From a Buick 8(35)

'You two have got the first watch,' Tony said. 'Sing out if you see anything peculiar. Even if you only think it's peculiar.'

Herb groaned at getting sentry duty and started to protest.

'Put a sock in it,' Tony said, pointing at him. 'Not one more word.'

Herb noted the red spots on his SC's cheeks and closed his mouth at once. Sandy thought that showed excellent sense.

Matt Babicki was talking on the radio as the rest of them crossed the ready-room behind Sergeant Schoondist. When Matt told Unit 6 to state his twenty, Andy Colucci's response was strong and perfectly clear. The static had cleared out again.

They filled the seats in the little living room upstairs, those last in line having to content themselves with grabbing patches of rug. The ready-room downstairs was bigger and had more chairs, but Sandy thought Tony's decision to bring the crew up here was a good one. This was family business, not police business.

Not strictly police business, at least.

Curtis Wilcox came last, holding his Polaroids in one hand, goggles still pushed up on his forehead, rubber flip-flops on his green feet. His T-shirt read HORLICKS UNIVERSITY ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT.

He went to the Sergeant and the two of them conferred in murmurs while the rest waited. Then Tony turned back to the others. 'There was no explosion, and neither Curt nor I think there was any sort of radiation leak, either.'

Big sighs of relief greeted this, but several of the Troopers still looked doubtful. Sandy didn't know how he looked, there was no mirror handy, but he still felt doubtful.

'Pass these around, if you want,' Curt said, and handed out his stack of Polaroids by twos and threes. Some had been taken during the flashes and showed almost nothing: a glimmer of grillwork, a piece of the Buick's roof. Others were much clearer. The best had that odd, flat, declamatory quality which is the sole property of Polaroid photographs. I see a world where there's only cause and effect, they seem to say. A world where every object is an avatar and no gods move behind the scenes.

'Like conventional film, or the badges workers in radiation-intensive environments have to wear,' Tony said, 'Polaroid stock fogs when it's exposed to strong gamma radiation. Some of these photos are overexposed, but none of them are fogged. We're not hot, in other words.'

Phil Candleton said, 'No offense to you, Sarge, but I'm not crazy about trusting my 'nads to the Polaroid Corporation of America.'

'I'll go up to The Burg tomorrow, first thing, and buy a Geiger counter,' Curt said. He spoke calmly and reasonably, but they could still hear the pulse of excitement in his voice. Under the cool will-you-please-step-out-of-your-car-sir voice, Curt Wilcox was close to blowing his top. 'They sell them at the Army Surplus store on Grand. I think they go for around three hundred bucks. I'll take the money out of the contingency fund, if no one objects.'

No one did.

'In the meantime,' Tony said, 'it's more important than ever that we keep this quiet. I believe that, either by luck or providence, that thing has fallen into the hands of men who can actually do that. Will you?'

There were murmurs of agreement.

Dicky-Duck was sitting cross-legged on the floor, stroking Mister Dillon's head. D was asleep with his muzzle on his paws. For the barracks mascot, the excitement was definitely over. 'I'm all right with that as long as the needle on the old Geiger doesn't move out of the green,' Dicky-Duck said. 'If it does, I vote we call the feds.'

'Do you think they can take care of it any better than we can?' Curt asked hotly. 'Jesus Christ, Dicky! The Feebs can't get out of their own way, and ? '

'Unless you have plans to lead-line Shed B out of the contingency fund ? ' someone else began.

'That's a pretty stupid ? ' Curt began, and then Tony put a hand on his shoulder, stilling the kid before he could go any farther and maybe hurt himself.

'If it's hot,' Tony promised them, 'we'll get rid of it. That's a promise.'

Curt gave him a betrayed look. Tony stared back calmly. We know it's not radioactive, that gaze said, the film proves it, so why do you want to start chasing your own tail?

'I sort of think we ought to turn it over to the government anyway,' Buck said. 'They might be able to help us . . . you know . . . or find stuff out . . . defense stuff . . .' His voice getting smaller and smaller as he sensed the silent disapproval all around him. PSP officers worked with the federal government in one form or another every day ? FBI, IRS, DEA, OSHA, and, most of all, the Interstate Commerce Commission. It didn't take many years on the job to learn most of those federal boys were not smarter than the average bear. Sandy's opinion was that when the feds did show the occasional flash of intelligence, it tended to be self-serving and sometimes downright malicious. Mostly they were slaves to the grind, worshippers at the altar of Routine Procedure. Before joining the PSP, Sandy had seen the same sort of dull go-through-the-proper-channels thinking in the Army. Also, he wasn't much older than Curtis himself, which made him young enough to hate the idea of giving the Roadmaster up. Better to hand it over to scientists in the private sector, though, if it came to that ? perhaps even a bunch from the college advertised on the front of Curtis's lawn-mowing shirt.

But best of all, the Troop. The gray family.

Buck had petered out into silence. 'Not a good idea, I guess,' he said.