“To the infinite annoyance of my parents! And they really can’t say anything about it.
When they try to, I just hang my pretty head and tell them the Baileys have to do something…”
She broke off with an abrupt mood change familiar to him. “Oh, all right, Chuck. You always do see through me. I got into this absurd Civil Defense thing on one of my impulses, and now I’m plenty sore because it takes a night a week. We’ve been briefed and briefed and briefed; some of the people have been at it for years—and the whole business is simply fantastic anyhow! Tell me about life in the army.”
He relaxed a little. “That’s even duller. You know. I’m not in the glamour department of the Air Force. I’d be, even in the highly unlikely event of a war, at some base probably, far from peril—attached to a Colonel who was attached to a good dugout—keeping track of the lubrication stock for B-47’s.”
She said, “You do think there’s no chance of a war, don’t you?”
“Are you asking me as a person? Or as a military man? Because, as the latter, I’m supposed to say we can’t afford to drop Uncle Sam’s big guard.”
“As you, Chuck.”
“I think the Reds want peace—need it—and mean to have it. They’ve conceded about everything lately, except letting the free world come in and inspect them. But I’d trust sharks quicker. I’m kind of glad you’re in something.”
He swung into South Hobson Street. It was solid with cars. From time to time they moved up a few inches. In the distance, the playgrounds of South High, floodlighted now, were swarming with people, most of whom wore brassards and helmets. Whistles blew. Teams of various sorts formed and marched together toward a place where flames licked around a huge heap of broken boxes, barrels, old lumber. Hoses played. The thrumming of a fire-engine pump could be heard. A searchlight snapped on somewhere and threw so much light on the simulated burning wreckage that the flames became invisible and only the smoke showed.
Chuck fixed an eye, half-humorous, half-melancholy, on the scene. It was just a little like basic training, when you crawled along under live bullets from real machine guns and when you ran through actual poison gas, wearing a mask. But, he thought, it was nothing whatever like a real city after the detonation of a real bomb—even a high-explosive bomb. “Terrific,” he said.