Bang-Bang was sitting there, doubled over with laughter. “Oh, sangue di Cristo! That Grafferty won’t come near a Corleone place for a while. And you bought the joint a million in publicity!”

Heller said, soberly, “And Grafferty won’t connect that bottle up with the warehouse job.”

Bang-Bang looked at Heller as Heller sat back down. “Hey, I never thought of that!”

Cherubino came over. He had another nonalcoholic beer. He was grinning when he set it down. “This a good kid you got here, Bang-Bang. I’m glad he’s part of our family and not some other mob! Maybe you ain’t so stupid as I thought!” He went off.

Bang-Bang sat there, looking at Heller. “You know, kid, I’m going to take you up on that offer. I’ll even swallow my scruples and join the Army for you.” He thought for a bit. Then he said, “It’s not because it’ll save me from going back to jail. It’s just because you’re kind of fun to be around!”

But I was not as impressed as they were. Heller’s tablecloth trick was something we used to do at the Academy to dumb recruits. And any spacer has vast experience in handling barroom brawls. Heller was just taking advantage of the fact that Voltar technology was far higher than that of Earth’s. Still, he was too tricky, too sneaky. And he was making too much progress!

Where the Hells was the communication from Rant and Terb? I couldn’t abide the idea of seeing Heller fool all these people into thinking he amounted to something. All that (bleeping) applause!

Bright and early, Heller and Bang-Bang got off the subway at Empire Station. This morning Heller was wearing tailored gray flannel tennis slacks and a gray shirt with a white tennis sweater tied by its sleeves loosely around his neck. And he wore his inevitable red baseball cap and his spikes. He was carrying two heavy rucksacks evidently jammed with things I had no clue about.

Bang-Bang was something else. He had on some nondescript jeans and denim shirt. But on his head he wore an olive drab cap and across it in black was stencilled USMC.

They came up College Walk. Students were moving along, burdened with books, on their way to classes.

But Heller and Bang-Bang, much to my surprise, did not seem to be headed for a class. Heller striding along and Bang-Bang double-timing to catch up, they turned north past High Library and, threading their way around buildings, came almost to 120th Street. There was an expanse of lawn and a tree. Heller headed for the tree.

“All right, this is the command post. Synchronize your watch.”

“Right,” said Bang-Bang.

“Here is the schedule of plantings we took up last night in the suite.”

“Right.”

“Now, you’ve got to look at this from the viewpoint of timed fuses.”

“Right!”

What in Hells were they up to? Was Heller trying to get out of his promise to Babe by blowing up the school?

“You put them in undetectably.”

“Right.”

“And what happens if you don’t need an area mined anymore?”

“You pick them up undetectably,” said Bang-Bang. “It’s a secret operation. Run no risks of barrage.”

“Right,” said Heller. “Wait a minute. What does USMC mean?” Heller was looking at Bang-Bang’s cap.

“Christ! ‘United States Marine Corps’ of course!”

“Give it to me.”

“And leave myself under enemy fire with no moral support?”

Heller took it off his head. He removed his own baseball cap and put it on Bang-Bang. Of course, it was miles too big. Heller put the USMC cap on his own head. I couldn’t see it but it must have looked very funny.

“I can’t see,” said Bang-Bang. “How am I going to plant a sensitive—”

“You’re falling behind schedule,” said Heller. He handed Bang-Bang one of the rucksacks. Bang-Bang sprinted away, lugging the filled bag and trying to keep the cap off his eyes.

Heller took out a ground sheet. Voltarian by the Gods — one of those inch square ones that open up to ten square feet! The kind that change color to match the ground!

It blended with the grass color. Leave it to him to keep himself neat! Bah, these Fleet guys!

He took out a gas inflatable backrest. Voltarian! It puffed up. He upended the rucksack over the ground cloth. Books spilled all over the place!

Heller sat down comfortably against the backrest, pawed the books over and found one. Aha! If Babe only could see this! He was not going to class! He was playing hooky!

The book he had was English Literature for Advanced High-School Students as Passed by the American Medical Association. Book One. The Complete, Rewritten and Abridged Works of Charles Dickens. It was a quarter of an inch thick and had large type. Heller, in his customary show-off way, demolished it, turning the pages faster than I could see what the page numbers were. It took him about one minute. He turned the book over, seemingly puzzled that there was no more book there. Then he took out an erasable Voltarian pen — he’s always so NEAT, it really gets on your nerves! — and marked the date and the Voltarian mathematical symbol that means “equation completed pending next stage.”

He put the book aside and got another one, book two of the same series, The World’s One Hundred Greatest Novels Complete, Rewritten and Abridged. It was also a quarter of an inch thick with large type. It took him another whole minute. He marked the date and the Voltarian symbol.

There was no book three so he opened a notebook and wrote High-School English Literature. And then the Voltarian mathematical symbol for “operation complete.”

This must have made him feel good for he looked around. Most of the students were in classes, apparently, for there were only a couple of girls loafing along, maybe graduate students. They waved, he waved.

He found another book. It was English Literature I for First Year College as Passed by the American Medical Association. The Complete Significances You Should Get Out of Literature and What You Should Think About It. He demolished that.

I was getting so dizzy watching the screen blur with turning pages that it was with some horror that I realized the worst. He was writing in his notebook, First Three Years College English Literature and the same Voltarian math symbol: “equation completed pending next stage.”

I verified it twice on my watch. Only ten minutes had gone by!

Oh, I know disaster when I see it. (Bleep) him. When he went to get tutored on English literature he would just make a vulgar gesture with his thumb and say, “Yah, yah, yah!”

Bang-Bang came back. “I planted them.”

“What took you so long?”

“I had to stop by the college store and get another hat. I couldn’t work in your cap.” And he had on a tasselled, black mortarboard. He gave Heller back his baseball cap, lay down on the Voltarian ground sheet and promptly went to sleep.

Heller had started on journalism, an unlikely subject that had been on his grade sheet. The book was College Journalism First Year. Essential Basic Fairy Tales of Many Lands. I was glad to see that it was taking him longer. He wasn’t reading so fast. He seemed to be enjoying something, so I split the screen and still-framed the other one so I could read it. My Gods, it was the story of the lost continent of Atlantis!

He dawdled along and it took him a half hour to finish College Journalism. Then he saw that he was supposed to have written a sort of end-of-course paper. He got out his bigger notebook, the one he doodled in. He wrote,

Circulation today was boosted by the timely event of a continent vanishing. Publishers ecstatic.