"Wish I didn't have to go, too," he answered. "But it'd be the Shore Patrol and then the brig if I tried to duck out. They'd bust me down to seaman third, too. You fight the Navy, you're fighting out of your weight."

"I know," she said. "But-" She didn't go on, or need to. But covered bombs and torpedoes and mines and everything else that could mean this was the last liberty George ever got. She clung to him tighter than ever.

He found himself rising to the occasion once more, which told how long it had been since his last liberty. In his thirties, he didn't do that as automatically as he had once upon a time. "Hey, babe," he said. "Hey."

"Ohh," Connie said when he went into her-more a sigh than a word. He wasn't sure he could come again so soon after the last time, but he did, a moment after she gasped and quivered beneath him. But then she started crying all over again. "I don't want you to go!"

"I don't want to, either. But I've got to." He stroked her hair and kissed her in the hollow of her shoulder, all of which made things worse instead of better.

Finally, after she cried herself out, she reached for a tissue and blew her nose. "Good thing the lights are out," she said. "I must look like hell."

"You always look good to me," he said, and that started her crying again.

He wasn't very far from blubbering himself, but he didn't. He did fall asleep a few minutes later. Connie couldn't tease him about that, because she'd already started to breathe deeply and slowly herself.

She fed him an enormous plate of bacon and eggs the next morning. The way the boys stared at it said how unusual it was. They ate oatmeal as they got ready for school. Connie ate oatmeal, too, and drank coffee that smelled like burnt roots. "Rationing that bad?" George asked.

"Well, it's not good-that's for sure," his wife answered. "Better for us than for a lot of folks. I know people at T Wharf, so I can get fish for us. We're tired of it, but it's better than going without."

"Sure." George remembered his mother talking about doing the same thing during the last war. All over the country, no doubt, people were doing what they could to get along.

What George could do was shoulder his duffel bag, kiss Connie and the kids good-bye, and head for the closest subway station. When he came up again, he was on the other side of the Charles, half a block from the Boston Navy Yard.

He and the duffel got searched before the guards let him in. "All right-you're not a people bomb," one of the men said.

"Has that happened here?" George asked.

"Not here at the Yard, no, but it sure as hell did in New York City. Twice," the guard answered.

"Jesus!" George said. "Nobody's safe anywhere any more. I'd rather put to sea. At least out there I know who's on my side and who isn't." With a nod, the guard waved him on.

Armorers were bringing crates of ammunition aboard the Josephus Daniels. They were eloquently obscene, creatively profane. George had heard that before among men with especially dangerous trades. It gave them a safety valve they couldn't find any other way. He paused not just to give them room but also to admire their invectives. He'd thought he'd heard everything, but they showed him he was wrong.

He was almost sorry when they finished and walked down the pier. "Permission to come aboard?" he called as he set foot on the destroyer escort's gangplank.

"Granted," answered Thad Walters, who had officer-on-deck duty. After the formal response, he unbent enough to ask, "Liberty good?"

"Yes, sir," George said. "Kids are growing like weeds. Connie pisses and moans about the rationing, but she's sure keeping them fed." He turned to salute the flag at the stern.

"Well, that's good." The grin on the OOD's face said he knew George and Connie didn't spend all their time talking about rations. He was younger than George himself. Chances were he didn't spend all his time thinking about Y-ranging gear, either. He went on, "Well, stow your gear below and get used to the ship again. You'd better-we put to sea tomorrow morning, early and"-he looked at the cloudy sky-"not too bright."

"Aye aye, sir." After his own apartment, the accommodations belowdecks were a rude reminder that he was back in the Navy's clutches. Everything was cramped and smelly. Instead of a bed to share with his wife, he had a hammock in a compartment full of snoring, farting sailors. If he tried to roll over, he'd fall out.

Some kid was bragging about how many times he'd done it in a whorehouse. Only a couple of guys were even half listening to him, and they mainly seemed interested in telling him what a liar he was. George thought the same thing. Anybody who boasted about what a great lover he was had to be lying, even if he didn't always know it.

Chow was another disappointment: some kind of hash and lumpy mashed potatoes. Connie would have been ashamed to put slop like that on the table no matter how bad rationing got. The coffee was better than hers, though. The Navy and the Army got most of the real bean that came into the USA; civilians had to make do with ersatz.

Maybe because he'd gone without real coffee for a couple of days and it hit him harder when he drank it again, maybe because his own mattress had spoiled him, he had a hell of a time going to sleep that night. He knew he'd stagger around like a zombie in the morning, but he lay there in the hammock staring up at the steel ceiling not nearly far enough above his head.

A pilot had brought the Josephus Daniels in through the minefields shielding Boston harbor from enemy submersibles. Another one took her out again. A small patrol boat followed the destroyer escort to pick up the pilot and bring him back. George stayed at his 40mm mounts till well after the pilot was gone. The powers that be had installed the guns to shoot at airplanes, but they could also do dreadful things to subs forced to the surface.

"We have ourselves a new assignment." Sam Carsten's voice blared from the loudspeakers. George still thought it was bizarre that he'd met the man now his skipper when he was a kid in Boston. Carsten went on, "We're heading for Bermuda, and then for the central Atlantic. We're going to try to find convoys bringing food up from Argentina and Brazil to England and France. And when we do, we'll sink 'em or capture 'em."

Excitement tingled through George. This was the work his father had done in the last war. It was what finally made Britain decide she'd had enough. And it was the work that cost his father his life.

"Some of you poor devils are polliwogs," the skipper boomed. "When we get to the Equator, King Neptune and the shellbacks aboard will take care of that."

George laughed. He'd been initiated into the shellbacks when he crossed the Equator for the first time. He could hardly wait to give the new fish a taste of what he'd got.

And he had another reason for wanting to get down by the Equator. The North Atlantic was kicking up its heels. He had a strong stomach, and he'd known worse seas than this in a fishing boat that made the Josephus Daniels seem as sedate as a fleet carrier. That meant he kept down what he ate. It didn't mean he enjoyed himself. And using the heads was rugged, because a lot of guys were desperate and weren't neat. Some of them didn't make it to the heads. The skipper had cleaning parties out all the time. They almost kept up with the sour stink. Almost, here as in so many places, was a word nobody really wanted to hear.

The ship approached Bermuda from the northeast. That made for more time at sea, but lessened the chance of meeting C.S. bombers or seaplanes on the way in.

"No liberty here," Carsten announced as they tied up in the harbor. "Sorry, guys. We don't have time. On the way back to the USA, I'll give you the best blowout I can, and that's a promise."