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moment, he thought it was someone from the bar, one of the other students. Then he realized it wasn’t.
    The heavyset man had on a stocking cap, some sort of fatigue jacket. But his matted beard indicated he hadn’t seen an inspection, or a razor, for a long time.
    â€œHey, mister. Got a match?”
    â€œSorry. Don’t smoke.”
    â€œSpare a buck?”
    The night was late, the street still deserted save for the two of them. The man stood so close, Dan could smell him. He kept one hand inside the tattered jacket. Dan hesitated. Finally, he held out the change from his drinks.
    â€œThat all you got?”
    â€œAll you’re getting.” He kept staring him in the eye, and at last the other looked down. As soon as the coins met his hand, he turned and limped away.
    Dan breathed out and went on. Once more on the way back to the subway, he thought he heard footsteps behind him. He looked back, heart accelerating again, but saw no one. He felt relieved when the lit M sign came into view ahead, and then the hole in the earth, leading downward and back to Arlington, and eventually to bed.

4

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    He went in to work Saturday and part of Sunday, getting read in to the directives and going over minutes and technical pubs. Monday, he was at NC-1 at 0600. Niles was due in and he wanted to be ready.
    When he unlocked the eleventh-floor door the boxes and trash were gone. The carpet had been shampooed and a scent of lemons hung in the air. It made him nervous, and after a moment he realized why. It was the same scent he’d inhaled for hours in the holding room outside the court of inquiry.
    Shaking it off, he strolled around the cubicles, checking out the art. A series of color photos showed a tubular blur approaching, then disappearing.into a concrete wall. In the last frame, an orange opium blossom of fire bloomed on the far side. A Naval Institute poster silhouetted the U.S. fleet. Another, in red, illustrated the Soviet navy. The centerfolds and crotch shots that would have decorated a shipboard office were restrained here to a cheesecake of Morgan Fairchild in clingy red lingerie.
    Next to Morgan was a sectional diagram of the missile. He leaned in. It
did
look like a torpedo. Straight-sided as a frozen foot-long frankfurter, with stubby, thin wings poking out. The tail was composed of four stiff little airfoils. A garbage can-shaped booster hung off the rear.
    Pursuing his circle back to Munford’s desk—no,
his
desk now—he stopped again in front of a diagram of the prototype launcher.
    â€œHey, Dan.” He turned, to see Vic Burdette hangingup his hat. The black officer’s smoothly shaven skull gleamed in the light. “New oh-seven’s due in today. D’l hear something about you knowing him?”
    Dan said he didn’t exactly know Barry Niles but that he’d met him a couple of times.
    â€œHe was what, your commodore down in Charleston?”
    â€œRight. He’s a surface nuke. Had
Barney
and
California
before he went to DesRon Six.”
    Burdette moved in, checking out Dan’s ribbons. “Where’d you pick up the Silver Star?”
    â€œIn the Caribbean. Look, I need to pump your brains about what you and Munford were doing. Can we get together this morning?”
    From the doorway, Captain Westerhouse said, “Dan, Vic. We’re going in to see the new director at eight.”
    â€œYes, sir. We’ll stand by.”
    Westerhouse disappeared. Burdette took off his glasses and polished them with a tissue. “How about now?”
    â€œSure.”
    Burdette briefed him for an hour, starting with the ABL. Each armored box launcher stored four Tomahawks. For launch, it clamshelled open, pointing the tubes up at about a thirty-degree angle. “We got turned on originally to put it on three classes of surface ship:
Spru-boats,
DLGs and CGNs. Then we got the surprise tasker to put them on the battleships