Hundeshausen hit the wall.
Dugan, who had been watching, stepped naked out of his shower. He had heard someone say that Hundeshausen had a room to himself. He had also noticed that Hundeshausen was about his own size.
Dugan was the first to reach the fallen man. He grabbed someone else's towel as though he did not realize what he was doing and wrapped it around his waist with a tuck. Now he had the same preposterous abbreviated skirt which the others, out by the wash basins, were all wearing. Dugan kept his face pointed at Hundeshausen's and tried to make concern for the stricken man, along with the pantomime of help, keep attention away from his own identity. He tried to put a jarring German resonance into his pronunciation of Russian and said:
"I'll get him to bed, tovarisch. Forgive him. He is drunk."
The pompous Russian started to say something mollifying when Hundeshausen opened his eyes and said: "Drunk? Ganz und gar versoffen! I'm glorious, old belly, that's what I am. Glorious!"
This annoyed the Russian so much that he walked off to the shower without further comment. Everyone in the room relaxed; Dugan guessed that the old boy must have been someone who had unrestricted powers of life and death over all the rest of theirs.
But, at the moment that the others, seven or eight in number, so visibly relaxed, Dugan caught something odd out of the corner of his eye.
One of the men had not gone tense in the first place. Nor had he relaxed. He was a huge, handsome man, visibly proud of his physique. He had the golden hair and blue eyes of the archetypal Slav, the thick smiling lips of a Cossack. He looked steadily toward Dugan and Hundeshausen as though he found them interesting. Dugan did not dare to look squarely at the man to see if he were really being watched. Neither did he dare overlook the man.
If this had not been Atomsk — if he had not thrust himself into the dormitory of the scientists themselves — if he had the faintest scrap of paper on which to improvise a pyramid of lies — he would not have minded a face-to-face challenge.
But now he was naked. He was Comrade Nobody. He was ready for the upright post set firmly in the ground, ready for bullets which would tear through ribs and skull-case. Dugan had never felt more defenseless in his life than he did under the calm steady inquiring gaze of those blue and utterly Russian eyes. This was the first real test inside Atomsk.