"IT can't be true!" I muttered. "It just can't."
He was squatting on the edge of his duralloy sleeping cot, a planerium mirror propped up in front of him while he carefully plucked his bushy blond eyebrows with a tweezers.
I looked at him for almost a minute, fighting back a sudden impulse to konk him on the back of that shaggy tow head of his. It was obvious that he hadn't heard me come in, for now he broke forth in an off-key, saw-toothed basso.
"It is looooooove, it is looooooove, that I feeeeeel," he vocalized. "It is looooooove, it is loooooooove, that is reeeeeeeeal!"
This was more than I could stand, so I said, making my voice a high treble.
"All right, dearie, I'll buy you that precious gingham tunic!"
Sergeant Shane wheeled, his big adam's apple bobbing in his leathery throat like an egg in a hose. He made a frantic effort to hide the tweezers under his coat. His face, beneath that shock of tow hair, was as red as a Saturn sunset.
"What goes, Sarge?" I demanded.
95
