"Guess I'd better get back to the big job," he said then. "—Or Tayne'll be your new boss! And then—"
"Doug what a perfectly awful thing to say! You've got to stop worrying. Sometimes you're hardly yourself—honestly, if I didn't know you better I'd think you'd lost the old self-confidence, the old strut! Your voice even sounds kind of different. You've got to relax, mister."
"When I get things taken care of, maybe then.... And I think—I think I can give them something they can't say no to if I go over every detail once more—a whole re-study." He watched her face closely, nerves taut for the first tell-tale sign that he'd fallen on his face. But she nodded.
"Probably help. Shall I bring in the whole file for last year? Checklists, film-strips, the works?
"Yes," he said. "Yes. That's what I want—the works."
Neatly lettered on the file-tab of the heavy folder she brought were the words WAR GAMES, 1957, and he did not understand.
War Games, and she had said there was no war....
Suddenly, he was afraid. Afraid to reach inside the folder, afraid to find what would tell him that for some fearful reason she had lied, that this beautiful, sparkling world was nothing but a lie....
He read the file-tab again. WAR GAMES, 1957, it said. No—no he did not understand.