His wife said, "Now, Hubert."

"Sorry, Grace."

"You're too harsh on the boy. It does make me nervous."

"Duke is not a boy. And I've done nothing to make you nervous. Sorry."

"I'm sorry, too, Mother. But if Dad regards it as interference, well-" Duke forced a grin. "I'll have to find a wife of my own to annoy. Barbara, will you marry me?"

"No, Duke."

"I told you she was smart, Duke," his sister volunteered.

"Karen, pipe down. Why not, Barbara? I'm young, I'm healthy. Why, someday I might even have clients. In the meantime you can support us."

"No, Duke. I agree with your father."

"Huh?"

"I should say that my father agrees with your father. I don't know that my pops is carrying around a radio tonight but I'm certain that he is listening to one. Duke, every car in our family has a survival kit."

"No fooling!"

"My car out in your father's driveway, the one Karen and I drove down from school, has a kit in its trunk that Pops picked before I re-entered college. Pops takes it seriously, so I do."

Duke Farnham opened his mouth, closed it. His father asked, "Barbara, what did your father select?"

"Oh, lots of things. Ten gallons of water. Food. A jeep can of gasoline. Medicines. A sleeping bag. A gun-"

"Can you use a gun?"

"Pops made me learn. A shovel. An ax. Clothes. Oh, yes, a radio. But the important thing was 'Where?'-so he kept saying. If I were at school, he would expect me to head for the basement of the gym. But here- Pops would expect me to head up into the mountains."

"You won't need to."

"Sir?"

"Dad means," explained Karen, "that you are welcome in our panic hole."

Barbara showed a questioning look. Her host said, "Our bomb shelter. 'Farnham's Folly' my son calls it. I think you would be safer there than you would be running for the hills-despite the fact that we are only ten miles from a MAMMA Base. If an alarm comes, we'll duck into it. Right, Joseph?"