"Not even here in the forest?" Irina asked in a practical, indignant, feminine way.
"You never know who's listening—"
Damn right you don't, thought Major Michael A. Dugan of the United States Army.
"Don't be silly," said Irina.
That's right, thought Dugan, don't interrupt the girl. Let her tell me the rest of the story.
"But your father — he would have held up the work for months. The Deputy Commissar came in from N.K.A.R. He himself showed that your father was concealing traces of capitalist cowardice and bourgeois humanitarianism…."
"My father's no humanitarian!" said Irina wrathfully. "He just wanted the project to succeed. Didn't he originally write the original syllabus for the whole project—?"
"The Konspekt Proekta," murmured Aleksandr respectfully. Dugan cheerfully noted the title.
"— and if," said Irina, "we ever had a flood here and the Honorable Senior Expert Engineer, or whatever the pompous fool calls himself, had to turn the valve up above Number Eighteen, what do you think would happen to Atomsk?"
"Nothing, sweetheart," said Aleksandr patiently. "That's all been explained. Let's not argue over technical matters. We shouldn't even be talking about them in the first place. It's not loyal. It's not right. Not Socialist. Let's talk about us. Give me a kiss… "