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was with her all the way.
    No damned imp with a lucky fireball had succeeded in blinding our big Mormon buddy. I was still pissed that Bill Ritch had been killed in similar circumstances on Deimos. Well, the bastards didn’t have any of Albert. The L.A. mission had turned out to be a mortality-free operation. Hell, we’d even rescued Ken Estes when the man could do nothing to help himself. The docs had him sitting up in bed, wearing pajamas instead of mummy wrappings, and he could talk again. A bona fide miracle. Then it was Albert’s turn.
    â€œFly,” said Arlene, up close all of a sudden.
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œYou’re a great guy,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek. She could always surprise me.
    â€œWhat brought that on?” I asked.
    â€œYou care about Albert,” she said softly. “You care about Jill and Ken, too.”
    I shook my head. “Don’t think that way,” I told her. “You can’t relax into—”
    She put her hand over my mouth. It was her turn again: “You’re not the only marine who can make command decisions. Soon the only people left in the world will have the will to sacrifice their loved ones if that’s what it takes to defeat the invaders. Meanwhile, we can care for one another.”
    â€œYou’re not describing civilians,” I said coldly.
    She started swimming for the shore, but then turned back, treading water, and completed my education:“There are no civilians any longer, Fly. Every survivor is a soldier in this war.”
    I gave her that point. After all, she hadn’t said everyone was a marine. I could accept the idea that all terrestrial life-forms had volunteered for grunt duty on the front line. The whole planet was the front line.
    Floating on my back for a moment, I let Arlene’s words wash over me. The heat of the sun and the cool of the water threatened me with sleep. We hadn’t had very much of that in the past month. I’d always been naturally buoyant, but I wasn’t going to risk taking a doze in the ocean. It would be funny if a guy who had survived spider-minds and steam demons drowned a short distance from his best buddy.
    I swam to shore, where Arlene was waiting for me, pointing to something behind me. I looked around and for a moment thought she was referring to the cloud the admiral had noticed earlier, but it had vanished. She was interested in the black fin a hundred yards away from us.
    â€œThere’s someone for your terrestrial army,” I said. At the time I thought it was a shark.
    â€œDo you think we’ll ever get Jill to eat seafood?” she asked.
    â€œI doubt it. Speaking of Jill, let’s check up on her.”
    *   *   *
    I’m lonely. I’m bored. I thought when we got to Hawaii I’d find some kids my own age. Everyone here is either an adult or a little kid. Some of them don’t even call me Jill. They call me “the teenager.”
    At first they made a big fuss. The admiral gave me a medal. They were short on the real thing, so he used some old golf ribbon he’d won years ago, but it meant a lot to him, so I was polite. I was uncomfortable atthe way everyone looked at me, but it was still kind of nice. The pisser was, no one would get off my age after that.
    Except for Dr. Forrest Ackerman. He was probably crazy, but he was nice to me. “You’re a genius,” he kept repeating. “I prefer the company of geniuses.”
    He looked like Vincent Price from an old horror movie, complete with neat little mustache. I might not have remembered that movie except that the doctor considered himself a monster expert. “Let the others call them ‘the enemy,’ ” he said, winking. “They’re more comfortable with the old language. ‘The enemy’ refers to something human. We face principalities and powers. We’re monster-fighters.”
    I had no idea what