him. The Psychological Department was never too busy to refuse another
case; they hunted patients gleefully, each psych-shark seeking in every
one proof of his own particular theories. It was with relief that he
watched them fill out the red tag which gave him a priority on jet
transports for home.

Ankara to Alexandria, Alexandria to Dakar, Dakar to Belém, Belém to the
shattered skyline of New York, the "hurry-and-wait" procedures at Fort
Carlisle, and, after the usual separation promotion, Major Fred Benson,
late of Benson's Butchers, was back at teaching high school juniors the
difference between H_{2}O and H_{2}SO_{4}.

* * * * *

There were two high schools in the city: McKinley High, on the east
side, and Dwight Eisenhower High, on the west. A few blocks from
McKinley was the Tulip Tavern, where the Eisenhower teachers came in the
late afternoons; the McKinley faculty crossed town to do their
after-school drinking on the west side. When Benson entered the Tulip
Tavern, on a warm September afternoon, he found Bill Myers, the school
psychologist, at one of the tables, smoking his pipe, checking over a
stack of aptitude test forms, and drinking beer. He got a highball at
the bar and carried it over to Bill's table.

"Oh, hi, Fred." The psychologist separated the finished from the
unfinished work with a sheet of yellow paper and crammed the whole
business into his brief case. "I was hoping somebody'd show up...."

Benson lit a cigarette, sipped his highball. They talked at
random--school-talk; the progress of the war, now in its twelfth year;