Jerry nodded. “That’s pithy—and I’m not even lithping.” Pournelle looked as if he’d bitten down hard on a lemon. From then on, they got along with each other pretty well.

The men on the Glomar Explorer had made some progress since sending Jerry and Steve back to the mainland. “We know what the atmosphere is like inside Humpty Dumpty now,” Dave Schoals told him. “Eighty-two percent nitrogen, seventeen percent oxygen, one percent argon and neon and what have you. Pressure is just a skosh higher than ours, so the oxygen level is that much closer to what we’ve got here.”

“How could the pressure difference persist if it opens up when you say ‘Friend’?” Jerry asked.

The recovery director shrugged. “You find the answer to that one, you win the Nobel Prize. People can go in and out, but the local atmosphere stays in and ours doesn’t mingle with it.”

“That’s … pretty crazy, man,” Jerry said.

“No kidding,” Dave said. “Oh, we go in there without air connections now, too. We put in a cage of white mice, left ’em there with food and water for several days. They did fine in there and after we took ’em out. So we did the same thing with a monkey, to check a biochemistry closer to ours. He did all right, too. He breathed the air and didn’t come down sick or anything, even after we got him out. When we were sure he’d stay healthy, I tried it myself. Except for growing an extra pair of legs and feathers, nothing happened to me, either.”

“Right.” Jerry couldn’t help smiling; it was the kind of joke he might have made himself. Dave was okay … for a career CIA man. How much had he known about the hit on Steve Dole, and about whatever preparations the CIA had made for Jerry? Had he and Jack approved all that? Had they suggested it?

Jerry would have asked him, only he was sure whatever answer he got would be what Dave wanted him to believe, not the truth. He’d thought about Wernher von Braun not so long before. Von Braun had been a capable man serving unsavory bosses, too.

“I’m allowed to go into Humpty Dumpty with the Russians, then?” Jerry asked.

“With the other Russians, you mean?” Dave said.

That did it. Jerry’s temper was more fragile than he’d thought. “Fuck you,” he said. “You try and murder somebody, all of a sudden you find out he’s not your best buddy anymore. And then you act surprised and snotty? Fuck you! I’m ten times the American you’ll ever be.”

Dave Schoals went red. Jerry suspected the CIA guy could clean his clock if he wanted to. But all Dave said was, “You have the same privileges we do. That’s been agreed to. So yes, you and they can go in as you please. And…”