We didn't get to hear right then who I ought to know because I had a fit
of coughing and we realized the cigarette smoke was getting just too
thick. Pop fixed the door so it was open a crack and after a while the
atmosphere got reasonably okay though we had to put up with a low lonely
whistling sound.

"Yeah," I continued, "I was the boss of the missile crew and I wore a
very handsome uniform with impressive insignia--not the bully old
stripes I got on my chest now--and I was very young and handsome myself.
We were all very young in that line of service, though a few of the men
under me were a little older. Young and dedicated. I remember feeling a
very deep and grim--and _clean_--responsibility. But I wonder sometimes
just how deep it went or how clean it really was.

"I had an uncle flew in the war they fought to lick fascism, bombardier
on a Flying Fortress or something, and once when he got drunk he told me
how some days it didn't bother him at all to drop the eggs on Germany;
the buildings and people down there seemed just like toys that a kid
sets up to kick over, and the whole business about as naive fun as
poking an anthill.

"_I_ didn't even have to fly over at seven miles what I was going to be
aiming at. Only I remember sometimes getting out a map and looking at a
certain large dot on it and smiling a little and softly saying,
'Pow!'--and then giving a little conventional shudder and folding up the
map quick.

"Naturally we told ourselves we'd never have to do it, fire the thing, I
mean, we joked about how after twenty years or so we'd all be given jobs
as museum attendants of this same bomb, deactivated at last. But
naturally it didn't work out that way. There came the day when our side
of the world got hit and the orders started cascading down from Defense
Coordinator Bigelow--"

"Bigelow?" Pop interrupted. "Not Joe Bigelow?"

"Joseph A., I believe," I told him, a little annoyed.

"Why he's my boy then, the one I was telling you about--the skinny runt
had this horn-handle! Can you beat that?" Pop sounded startlingly happy.
"Him and you'll have a lot to talk about when you get together."

I wasn't so sure of that myself, in fact my first reaction was that the
opposite would be true. To be honest I was for the first moment more
than a little annoyed at Pop interrupting my story of my Big Grief--for
it was that to me, make no mistake. Here my story had finally been
teased out of me, against all expec