The young man at the skillet laughed. “She’s funny. You didn’t tell me she was funny.” He looked back at Betty. “How do you like it?”
“It?” she said, unsure of what he was referring to, but a bit suspicious of the possibilities.
“Your eggs.” He nodded toward the stove top.
“Oh! Uh, scrambled, I guess. Dad . . . ?”
Ross, who was busily studying the newspaper, nodded absently. “Yes, you like them scrambled.”
“No, I know that. I mean . . .” And she sharply inclined her head toward the young man.
“I think she means ‘Who the heck is this dashingly handsome fellow cooking up eggs?’ ”
Despite the awkwardness of the situation, Betty laughed lightly at that. “Well, I don’t know about the ‘dashingly handsome’ part, but . . .”
“This is Glen Talbot,” Thunderbolt Ross said. “Out here visiting his uncle, Colonel Talbot.”
“Ah. Okay, so, welcome to Fort Meade, Maryland,” Betty said, being as affable as she could considering it was first thing in the morning. “Significant for—well—not much, really.”
“Well, I hear you won’t have to worry about that much longer,” Glen said, deftly mixing the eggs in the skillet.
She looked in confusion at him. “Why not?”
Ross set down his newspaper. “Yes, ah . . . I was going to tell you this, Betty.”
“Oh!” Talbot looked a bit chagrined. “I’m sorry. Did I spoil the surprise?”
“Surprise?” Her befuddlement grew.
Ross cleared his throat and said, “We’ve been reassigned, Betty.”
“Awwww, no.” Betty sagged into a chair at the table, dropping her head into one hand. “Not again. I was just starting to get used to this place.”
“I know it’s difficult,” Talbot said sympathetically as he flipped the eggs onto her plate. The aroma wafted up from them, and she had to admit they didn’t smell bad at all. She poked at them experimentally and took a bite. Didn’t taste bad, either.
“Actually, it shouldn’t be so unpleasant this time, Betty,” Ross told his daughter. “In fact, it may be like old times.”
She started to get excited. “Italy? Back to Italy?” She’d loved the time they’d spent there, two years ago, and had hated that it had only lasted a couple of months.
“No, not Italy. Desert Base.”
Slowly Betty lowered her fork, letting it clink down onto the plate. “You’re . . . not serious.”
“Very serious.”
“Do we have to?”
Talbot looked curiously from Betty to her father. “Is there a problem with Desert Base? I hear Nevada’s pretty nice, actually.”
“We have some . . . unpleasant memories of it, that’s all,” said Ross.
“Yeah, if you consider we almost got killed when it blew up and, by the way, my mom dying there a week later ‘unpleasant.’ ”
She was unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice, which was unfortunate because she knew that attitude put her father on edge. But he maintained his cool, which was to be expected since they had a guest.
“Sorry,” mumbled Talbot. “I had no idea.”
Her heart softened a bit. “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known. But at least, knowing the army, it’ll be temporary . . .”
“Permanent, actually,” Ross said. “At least as permanent as such things are.”
Betty couldn’t believe it. Of all the glorious places they’d been to, that damned desert was where they were being stuck for good? “I thought the place was leveled!”
“It was rebuilt. I’ll be taking command of it.”
“Oh, God,” she moaned, convinced that there wasn’t a teenager in the world who was having a worse day than she was.
Bruce Krenzler, hard at work in the lab at school, had his attention drawn away from the slides he’d been studying under the microscope by a specimen of a very different sort. Specifically, a lovely girl who had just entered the room and was looking shyly in his direction. Bruce became so flustered that he almost knocked over some test tubes, but caught them at the last moment and prevented a spill.
Her name was Alice, and he had noticed her any number of times. She had never given him so much as the time of day . . . and that was literally true, because he’d asked her what time it was once or twice between classes, and she’d just breezed right past him. But now she was sauntering right over to him as if they were the best pals in the world.
“Hi, Bruce. Whatcha doing?”
“It’s cool. Uh, you can check out the DNA, you know, the proteins,” said Bruce.
“Can I see?” asked Alice, sounding genuinely interested.
“Sure,” he replied.
Alice leaned in closely over the microscope and he became aware of the heady smell of her perfume. “You know,” she said, “I really get turned on by brainy guys.”
Bruce stepped back, scarcely able to believe where the conversation was going. For years he had been gawky and awkward and utterly tongue-tied when it came to the opposite sex, and now this lovely young girl had actually noticed him and was being nice to him, and maybe they could go out some time and who knew what the possibilities might be, and this was just the most incredible thing that had ever happened to him . . .
At which point, while stepping backward, he tripped and fell over a stool. He went down bruisingly with it, tangled in the crashing metal, and as he lay there in a heap, he heard a chorus of laughter. He twisted around to see a group of other students watching, and realized with rapidly burning anger that it had all been a setup, that Alice had been coming on to him for the amusement of some of her friends.
“Poor Bruce,” said Alice, and she was laughing the hardest of all. “You’re such a nerd.”
Bruce’s face filled with anger, then his whole body started convulsing. He grabbed the side of the table, lifting himself up, and, flailing, scattered everything, including a lit Bunsen burner. The burner struck the spilled liquid from one of the test tubes, which just happened
