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Your Dad inside?”
    “I guess so.”
    He found Ruth and Chuck in the house. He had not seen Ruth for four years and probably he had not met her half a dozen times since their disgrace; he thought he had got over that, and he was surprised that she could still give his heart a little twist when she said, “Why Stan, it’s real nice to see you!” Chuck was in a clean drill summer uniform shirt and slacks, sorting out a tangled mass of baggage and kiton the floor of the video alcove off the living-room. He said, “Hi-yah, fellow. How you doing?”
    “Okay,” said Stan. “You still in one piece?”
    Chuck stood up, grinning, a bulging haversack in hand. “More’n one piece. Either one or two more since I saw you—I kinda lose track of them. You better ask Ruthie. She might know.”
    “It’s one more, Stan,” she said. “Gloria was born just before you went away, remember?”
    “Uh-huh. This the one born last fall?”
    “That’s right—Jasmine. She’s asleep right now, but she’s a lovely baby.”
    Chuck said, “Sure she’s a lovely baby. Ruthie, what about a rum ’n coke?”
    She went to get the bottles of coca cola from the refrigerator, and Chuck produced a half-empty bottle of rum from the haversack. Stanton said, “Not for me, pal. I don’t use the stuff.”
    “Not even in Arabia?” Chuck grinned.
    Stanton shook his head. “Just coke.”
    “Okay, fellow. Ruthie, bring some ice along.”
    They sat down, sucking cokes and rum and cokes through straws as they compared experiences. Chuck had achieved the Distinguished Flying Cross in Korea after shooting down three MIGs, and in celebration at a party in Tokio he had crashed an Army jeep, had been arrested by the military police, and had spent a night in the cooler. He was now instructing fighter pilots at an airbase near Houston, and he had developed a technique which was giving him a good deal of pleasure. In that district the railways were mostly single track. When night-flying he would cruise around until he saw a train, the engine decorated with one bright headlight. He would then retire fifteen miles ahead of it and bring his aircraft down to track level, flying towards the train with one landing light on, exactly above the track. So far no engineer had actually died of fright but he understood that several had come very near it, and that half the locomotives in Texas were progressing in a series of leaps with flats on the wheels.
    Stanton told them all about Arabia, or what he knew of it; it took him about three minutes. They then turned to gossip about their schoolmates in Hazel, far more interestingand important topics, and the prospects in the forthcoming World Series. They sat together gossiping for half an hour, and got on to the subject of the deer.
    “I got to get going on September nineteenth,” the geologist said.
    “Only gives us three days of the shooting season,” said Chuck. “Kind of short.”
    Stanton said, “You know somethin’? I’d like to try it with the bow and arrow.”
    In the Hazel National Forest the deer were strictly protected. There was a shooting season of one month in the fall, but before the shooting season it was legal to attack the deer with bows and arrows for a fortnight.
    “Might do that,” said Chuck. “You got a bow?”
    Stanton nodded. Before leaving for Arabia he had bought himself a fine new modern bow the like of which was never seen at Agincourt, made by the American Steel Tube Co. Inc. in Springfield, Illinois, delicately tapered and immensely powerful; he had only used this outfit once and longed to use it again. “Hank Fisher got himself a bow like mine,” he said. “He’d lend it you.”
    Chuck smiled. “Go at it the hard way, like boy scouts.”
    “I guess it wouldn’t do us any harm, take off a bit of weight.”
    “I’ll say it wouldn’t,” said Ruth feelingly.
    They started three days later, Chuck and Stanton alone. They went on horseback, Chuck riding Mrs. Eberhart’s grey