Major Michael A. Dugan stayed in the shower until he thought he would erode. The conversations in the shower room were too interesting for him to miss.
From them he gathered that he had walked into the dwelling tunnel of the atomic physicists, with a few police officials thrown in for good measure. The men in the room were all tired. When they talked shop to one another, it was with curt allusions which meant nothing even to an outsider who knew Russian. Phrases like "The big one might cook," or "Why not try tongs for the Green Apparatus?" or "Did you see the dandelions that Rosanov raised yesterday?" kept introducing an element of the grotesque into the conversation; they sounded like suburban chat when in reality they spelt the awful agonies of matter itself being put through flux.
But Dugan did not care about the theory — not at that moment. He wanted to finish his shower — and to stay alive.
Finally his chance came.
A German came into the room. Dugan did not find out whether the German was an old-time Communist who just happened to be an expert physicist or one of the ex-Nazi physicists whom the Russians had moved out of their Soviet Zone along with the cyclotrons.
Red, white, blue, black, or striped, he was drunk. He was ripely and mournfully drunk. He entered the shower room singing "Alt Heidelberg, du schöne" horribly off key. He tried to tickle the hairy paunch of an elderly and stuffy Russian who looked — despite his Soviet surroundings, and his Siberian underground home — piquantly much like the dissolute, ruddy millionaires shown leering at showgirls in popular American cartoons. The Soviet stuffed-shirt reacted just the way an American stuffed-shirt would have; his dignity became huffy: it was a little difficult to manage when he had nothing more than a towel wrapped around him. Finally he exploded and spat out:
"Herr Hundeshausen!"
The whole room froze like bird-dogs. Up to then the men had been calling one another Comrade, Professor, or Doctor. The interjection of the German title was enough to evoke the well-remembered rage of World War II.
Hundeshausen did not mind. With drunken joviality he lurched at the big shot, saying. "Kitchy — kitchy — kitchy! Tomorrow's May Day and we can have a parade. With your stomach out in front of it — ha! Kitchy — kitchy — koo!"
He lurched toward the Russian and the Russian pushed him firmly in the face. Hundeshausen staggered backward, step by step. The eyes of each man in the room moved, jump by little jump, following his retrogress as though it were a cliff which he were approaching, and not a mere tiled wall.