For some reason Melissa couldn’t understand, the U.S. Air Force did not want their missile shooters fat. Rick Stacy, a fitness fiend, postulated that “excessive poundage,” in his words, made people slower on the controls. Melissa said she knew a cab dispatcher who was fat, enormous, and the most competent dispatcher around.
“We’re not dispatching cabs, Lissa,” Stacy told her. “We’re into kilotons on the front line.”
Melissa didn’t bother pursuing the fact that the front line was five thousand miles away in Europe, and nine thousand in Korea. In a way, she knew Rick was right, but his egocentric habit of automatically assuming the “front line” wherever he was annoyed her. Still, he was kind to her, considerate, and in this world where the casualties in Europe and Korea meant that there were about four women for every man back home, Richard was a better catch than most. And he’d given her good advice. While some of her friends at college had put their professional goals on permanent hold to have a good time, “while the world lasts,” as they’d put it, Melissa had signed up for the silo program, which would help pay for her degree. After the war, her degree and experience in such a highly skilled job would stand her in good stead.
In any case, she and Rick, by planning on getting married in the spring, were going to try both for the “good time” and, in Rick’s words, improve their “marketable skills.”
The only thing she regretted was that Rick was as organized and efficient in bed as he was in class. It was all very purposeful and unerringly “on target,” as he so romantically put it. And it was all over in ten minutes. She was reminded of some vulgar engineering student in Portland talking about “slam, bam, thank you, ma’am.” Part of the problem was that Rick detested sweat.
Now and then she found herself conscious of the stares of a local contractor, a man the air force used for base and silo support building repairs. He was a big man, very hairy, known to some of the unmarried women team members — and, it was said, some of the married women — as “KITS — Killerton in the SAC.” Melissa hadn’t been listening to the instructor, idly wondering whether “KITS” referred to his weight on top of you or to his actual performance in bed.
The instructor was rambling on about how “weather bias,” such as differences in air density, could cause possible “skipping” of a reentry warhead vehicle and how one way around this was for the kiloton or megaton warhead to effect reentry at a steeper angle than usual, which would make it more accurate, but that this in turn would generate more heat.
“So be alert,” said the instructor, “when we’re going through PALFIR — which is?” He was pointing at Melissa. Rick Stacy was watching her.
“Prearming,” she replied. “Arming, launching, firing, releasing,” she added smartly.
“Very good! Okay, that wraps it up for today. Remember, tomorrow you’re on solo, which may or may not include a problem with the blast valve. Three ways to clear?” He looked about the room, using a stick of chalk as a pointer. “Johnson?”
“Ah—”
The instructor laughed. “Unfair question. Tomorrow, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Zipping up his parka before going out in the thirty-below “icy hell,” as Rick Stacy called it with what he thought was a fine piece of irony, he complimented Melissa on her PALFIR answer. “Right on the button, Lissa. Very impressive!”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped.
“What?”
“Lissa.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s right with it? My name’s Melissa.”
“Sorreeeee.”
In the pickup van, there was a lot of loud talk as the class members unwound. No one spoke of estimating warhead yield, launch reliability factors, or reentry penetration. Only when it was suggested that the PX might have run out of Coors did one of the silo cadets, a tall youth from Louisiana, drawl that if the PX manager hadn’t ordered in enough beer, the manager’s TKP — terminal kill probability — would be 1.0—absolutely certain.
Melissa ignored the small talk, thinking instead about the bungalow she and another woman trainee shared. The bungalow had developed a leak in the roof. It would be all right for the time being, but once there was any melting, it’d be like a waterfall. “Be spring,” Rick said sulkily, “before there’s any melting around here.”
“You might be right,” she said, “but I thought you didn’t like my place looking unkempt — the ceiling’s stained.”
“I don’t.”
“Well then?”
“Melissa, I have better things to do right now than to mend roofs. We go solo tomorrow, remember?”
“I remember,” she said tartly.
“What’s gotten into you?” he asked brusquely.
“Nothing.”
“Well, if you want it fixed that badly, call Base Repairs. They’ll send someone over.”
“I thought you liked doing that kind of stuff.”
“I would if I had the time. Okay?”
“Okay. I’ll get Base Repairs.”
“Right.”
The van suddenly slid on black ice. There was a chorus of “whoa”s as it slithered further, then righted itself. It was all very funny, but for a second Melissa felt they were going to go right off the road and smash into the ice-hardened ditch. Life was too short — full of hazard.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As David Brentwood left Brussels headquarters, stepping out onto the wet, black pavement, his mood was one of brooding self-condemnation — about Melissa’s letter, the interview board — everything. His dejection wasn’t helped any by the ceiling of overcast, drizzling gray clouds so low, they obscured the ornate spires of the Grand Place, or by the British military police sergeant waiting for him under a dark canvas awning. The last thing he needed was the Brit’s nonstop patter, full of empty homilies and pubic jokes.
“What ho! Here comes our hero!” the sergeant said. Until then, David hadn’t seen Lili with him. The rosy-faced girl smiled with such transparent pleasure at seeing David that momentarily his attention shifted from thoughts of Melissa, whose letter lay like a poison against his chest. So powerful was the effect of the letter that for a moment during the interview, he had petulantly thought of agreeing to join the joint British/American commandos out of pure pique. He’d show her — the bitch. But then the fear of sudden death had prevailed — and now he was glad. Lili’s smile beneath the Flemish bonnet was so radiant and open that despite himself, he was smiling, too.
“You have forgotten,” she said.
He looked blank.
“Well — are you ready?” she added, full of enthusiasm.
“Oh-oh — that’s a leading question,” guffawed the sergeant. David wished the MP would evaporate. Lili ignored the Englishman.
“You do not remember,” she said, but it was uttered without rancor, almost alluringly. “I promised I would be your, ah—” She couldn’t think of the English word, her hands gesticulating impatiently, but even this was done with an infectious eagerness, full of life, of the kind of spirit that David felt had deserted him, what the French call joie de vivre.