"Today. Sixteen-fifty hours."
There was a perceptible period of silence. Colonel Landsiedel made a bet with himself. As soon as Dugan spoke, Landsiedel collected the bet within his own mind; he had won. Dugan had said, with incredible casualness:
"Didn't Coppersmith have some kind of a woman assistant?"
"You mean Major Lomax?"
"I thought she was a captain," said Dugan. His eyes went hard when he realized that Landsiedel had caught him; momentarily he tensed as though to fling himself out the window, to kill Landsiedel, or to follow some other desperate improvisation. Then, remembering that he was among friends, he laughed out loud. It was the first uncalculated laugh which Landsiedel had ever heard from Dugan.
Dugan said, "You caught me."
"Sir?" said Landsiedel, with extreme but comical formality.
"Sure. I remember her. I'm scared. What am I going to do, Colonel?"
This was the moment which Landsiedel had awaited for years — the time that Dugan would open up. But a sense of officer-to-officer delicacy kept him from plunging into Dugan's private life. He let the opportunity slip, thinking oddly that a few minutes before he had tried to open Dugan up with frontal questioning and that now he was passing up a chance. With significant gentleness he said, "She's been asking about you. Sometimes twice a day. When she got promoted, she pulled her rank to get into the message room, looking for clues about your progress."
"Nice of her," said Dugan bleakly, "but what can I do? Marry her?"