"Put it another way, suh, let's say I joined the right side."
"How did you find this place?"
"I just kept thinking and kept trying. Eventually we found each other. The psychos tried to make me believe I was nuts. But I knew better. I knew what had happened. And I knew there had to be a reason for it. I kept hunting until I found that reason. The big part of the battle, where I had an advantage over most everybody else, was that I knew from experience that something was going on. Knowing this much, all I had to do was keep looking." The man's voice drawled the explanation. His eyes smiled. "At your service, suh."
"Do you know that going with me may mean death?"
"What's death, suh?" Red-Dog Jimmie Thurman grinned. "I died over the North Pole, suh."
"Spike Larson," another man said.
"You were in a sub," Zen challenged. A glow was coming up inside of him like nothing he had ever experienced before. He was getting fighting men to stand beside him.
"Yes," Larson answered. "And I will consider it a privilege to stand beside you."
Like soldiers, they passed in review before him, the fat boy, the tall, lean, brown-skinned youths. Somehow he thought there ought to be another one. He looked around for him. Grant was talking to West.
Grant was the man whose face had looked out of thin air in the middle of the room.