A letter from a military prosecutor lay on his desk. He'd left it there when he went home the morning before. Major Lopat's secretary had neatly typed, We are not obligated to turn over this evidence to you prior to its production in court. Rules of discovery applicable in civilian cases do not apply here, as you are doubtless perfectly well aware. If I can be of further assistance to you, do not hesitate to call on me. Then Lopat had signed it-in red ink, for good measure.

"Well, screw you, Sam," Moss muttered. What the military prosecutor didn't know was that he already had back-channels photostats of the documents in question. They'd come in the same mail delivery as the snotty letter.

He was gloating about the surprise he had planned for the prosecutor when the telephone rang. He was his own secretary. Picking up the telephone, he said, "Jonathan Moss."

A man's voice on the other end of the line: "You're the Yank barrister, aren't you?"

"That's right," Moss answered. "Who are you? What can I do for you?"

"If I was you, I wouldn't start my motorcar no more," the voice said. A click followed. The line went dead.

Moss looked out the window. There sat the Bucephalus, right where he'd left it. Had someone done something to it there on the street, brazen as could be? Or was somebody just trying to rattle his cage?

That wasn't the biggest question, he realized. The biggest question was, did he feel like finding out the hard way?

He didn't. He called the local garrison and reported what had just happened. The sergeant with whom he spoke knew who he was. The noncom thought the call highly amusing. "You're worth more to the Canucks than a dozen of their own kind," he said. "They ought to give you a medal, not blow you up."

"Funny. Ha, ha," Moss said. "Will you send your bomb squad out to go over my auto?"

"Yes," the sergeant answered. "I'll do that. The squad may take a while to get there, though. Yours is the fifth call we've had this morning."

"A hoaxer, then," Moss said. "He must want to make people run around in circles and waste time."

"We thought so, too," the sergeant told him. "The first two times we sent out the bomb squad, nothing. The third time, there was a bomb. They're still playing with it. If you hear a bang and your windows rattle, you can bet the squad will be late to your place." He laughed again.

Moss remembered such humor from his own days in the Army. It had seemed funny then. It didn't now-not to him, anyhow. The sergeant enjoyed it. "You ought to be trying to find out who your practical joker is," Moss said. "We could have another Arthur McGregor on our hands."

"Don't worry about it, Mr. Moss," the sergeant said. "When we do catch this son of a bitch, whoever he turns out to be, you can get him off the hook. So long. The bomb squad will be along sooner or later." He hung up.

That shows what my own people think of me, Moss thought unhappily. I'm not doing anything against the law-I'm working strictly within it. This is the thanks I get.

He wondered whether the bomb squad would show up at all, or whether he would get to find out if his car was wired by going out to it and turning the key. He heard no sudden and dreadful boom, though he worked with his ears peeled all day. Toward evening, a squad of men whose heavy armor made them look like a cross between modern soldiers and medieval knights showed up and went over his car. After twenty minutes or so, one of them waddled into the building.

By the time he got to Moss' door, he was sweating despite the chilly weather. How much did that protective clothing weigh? If a bomb went off, how much good would it do? Even had Moss intended to ask those questions aloud, he didn't get the chance. The man from the bomb squad asked if he was Jonathan Moss. When he nodded, the fellow said, "No bomb. Just that asshole running us from pillar to post." Without waiting for an answer, he waddled away.

"Thanks," Moss called after him. He raised a gauntleted hand and kept on walking.

Who would want to blow me up, or at least to scare me spitless? Moss wondered. The U.S. sergeant was right. He had done a lot of good for the Canucks. They shouldn't have wanted to hurt him. They should have wanted to coat him in bulletproof glass.

Do they hate me just because I'm a Yank? He shook his head in slow wonder. Who could be that stupid?

M ary Pomeroy. Mary Pomeroy. Mary Pomeroy. No matter how often she wrote her new name, trying to get used to it, she still thought of herself as Mary McGregor. She'd been married only a couple of months. The change in her name sometimes seemed the smallest of the changes that had swept over her. She'd known they would be there when she said yes after Mort got down on one knee in front of her. She'd known they would be there, but she hadn't had any idea how overwhelming they would prove.

How could living in Rosenfeld, for instance, be so very different from living on a farm not that far outside of town? So she'd asked herself before going from the farmhouse where she'd spent her whole life to rooms across the street from the diner where her new husband worked with his father. So she'd asked herself, and she'd found out.

Electricity, for instance. She'd never had it at the farm, so she'd never known what she was missing. Now she felt as if she'd spent her life in the Dark Ages. That was literally true; kerosene lamps didn't come close to matching light bulbs for brilliance or convenience. But there was so much more. A refrigerator beat an icebox all hollow. A vacuum cleaner was ever so much easier to use and more effective than a carpet sweeper. An electric toaster knocked the stuffing out of the wire grid that went over the fire. An electric alarm clock didn't stop running if she forgot to wind it.

An electric phonograph also didn't run down, unlike the windup machine the McGregors had had on the farm. And a wireless set-a wedding present from Mort's father-offered a window on the world Mary had never imagined. Music, dramas, comedies-all in the apartment, all at the twist of a dial? If that wasn't a miracle, what was? She had to keep reminding herself the news that came from the machine on the hour was only what the Yanks wanted her to hear.

The apartment had a telephone, too. That didn't impress Mary so much. None of the few people who might have wanted to call her had telephones of their own, so they couldn't. Whenever it rang, it was for Mort. She suspected that would change as time went by. The Pomeroys were still a very new couple. Bit by bit, they would fit themselves into Rosenfeld's jigsaw puzzle of class and sociability.

That thought had hardly crossed her mind before the other half of the Pomeroys came out of the bedroom pulling his overcoat tight around himself. "I'm off to the diner," he said, and paused to give Mary a kiss.

"Oh, Mort," she said. Her arms tightened around him. The kiss took longer and got hotter than he'd probably expected. He didn't seem disappointed, though, when they finally broke apart.

"I'll see you tonight," he said huskily.

Mary nodded. Some of the other things that went with marriage and a move to town were even more startling, even more exciting, than electricity. Although if it wasn't electricity that set her pulse racing now, what was it? She knew what it was, all right. "Tonight," she said.

Mort looked as if he had to remind himself he was supposed to go out the door, down the stairs, and across the street to the diner. Mary watched him from the window. He hurried across when no motorcars were coming in either direction. Snow flew up from his overshoes as he crossed the street. Rosenfeld would have a white Christmas in a couple of weeks. More snow started falling even as Mary watched.

Mort opened the front door to the diner, ducked inside, and closed it after him. With a regretful sigh, Mary turned away. What shall I do with the rest of my day? she wondered. Oh, she had work to do keeping the place clean and getting supper ready for tonight. But that was work for a few hours, not work that would devour a day. She had no livestock to look after but a cat, and Mouser, like any of his kind, looked after himself perfectly well.