Mr. Windshuttle's mouth pursed to form a reasonable facsimile of a cat's anus, and he spun away, storming off in high dudgeon.

The three of them burst out laughing before he was out of earshot.

Dan returned to the Clinton for the rest of day, leaving the women to lounge around the hotel. He thought it would put Julia in a relaxed frame of mind for the dinner with Spruance, but he was wrong. When he returned to the hotel he found her pacing their room like a caged wolf. She was beginning to chafe at the restrictions on her movements.

"This story is going to break, Dan," she said, "and if I want to have any chance at getting my job on the Times, I need to be there on day one."

Dan slipped an arm into the jacket of his dress whites.

"I think you're getting all worked up over nothing, baby. You're the man on the spot, so to speak. They're going to want as much as you can write for them."

"They're going to want to know why I didn't get on the blower to call them right away. That's what they do here. They get on the blower. Right away."

Dan finished buttoning his jacket and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead.

"Nobody is getting on the blower at the moment, baby. So what is it you say? 'Chill out'? You're going to dinner with Admiral Spruance, and there's a story for you right there."

"He's not going to tell me squat about what you guys are cooking up. First thing I'll know, there'll be newsreel footage of a mushroom cloud over Tokyo and some asshole sounds like he's got a pole up his butt doing a voice-over like, That'll put the nips in the stir-fry."

Dan sat at the end of the bed to enjoy the sight while she pulled on her stockings. Julia rarely wore dresses, and he wondered why, given how good she looked in this one.

"You brought that frock with you, I'll bet," he said.

"Nice shuffle, Dan. I did. I got it in Milan a couple of years ago. It's great for travel because it crumples to nothing in your bag, but never creases. See?"

She held the dress against herself, not a crinkle or fold to be seen, even though she'd just pulled it out of her suitcase in a tightly rolled ball.

"How do they do that?" asked Dan, who was almost as interested in the answer as he was in copping another look at Julia in her stockings and underwear.

"Nanonic manipulation of the silk fibers," she said. "It's the same sort of process they use to make body armor, except with a few twists you get a cocktail dress that feels like air on your skin."

"Well, you look a hell of a lot better than some jarhead."

"Better than Lieutenant De Marco?" she asked with an arch of one eyebrow.

"Hey, I wasn't… I didn't…"

Julia burst out laughing.

"Chill out yourself, Daniel. Word gets around. I hear all of you primitives get one look at Gina De Marco and the blood rushes right to your pants."

Julia drew the dress over her head and let it slide down into place. It seemed to flow down her like black oil. Dan thought that was almost as good as watching it come off.

"Don't panic, Lieutenant," she said. "That Marine Corps chicky-babe is a hottie. I'd probably fuck her myself after a couple of drinks."

Dan didn't know whether to be excited or horrified by that revelation. In his embarrassment, he opted to change the subject again.

"Julia, why is it okay for you to call her a chicky-babe, but it's akin to a federal crime for someone like me?"

"Well, for one thing, I am a chicky-babe, so it's cool." She smiled. "And also, I say it with a sense of irony. Work on your irony, Dan. If you want to hang around with my gang, you're going to need it. You want to know a secret about us modern chicky-babes?"

Dan handed her a clutch purse as they headed for the door.

"Sure," he said.

She stopped by the door, leaned over, and kissed his ear while whispering, "A boyish grin and a sense of irony will carry you through almost anything."

With that, she bit him, ducking quickly out of the door as he yelped in surprise.

Captain Karen Halabi had nobody to joke with as she buttoned up her dress whites. She was in no mood to dine with Admiral Spruance. Acting in Kolhammer's position had drained her of any desire to do anything other than drive a missile boat. The politics of their situation were starting to get to her. She'd spent the entire day hosing down brush fires, dealing with the aftermath of the riot, sorting through the double homicide, and juggling what felt like a thousand other competing problems.

But Spruance had insisted that she join him and his party for a late supper. So she padded quietly into the cocktail lounge of the Moana, her temper improving when she discovered that the two female reporters were to be part of the evening.

"I'm glad to have your company," she said quietly as they all shook hands. "At least that's one flank secure tonight. Where's your date, Julia? All I hear about from my spies is this Cro-Magnon character you snagged for yourself."

Julia smiled. "He's patching himself up in the bathroom, Captain. A bit of roughhouse in the boudoir, I'm afraid."

Ensign Curtis arrived, tricked out in his whites and looking incredibly nervous. He saluted, then shook Captain Halabi's hand and stammered a greeting.

"Wally, just calm down," said Rosanna, his date for the evening. "What's up, you never been surrounded by so many beautiful women before?"

"Uh, no," Curtis confessed sincerely. "Never. Oh, sorry, Captain, I didn't mean that you were beautiful, I just, oh darn…"

Against her better judgment, Halabi found him endearing. He was a geek, just like she'd been, a long time ago.

"Be cool Ensign," she said, patting him on the arm. "Take a few slow deep breaths, and don't worry about what you're going to say to Admiral Spruance. Trust me, you'll hardly get a word in edgeways with these two at the table."

Curtis looked only vaguely relieved.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. It's just that nobody back in Oak Brooke would ever believe that Wally Curtis would find himself having dinner with a real admiral. And I can't write my mom and dad about it, the censors would just cut it out and anyway they'd never believe me, and-"

"Ensign, calm down," said Halabi. "You're babbling. I imagine there's plenty that folks won't believe about what's happened to you the last few weeks. But it has, and you'll always have that. Admiral Spruance told me you were the first man on the Enterprise to have any idea of what was happening. That makes you just about one of the most interesting people in the world right now. Imagine that."

"I can't," he confessed.

"It's pre-Warhol syndrome," said Natoli. "Nobody here realizes they have a constitutional right to fifteen minutes of fame and their own cable talk show."

"It's kind of sweet, don't you think?" said Julia.

"Heads up, the boys are here."

Dan Black and Ray Spruance appeared at the same time. "Ms. Duffy," said the admiral, "Commander Black here has been telling me all about your adventures after the riot. I'm glad you're giving him back to me in one piece."

"I'm not quite finished with him, Admiral," she teased. "I might just break him yet."

"Well, please don't kick him around like you did that fellow in town. I need him to run a few errands for me. And you, Curtis, how are you finding the Clinton?"

"It's amazing, sir! They let me sit in a Raptor today. And Ms. Natoli has been teaching me to use the computer net. It's got everything on it."

"Would you like to know who played you in the movie of Midway, Admiral?" asked Rosanna. "I bet we could get that off the net."

"I'd hope it was Errol Flynn," quipped Spruance.

"Sorry," said Rosanna. "But it could have been Clint Eastwood."

"No way," said Julia. "Harrison Ford."

"That's the remake of Tora Tora Tora," Halabi said, correcting them both.