The two sergeants from Hanford had bright eyes and stubble and the air of men returned from the dead.

“Want some bennies?” One came over to Ray’s window and offered a handful of white pills. Ray took three and swallowed them. “You better take this, too.” He handed in the tommy gun that the co-driver was supposed to carry.

“Secure the convoy!” the lieutenants shouted at one another. They were boys right out of college and right into intelligence, and would never see war. As they ran around with .45s and submachine guns they reminded Joe of the sort of kids who brought baseball gloves to big-league games. New mechanics clambered into the truck. Its back was stuffed with ambulance, car and truck spare parts in case there was a breakdown on the way. The orders were—as always, from Groves—no stopping.

“Let’s for Chrissake go.” Ray clutched the tommy gun. Hair clung to the sweat of his forehead. His face had closed down to a bleak and dangerous glare. He refused to look back at the suspended eight-armed canister riding in the rear of the ambulance.

“Wait a second, men.”

A white-haired man in a tweed jacket and carrying a clipboard bounded out of the garage toward the ambulance.

“Santa!” Joe said.

“I’ll kill him,” Ray said.

Santa was the Hill psychiatrist. He’d always seemed to be part of the furniture at the Lodge, an amiable headshrinker on hand to offer security-cleared emotional assurance to any longhair with the blues. Joe couldn’t figure what he was doing at Fort Douglas. He expected the lieutenants to block Santa’s way because no one outside convoy personnel was allowed near the ambulance, but the officers waved him on.

“Permission to come aboard?” Santa took a letter from the clipboard and handed it through Ray’s window to Joe. The letter was a pass for Dr. Delmore Bonney to accompany the drivers of Army ambulance YO3 from Fort Douglas to Site Y (Los Alamos), and the order was signed by both Oppy and Groves.

“I think you’d be more comfortable in one of the cars.” Joe gave the letter back.

Santa shrugged happily. “Orders are orders. Sometimes even civilians have to suffer.”

“Sergeant Stingo isn’t feeling too good. It could be infectious,” Joe warned.

Santa raised white eyebrows. “It could be psychosomatic.”

Joe pushed Ray’s door open. Ray leaned woodenly to one side so Santa could slip through to a fold-down seat because already the lead sedan and truck, then ambulance and tail sedan, were turning around the gas pumps for the remaining four hundred and fifty miles to New Mexico and the Hill.

“Nose wipes, boys.” Santa handed up cotton swabs. “All part of the routine.”

Joe and Ray stuck the swabs up their noses, then handed them back to Santa, who dropped them into separate envelopes.