The old waiter shuffled away. Lieutenant Flowers cupped his hands about the glass and stared down into the brown liquid. Only half his mind had ordered the drink. For some time now the other half had been telling him he'd had enough.

He was alone in the Bull and the Wharf in Peterborough where he'd come to try to sort out just what had happened yesterday. But he wasn't having much luck in getting the job done. He just couldn't go back to it, couldn't face it. It was like he was sitting before some murky window and he'd see the thing swim up just at the edge of the glass, then the thing would sink down again, the curtain would drop and there wouldn't be anything there but a dark blank.

Yesterday morning everything had been O. K. , except it was their 13th mission they'd been called to fly. Flowers hadn't thought he was superstitious, but that 13 stuck in his craw. He'd spent the last three nights lying awake trying to figure out how to number missions the way they numbered hotel floors back home. There just wasn't any 13. You went right from 12 to 14. The only thing wrong with that was only a moron could fall for it. It was nutty.