And a few minutes later, in the shower room, where Jack Kinnison was caroling lustily while plying a towel, a huge young man strode up and slapped him ringingly between the shoulder blades.
"Congratulations, Jack, and so forth. But there's a thing I want to ask you. Confidential, sort of...?"
"Shoot! Haven't we been eating out of the same dish for lo, these many moons? Why the diffidence all of a sudden, Mase? It isn't in character."
"Well ... it's ... I'm a lip-reader, you know."
"Sure. We all are. What of it?"
"It's only that ... well, I saw what you and Miss Samms said to each other out there, and if that was lovers' small talk I'm a Venerian mud-puppy."
"Lovers! Who the hell ever said we were lovers?... Oh, you've been inhaling some of dad's balloon-juice. Lovers! Me and that red-headed stinker—that jelly-brained sapadilly? Hardly!"
"Hold it, Jack!" The big officer's voice was slightly edged. "You're off course—a hell of a long flit off. That girl has got everything. She's the class of the Reservation—why, she's a regular twelve-nineteen!"
"Huh?" Amazed, young Kinnison stopped drying himself and stared. "You mean to say you've been giving her a miss just because...." He had started to say "because you're the best friend I've got in the System," but he did not.
"Well, it would have smelled slightly cheesy, I thought." The other man did not put into words, either, what both of them so deeply knew to be the truth. "But if you haven't got ... if it's O.K. with you, of course...."