Oh, the crook! He and Bang-Bang were simply recording all the lectures! He didn’t intend to go to a single class in that college!

Oh, I knew what he would do. He would speed-rig a playback machine as he had done with languages and zip a lecture through it in a minute or so at his leisure! Maybe even save them up and do the whole three months’ course in under an hour!

What dishonesty! Didn’t he know that the FBI arrested people for doing unauthorized recording? Or was that for copying and selling copyrighted material? I couldn’t remember. But anyway, it was an awful shock to me! He had a chance of getting through college in spite of Miss Simmons!

I had a momentary glimmer of hope. There might be quizzes. There might be lab periods. But then I sank into a deeper gloom. Heller had probably figured those out, too!

(Bleep) him, he was defeating the efforts to defeat him! My hand itched for a blastick! I had better quadruple any effort I was making to put an end to him!

Rucksacks and all, Heller went for a run. He went west on 120th Street, south on Broadway, east on 114th Street, north on Amsterdam, circumnavigating the whole university. He was obviously trying to kill time. I hoped he would look out of place and maybe even get arrested for something, but there were lots of other joggers or people late for something.

At 3:45, he began to drift back to the job of picking up and planting recorders. Then he went back to the original “command post” and looked expectantly around for Bang-Bang. He muttered, “The Marines should have disengaged by now. Where are you, Bang-Bang?” No Bang-Bang.

Heller went for a run on a path in Morningside Park and then came back and picked up what seemed to be the last recorder of the day.

He returned to the “command post.” No Bang-Bang. His watch winked at him in Voltarian numbers that it was 5:10.

Heller found a shady place, spread his ground sheet again, reinflated his backrest and sat down. He didn’t study. He just kept watching for Bang-Bang. The shadows grew longer and longer. He looked at his watch oftener and oftener. Finally it was 5:40.

And here came something!

It was approaching down a path. It looked more like a mound of baggage with two legs than a person.

Towering and unsteady, the mountain came near Heller. It tipped over and crashed on the lawn. It avalanched for a few seconds longer and then there was Bang-Bang, standing amongst the debris. He was out of breath from the effort. He moved over and collapsed on the ground sheet.

“Well,” said Bang-Bang, “the engagement was bloody and prolonged. I will give you my battle report, Marines versus Army.” He composed himself. “You presented yourself on time to the standard Army confusion of ROTC induction. You signed the form as ‘J. Terrance Wister.’ You then presented yourself to the first obstacle of the obstacle course.

“As you were new to this ROTC, you had a physical examination. Now, you will be horrified to know that you have incipient cirrhosis of the liver from overindulgence in alcohol. I’m glad it wasn’t my physical. I have sixteen cases of Scotch left. So you were passed, providing you stop drinking.

“You then proceeded to the next obstacle. Uniforms and equipment. Those are them,” he indicated with a disdainful hand toward a pile of clothes. “The quartermaster insisted everything would be a perfect fit. But I’ll have to get them to an alterations tailor right away, get them taken in and let out to really fit me. I refuse to have you looking so sloppy! Even if it is the Army, there is just so much a Marine can take! So, you got over that obstacle.

“The next wasn’t so easy. You know what those (bleepards) did? They tried to issue me a defective M-l rifle! Now, you know and I know that a Marine can be socked a whole month’s pay if his piece is found defective. And (bleep) it, kid, its firing pin was sawed off! Yes! Sawed right off! They tried to argue with me and I bench stripped it right there down to the last screw! They said ROTC trainees weren’t allowed to have a firing pin. They said somebody might put a live round in the chamber and when they did inspection arms it might go off. And, boy, I let them have it. The dangerous thing is to have an inoperational weapon! You get charged, you can’t shoot! And I said, ‘What if you want to shoot some colonel in the back? How about that?’ And that stopped them. They couldn’t put the weapon back together and I refused to as I said it ought to be sent to the gunnery sergeant and repaired, and finally a Regular Army captain said he’d put in a request to allow you to have a non-defective M-l. So they’ll issue the rifle later but you got by that. All right so far, kid?”

“Perfectly reasonable,” said Heller. “Bad enough to have a chemical weapon already without its being defective. Must be an awful army.”

“Oh, it is, it is,” said Bang-Bang. “Dogfaces. Anyway, then you came to the swamp and no ropes to get over it so I had to make up your mind for you and I hope I did right.

“Some Regular Army lieutenant with glasses noticed it was your senior year and noticed in your prior military training at Saint Lee’s that you’d never indicated preference for branch of service. Well, I hedged. But he said the classroom work in your senior year depended on it and you had to choose. And so he handed me a long list.

“Well, kid, I knew you didn’t want to dig latrines, so the infantry is out. And I didn’t want some dumb army jerk pulling a lanyard on a 155 when your head was in the barrel, so the artillery is out. And these days, all tanks is good for is to get burned up in, so that’s out. I knew that you, like me, hated MPs, so that’s out. When I finished the list, it left only one thing. I hope you will like it. G-2.”

“What’s that?”

“Intelligence. Spies! It seemed to sort of fit my job right now — a Marine infiltrating the Army. So I knew it would make you feel good, too.”

I didn’t feel good. I reeled!

Bang-Bang got to the books and pamphlets in the mountain. They were marked Restricted and Confidential and Secret.

“Look at this one,” said Bang-Bang. “‘Codes, Ciphers and Cryptography.’ ‘How to Talk Secret.’ Look at these things. ‘How to Train Spies.’ ‘How to Sneak Somebody Back of the Enemy Lines to Poison the Water.’ ‘How to Seduce the Wife of the Enemy General and Get Her to Give You Tomorrow’s Battle Plans.’ Good, solid stuff! And look at the number of these manuals. Dozens! ‘How to Tail a Russian Agent.’ ‘How to Select Sensitive Targets to Destroy Industrial Capacity.’ Good, solid stuff, kid!”

“Let me see those.” And he got hold of one about blowing up trains. And then another about the art of infiltration. Heller started to laugh.

“Are you pleased, kid?”

“Fantastic,” said Heller.

“Oh, I’m glad you’re pleased, kid. I just thought I was being a little bit selfish. You see, it makes me feel less degraded.”

Bang-Bang recovered his USMC fatigue cap and put it on. Then he got an Army fatigue cap and put it on over it, hiding the Marine one.

Then Bang-Bang got down on all fours and crept to the other side of the tree and peered out with exaggerated care. He was clowning!

“Spies,” said Bang-Bang. “A Marine spying on the Army! Get it, kid?”

Heller was laughing. He was laughing very hard. But I knew he wasn’t laughing at the same thing Bang-Bang was.

Suddenly I knew how Izzy Epstein must have felt when the catastrophe he had dreaded struck. This Earth espionage technology was probably pretty crude. But it was espionage technology. It would make my job so much harder!

I hastily wrote another dispatch to the New York office repeating my earlier order to find Raht and Terb and promising torture along with extinction if they didn’t comply! Heller had to be stopped!