Paula Piacentelli wore the short skirt, knee-hose and short-sleeved blouse of Pioneer green that was the Class B uniform for females inside the Barracks. She looked, Hartford thought, remarkably delectable; and he again congratulated his friend on his luck in getting her. He returned his attention to the Status Board, which Paula was conning. Two red lights flickered on above the ground-floor diagram of the Barracks, indicating that the two men of the picket had entered the Hot Gut. A moment later these lights blinked off, and two lighted over the diagram of the Wet Gut. Piacentelli and Bond were swimming now, towing their weapons in ballooning plastic sleeves. Sterile, on their way out into a filthy world, these two men were the outpost that would protect through the night their hundreds of brothers and sisters sleeping safe in utero. Freud, thou shouldst have lived this hour! Hartford mused.
Piacentelli turned the ignition key of the jeep he'd chosen. With the starting cough of the engine, one of the rank of TV screens over the Status Board lighted. The camera eye was looking out the rear-view mirror of the jeep, and picked up Pia's helmeted head and the shoulder of his companion. "We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz!" Piacentelli sang.
His wife spoke into the microphone before her. "Don't do anything foolish, Lieutenant," she said. "And remember, all transmissions are recorded and are audited, at random, by the Base Commander."
"Transmission received, receiver contrite," Piacentelli reported back. "Okay, Paula-Darling. From now on till Bond and I swim home, we'll be as military as GI soap." He flicked the TV monitor around to look out the windshield and started the jeep down the road toward Stinkerville. The duty of the picket was to chug around outside at random, hitting all the cross-roads, settlements and high spots of the countryside near the Barracks; to interview late-riding Indigenous Hominids and inquire their business being out; to conduct such searches of Stinker homes and hideaways as might seem useful to the occupying Axenites; and to remain at all times in contact with the officers on duty at the Status Board.
As the picket got underway, Hartford went down to the Terrible Third's area to check quickly through the two-man apartments. Knock on the door; "As you were, Troopers." A brisk inspection of two safety-suits, gaping beside their owners' bunks like firemen's boot-sheathed pants. The men were quiet. Guard-duty meant that any socializing with Service Company troopers was impossible for a night, and militated against any intake of alcoholic beverage. It was a bore, especially after three dry and womanless weeks in the field. Hartford visited his Platoon Sergeant last: "Sergeant Felix, could you have our bunch standing on bug-dirt ten minutes after I blew the whistle? Very well, then. Good night, Felix."
Having demonstrated to his troopers that he was suffering the same strictures as they, Hartford went back to the O.G. cubicle in the Board Room. He checked his own safety-suit, his plastic-packaged Dardick-pistol, said good night to Paula Piacentelli and lay down to begin his first night's sleep outside a safety-suit in three weeks.
But sleep didn't come easily.
There was the murmur from the Board Room; Piacentelli's half-hourly reports. "Nothing to report, Paula. I'm at Road Junction (41-17). No I.H. activity. No excitement at all."
"Continue random patrol, Lieutenant."