Hussein ben Mehdi had no general distaste for garrison duty, but Smiricky #4 was three hundred kilometers from even a decent brothel. The Lieutenant was bored, and the attack seemed to have been arranged precisely to help with the project by which he hoped to improve his time. He moved fast enough to be inside Powers' shelter when the sonic boom rattled it, but he was careful not to brush dirt on his uniform either.

"Oh!" said Trooper Powers. She had just taken off her left sock. Her toe-nails were varnished a deep scarlet. In confusion, the blonde trooper twisted the bare foot under her and picked up one of her boots.

"Any port in a storm, hey Powers?" said Lieutenantben Mehdi with a warm smile. "Hope you don't mind the intrusion." He reached out to grip between his thumb and forefinger the boot which Powers held. Ben Mehdi's fingers were long, their nails perfectly shaped. There was enough strength in them to pluck "the boot away from someone much huskier than the petite blonde who faced him now.

The shelter roof was translucent. It filtered light heavily toward the blue end of the spectrum. That alien tinge heightened Powers' look of tension as she huddled toward the corner of the dug-out. The two bed-rolls, hers and Sergeant Hummel's, were parallel with a narrow aisle between them. They were on wooden frames which kept them off the floor. The frames were lowenough, however, that the dug-out's occupants could sit up without risking their heads to shrapnel through the unprotected ends of the shelter. Hussein ben Mehdi leaned forward as he sat on the bunk beside Powers. She gasped as the Lieutenant dropped the boot he had taken from her and hooked her right sock with an index finger. "Lieutenant?" the Trooper said. His left arm slid behind her shoulders despite her efforts to press herself tighter against the wall of the dug-out.

The anti-personnel bombs lashed down like the wind-driven edge of a hail storm.