Major Michael A. Dugan stayed in the shower until he thought he would erode. The conversations in the shower room were too interesting for him to miss.
From them he gathered that he had walked into the dwelling tunnel of the atomic physicists, with a few police officials thrown in for good measure. The men in the room were all tired. When they talked shop to one another, it was with curt allusions which meant nothing even to an outsider who knew Russian. Phrases like "The big one might cook," or "Why not try tongs for the Green Apparatus?" or "Did you see the dandelions that Rosanov raised yesterday?" kept introducing an element of the grotesque into the conversation; they sounded like suburban chat when in reality they spelt the awful agonies of matter itself being put through flux.
But Dugan did not care about the theory — not at that moment. He wanted to finish his shower — and to stay alive.
Finally his chance came.
A German came into the room. Dugan did not find out whether the German was an old-time Communist who just happened to be an expert physicist or one of the ex-Nazi physicists whom the Russians had moved out of their Soviet Zone along with the cyclotrons.
Red, white, blue, black, or striped, he was drunk. He was ripely and mournfully drunk. He entered the shower room singing "Alt Heidelberg, du schöne" horribly off key. He tried to tickle the hairy paunch of an elderly and stuffy Russian who looked — despite his Soviet surroundings, and his Siberian underground home — piquantly much like the dissolute, ruddy millionaires shown leering at showgirls in popular American cartoons. The Soviet stuffed-shirt reacted just the way an American stuffed-shirt would have; his dignity became huffy: it was a little difficult to manage when he had nothing more than a towel wrapped around him. Finally he exploded and spat out:
"Herr Hundeshausen!"
The whole room froze like bird-dogs. Up to then the men had been calling one another Comrade, Professor, or Doctor. The interjection of the German title was enough to evoke the well-remembered rage of World War II.
Hundeshausen did not mind. With drunken joviality he lurched at the big shot, saying. "Kitchy — kitchy — kitchy! Tomorrow's May Day and we can have a parade. With your stomach out in front of it — ha! Kitchy — kitchy — koo!"
He lurched toward the Russian and the Russian pushed him firmly in the face. Hundeshausen staggered backward, step by step. The eyes of each man in the room moved, jump by little jump, following his retrogress as though it were a cliff which he were approaching, and not a mere tiled wall.
Hundeshausen hit the wall.
Dugan, who had been watching, stepped naked out of his shower. He had heard someone say that Hundeshausen had a room to himself. He had also noticed that Hundeshausen was about his own size.
Dugan was the first to reach the fallen man. He grabbed someone else's towel as though he did not realize what he was doing and wrapped it around his waist with a tuck. Now he had the same preposterous abbreviated skirt which the others, out by the wash basins, were all wearing. Dugan kept his face pointed at Hundeshausen's and tried to make concern for the stricken man, along with the pantomime of help, keep attention away from his own identity. He tried to put a jarring German resonance into his pronunciation of Russian and said:
"I'll get him to bed, tovarisch. Forgive him. He is drunk."
The pompous Russian started to say something mollifying when Hundeshausen opened his eyes and said: "Drunk? Ganz und gar versoffen! I'm glorious, old belly, that's what I am. Glorious!"
This annoyed the Russian so much that he walked off to the shower without further comment. Everyone in the room relaxed; Dugan guessed that the old boy must have been someone who had unrestricted powers of life and death over all the rest of theirs.
But, at the moment that the others, seven or eight in number, so visibly relaxed, Dugan caught something odd out of the corner of his eye.
One of the men had not gone tense in the first place. Nor had he relaxed. He was a huge, handsome man, visibly proud of his physique. He had the golden hair and blue eyes of the archetypal Slav, the thick smiling lips of a Cossack. He looked steadily toward Dugan and Hundeshausen as though he found them interesting. Dugan did not dare to look squarely at the man to see if he were really being watched. Neither did he dare overlook the man.
If this had not been Atomsk — if he had not thrust himself into the dormitory of the scientists themselves — if he had the faintest scrap of paper on which to improvise a pyramid of lies — he would not have minded a face-to-face challenge.
But now he was naked. He was Comrade Nobody. He was ready for the upright post set firmly in the ground, ready for bullets which would tear through ribs and skull-case. Dugan had never felt more defenseless in his life than he did under the calm steady inquiring gaze of those blue and utterly Russian eyes. This was the first real test inside Atomsk.
He lifted Hundeshausen a few inches off the floor and then let him slip, apparently accidentally.
The results were gratifying. Hundeshausen wailed like a perishing Siegfried and then, with a drunk's sudden change of tune, screwed up his eyes and bawled like a baby. A great roar of laughter, amplified by the tiles of floor and walls and ceiling, drowned out the weeping. Everyone was looking at Dugan and Hundeshausen, but Dugan was pleasantly hopeful that nobody saw Dugan; he'd have been spotted already if this dormitory were the habitat of long-time intimates. There must be room for strangers, he thought.
