"Well-maybe so. But you aren't soothing her by trotting around with that plug in your ear."

"Perhaps not. But I have no choice."

"What do you mean?"

"Grace is my wife, Son. 'To love and to cherish' includes keeping her alive if I can. That shelter may keep her alive. But only if she is in it. How much warning today? Fifteen minutes, if we're lucky. But three minutes could be time enough to get her into the shelter. But if I don't hear the alert, I won't have three minutes. So I listen. During any crisis."

"Suppose it happens when you are asleep?"

His father smiled. "If the news is bad, I sleep with this button taped into my ear. When it's really bad-as it is tonight- Grace and I sleep in the shelter. The girls will be urged to sleep there. And you are invited."

"Not likely!"

"I didn't think so."

"Dad, stipulating that an attack is possible-merely stipulating, as the Russians aren't crazy-why build a shelter smack on a target? Why don't you pick a place far from any target, build there-again stipulating that Mother needs one for her nerves, which may be true-and get Mother off the sauce?"

Hubert Farnham sighed. "Son, she won't have it. This is her home."

"Make her!"

"Duke, have you ever tried to make a woman do anything she really didn't want to do? Besides that, a weakness for the sauce-hell, growing alcoholism-is not that simple. I must cope with it as best I can. However- Duke, I told you that I did not have much reason to stay alive. But I do have one reason."

"Such as?"

"If those lying, cheating bastards ever throw their murder weapons at the United States, I want to live long enough to go to hell in style-with eight Russian side boys!"

Farnham twisted in his chair. "I mean it, Duke. America is the best thing in history, I think, and if those scoundrels kill our country, I want to kill a few of them. Eight side boys. Not less. I felt relieved when Grace refused to consider moving."