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Semyon." He shrugged a large Russian shrug; and that was all he said. But he carefully checked the clips on his T-gun.
    The copters came down in a clearing, and the major jumped on a stump to disperse us. "They're moving slow," he bellowed, "but they're moving. Soon as you see anything, shoot it! They've got some guns, captured from the guards; dunno how many or whether this lot has them. There's upwards of five thousand of them running around, so you'll have plenty of targets. Miller!"
    I jumped. Of all the things I might have expected, being called out by name just then wasn't one of them. "Front and center, Miller," bawled the major. "The rest of you disperse and take cover."
    But it had an explanation. I saluted the major with more snap than I'd been able to put into a salute for weeks. He clipped: "Miller? You the one that's checked out on a scout torp?"
    "Checked out!" I started to blaze; but this wasn't the time for it. I said only, briskly: "Better than eight hundred hours in combat sweeps, with a confirmed—"
    "Sure," he said, unimpressed and unheeding. He jerked a thumb and I found myself trudging through the mangrove swamp with a female naval ensign, toward the shore.
    We looked at three scout torps lashed to a Churchill dock, bobbing harmlessly in the gentle morning swell. She said bitterly: "Half our complement on leave—understaffed to begin with—the filthy swine!" She didn't make clear whether the "swine" were COMCARIB or the Caodais; but it was perfectly clear that she, as temporary exec officer while the male strength of the torpedo-squadron complement was manning the other torps, was requesting me to take one of the idle scouts out on a sweep. She didn't have to ask me twice.
     
    I slid out on the surface, and two hundred yards from shore checked the sealer telltales, flooded the negative buoyancy tanks and tipped the diving vanes. I leveled off at thirty meters—plenty deep for the continental shelf.
    My search pattern was clipped to the board over my scanning port. I flexed the vanes a couple of times to get the feel of the torp; it was good to be home again. All these scouts come off the same assembly lines and are made out of the same interchangeable parts; but it is astonishing how much the "feel" can differ between craft. I set the auto-pilot for the first leg of the sweep; triggered the sonars; and I was off.
    Back to Spruance ! I felt like a fighting man. And there was, in truth, some chance that I might see some action. The girl ensign had filled me in a little bit on the way down to the beach; there really had been ship-to-shore firing—guided aerial torpedoes, mostly—and that meant at least a few Caodai vessels somewhere within range. Of course, "range" was anything up to 12,000 miles, and the only reason it wasn't more is that you can't get more than 12,000 miles away from anywhere and still be on the earth. But she thought, though she wasn't clear why, that they were pretty close inshore.
    It was an exciting prospect. I tasted the implications of it, thoughtfully. Both sides in the cold war were being pretty meticulous about respecting the continental masses belonging to the other side. You couldn't say as much for islands, and naturally Europe was respected by no one at all, being a selected jousting field. But even guided-missile attack was very rare. I wondered what on the Florida coast made the Caodais mad enough to shoot.
    The blow-off, of course, would be if they attempted a landing.
    I remembered what Kedrick had said about expecting trouble from the stockade; the girl had talked as if everyone knew the prisoners were seething for weeks past. How the devil, I demanded of myself, could you be expected to know what was going on when security kept everybody's mouth shut? Was it fair to drag me out of bed when—
    Two things stopped that train of thought. One was the faintly shamefaced realization that I was loving every minute of it. The second was the sonar sighting bell loud in my