With the whole room watching and laughing, Dugan led Hundeshausen across the floor. Hundeshausen waved at the shower stalls and yelled:
"Bye-bye, big belly, bye-bye, big belly—"
It wasn't very funny. But the atmosphere of the whole place was such that the men found it hilarious. One or two of them bent over in a wild parody of mirth. The others stood around like a capricious Grecian frieze — half-shaved, half-washed, half-naked, and laughing. Dugan felt sorry for them all.
Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the big Cossack. The tall man was still watching the two of them with tranquil and deadly speculation, as though he knew who Dugan was but did not care to expose him just then.
Dugan did not like that look.
Here was no posturing "Captain Stearns" advertising his secrecy to the world; here was no counterintelligence officer all puffed up with his own power: this was the real stuff. Dugan had the exceedingly uncomfortable feeling that the tall man knew things were wrong but preferred to see what Dugan was up to, before striking. He hoped that the tall man would have enough self-confidence to leave telephones alone. If they came in force — well, he did not even have the cyanide. He wondered if he could perform the old Chinese trick of strangling himself by swallowing his own tongue. He had had the thing explained to him, but it was not quite the kind of parlor trick which you could practice up on.
As he guided Hundeshausen through the door somebody yelled, "Ai, comrade, that's my towel you're running off with!"
The world teetered for Dugan as he expected several of them to wonder who he was. But before the challenger could start thinking around for a name, Dugan quipped back:
"Dirty towel, too! Take mine, comrade. You'll make a profit by the trade!"
The joke, random though it was, hit a responsive institutional chord. Either dirty towels were always good for a laugh, or else the challenger must have had a reputation for greedy swapping. The laughter of the group was incommensurate with the remark. Dugan gave the tall Cossack a quick, casual look; he too was laughing, but his blue eyes were not. They were steady, observant, and calm. Dugan started to lead Hundeshausen away from the doorway, and this put the whole bunch of onlookers into hysterics.
"You're taking him the wrong way," someone gasped after laughter.
Even Hundeshausen muttered, "Wrong way, wrong way. Don't you know Number Thirty-two, you sober fool — you beast — you Fascist — you etcetera!"
"I'm a what?" asked Dugan pleasantly.
"An etcetera! A hangdog, sober-sided etcetera. I bet you never studied physics!"
"I did so," replied Dugan promptly.
"Where?" Hundeshausen was a little more articulate now, but still far from sober. Dugan led him carefully down the corridor, hoping that the German was gravitating toward his own room. Meanwhile he answered the question in clear, measured German.
"My name is August Stettiner," said Major Dugan, and I studied at the Elizabetheum in Neu Glogau—"
"Not under old Glottwitz!" cried Hundeshausen delightedly.
"Gerade so," said Dugan, "and Glottwitz himself used to call me his prize Dummkopf…"
Hundeshausen laughed happily as he turned into a room which had the number 32 painted on it in clear luminous letters. Dugan steered him in. The walls reeled and waved peculiarly. Dugan at first thought that it was a silent earthquake or the oncoming of an end-for-me atomic explosion. Then he realized that it was nothing more than his own fatigue catching up with him. It was, he saw from a clock on the shelf, 2:20 A.M. And this was May Day.
As they entered Hundeshausen's room, Dugan glanced back swiftly and casually. The tall Cossack stood in the corridor, looking at them. Dugan shoved Hundeshausen on into the room.
He did not want the German to go to sleep yet, not until he had been milked for his contribution of information. He asked the man where his nightshirt was and received a wild incredulous guffaw from the drunk:
"Nightshirt! Ha! Where do you think you are? Back in the old Reich?" Hundeshausen had automatically reverted to German.
Dugan said, "All right. You want to sleep naked, or in your underwear?"
"Underclothing, of course. Don't you know it's cold here? I haven't seen you before. You must be one of the new batch. You're a filthy Nazi, that's what you are! I have been in the land of freedom for eighteen years and look what it's got me. A lot of disgusting stuck-up Prussian Nazi swine for my honorable colleagues. Go away. I don't want you around."
"I'm not a Nazi," said Dugan.
"Who are you, then?"
"My name is Schieffelin," said Dugan, "and I am a Swiss scientist."
"But you just said your name was something else and that you studied with Glottwitz!"
"Sh-h-h," said Dugan.
"Sh-h-h," said the drunk. After a moment he added, "Why sh-h-hT
"That's the name I have to use in public. Orders from the N.K.A.R. itself."
"Oh. Orders," said Hundeshausen. "I know all about them. You don't have to tell me about orders. I've worked on all of them. Every single one of them." He named four Russian place names. Each was engraved on Dugan's memory forever.
This alone was enough to entitle him to turn around and head back to Tokyo that moment. But just as he trundled Hundeshausen into bed after buttoning his long woolen underwear for him, there was a shadow in the doorway.
The tall Cossack was there.