an hour with half a dozen lightly wounded
Scots, rode for another hour on a big cat-truck loaded with casualties
of six regiments and four races, and finally reached Division Rear,
where both the Division and Corps commanders took time to compliment him
on the part his last hunter patrol had played in the now complete
breakthrough. His replacement, an equine-faced Spaniard with an imposing
display of fruit-salad, was there, too; he solemnly took off the
bracelet a refugee Caucasian goldsmith had made for his predecessor's
predecessor and gave it to the new commander of what had formerly been
Benson's Butchers. As he had expected, there was also another medal
waiting for him.

A medical check at Task Force Center got him a warning; his last patrol
had brought him dangerously close to the edge of combat fatigue.
Remembering the incidents of the tank and the unaccountably fast watch,
and the mysterious box and envelope which he had found in his coat
pocket, he agreed, saying nothing about the questions that were puzzling
him. The Psychological Department was never too busy to refuse another
case; they hunted patients gleefully, each psych-shark seeking in every
one proof of his own particular theories. It was with relief that he
watched them fill out the red tag which gave him a priority on jet
transports for home.

Ankara to Alexandria, Alexandria to Dakar, Dakar to Belem, Belem to the
shattered skyline of New York, the "hurry-and-wait" procedures at Fort
Carlisle, and, after the usual separation promotion, Major Fred Benson,
late of Benson's Butchers, was back at teaching high school juniors the
difference between H_{2}O and H_{2}SO_{4}.

* * * * *

There were two high schools in the city: McKinley High, on the east
side, and Dwight Eisenhower High, on the west. A few blocks from
McKinley was the Tulip Tavern, where the Eisenhower teachers came in the
late afternoons; the McKinley faculty crossed town to do their
after-school drinking on the west side. When Benson entered the Tulip
Tavern, on a warm September afternoon, he found Bill Myers, the school
psychologist, at one of the tables, smoking his pipe, checking over a
stack of aptitude test forms, and drinking beer. He got a highball at
the bar and carried it over to Bill's table.

"Oh, hi, Fred." The psychologist separated the finished from the
unfinished work with a sheet of yellow paper and crammed the whole
business into his br