"I think I've played it once or twice," the sergeant replied playfully. "Maybe I can dig up some cards in a day or so."

"You do that, Sergeant, and I'll see if I can beat you left-handed."

He realized with a start that he felt really good. All of the dismal miseries were gone. He had never felt better in his life. Somehow he suspected that the reappearance of a doctor would bring back just enough of them.

Who or whatever was looking over him was making certain that this medical marvel was convincing.

It had been almost four weeks since Paul Savage was murdered and the deed man was feeling fine. The tests had gone predictably; he'd had little trouble walking after the first time or two; and he was getting used to doing things with his left hand, although writing still caine hard.

In fact, his progress had been so good that they had sent a man around during the second week to measure his stump and check his muscle placement and development. A day or two after that, they'd fitted him with a mechanical claw-like appendage and given him various exercises to increase his proficiency in its use and build up the necessary muscle coordination to use it. As he'd already read seven novels and now owed Cohen $1,428.63 from playing gin, he was ripe for something else and spent almost every waking moment practicing.

The therapists were amazed at his progress. By the start of the fourth week, he was using the metal claw almost as if he had been born with it.

His progress amazed him, too. Never in his life had he been able to concentrate so well, think so clearly, be so much in command of his entire body.

He had always been far above most other people in intelligence, but now he found that he was able to put his potential to its fullest use.

Slowly, he began to think of himself as no longer quite human. Oh, same form, same memories. But subtly altered, a fine machine that was of the man but not the man himself.

Hunter had said something about being able to play games with his molecular structure. It was becoming apparent that there was more to it than that. He had been taken apart and redesigned -- engineered.

For whom?

For what?

He began to wonder when he would be drafted. They seemed in no hurry.

On his thirty-fourth day after the resurrection, they pronounced him fit enough to go home. It was only when he went down to the out-processing section at the airport that it occurred to him that McNally and the rest of the squad were short-timers. A couple of bottles of booze and a session with a couple of personnel men he knew got him access to the files, and a little "officious" act scared the private in Records into punching the two names he'd pulled into the computer.

The clerk was a nervous little man who obviously hadn't been out of his air-conditioned office since reaching the Far East. Savage presented an imposing figure looming over the little private at his big console, the lieutenant's reflection in the CRT glass an intimidating reminder of himself. Savage was over six feet, and powerfully built. His face was of almost the idealized gangster of the 1920s: rough, pock-marked from a severe adolescent bout with acne, and a long scar down his right cheek. His lips formed an almost permanent sneer due to a corrective hairlip operation when he was a baby, and his crooked boxer's nose added a further sinister touch. His bushy eyebrows were gray in color, like his hair, although he was barely thirty; and they met at the bridge of his nose. He looked more like a Neanderthal than anything else, and the extreme hairiness of his body had always made him the object of derision by his peers as a youth.

"Yaa! Yaa! Ape man!"

His cold, steely-blue eyes glared as the clerk punched in the names: MC NALLY, JON OR JOHN F X.

SANTORI, JOSEPH ANTONIO.

The typewriter clattered on the output console and the clerk reached over and tore off the sheet, handing it to Savage.

SANTORI, JOSEPH ANTONIO, SP4, ASSIGNED FT ORD CA EFF 19 OCT.

69.

MC NALLY, JON OR JOHN, NO RECORD THIS THEATRE.

"What the hell does it mean, 'No Record'?" snarled Savage. "I thought you had everybody in 'Nam in this thing!"

The computer operator looked apologetic and apoplexic at the same time.

"I dunno, sir. Only thing I can figure is that you have something wrong in the input -- name, serial number, or whatever."

"No, nothing's wrong," Savage growled. "I got my squad assignment sheet and I gave you McNally."

The little computer operator just sighed. He was always more comfortable with his machines than with people, and this was a perfect example of why.

"Look, sir, I can give you a printout on every McNally that's ever been to 'Nam, even on temporary duty. Also MacNally and any other variations you like.

But the computer says that the person you're looking for just doesn't exist."

"All right, do that, then. I'm due to go home on Wednesday, and I'll be discharged soon after that. I want to know where that guy is before I leave."

The little man sighed and turned back to his console. In a few seconds, the printer typed out the information requested. Savage tore it off eagerly and scanned the sheet. About forty names were on the sheet, which also included their serial numbers, military specialty codes, assignments, and date of out- processing if they were gone.

None of them came close to McNally in the particulars. He simply wasn't in that computer.

Savage whirled angrily around and stalked out of the records center.

By the time he had hit the street and the hot, garbage-odored air of the Orient hit him, he'd calmed down enough to think it out.

The pincers at the end of his right arm took a cigarette pack out of his breast pocket. Almost as if he had always had the claw, he removed a cigarette and, with the lighter in his left hand, lit up and inhaled deeply.

Oblivious to the heat, odors, and sounds all around him, he reviewed what he knew.

(1).

McNally was real.

(2).

McNally had been assigned to the mission and bad gone on it.

(3).

McNally had gotten out alive and had gotten back to the firebase.

(4).

The Army said he didn't exist.

All of which meant that either the Army was lying or, for some reason, McNally was actually unknown to them. The former seemed the more likely, but - - for what reason?

A strange thought hit him ... and was gone, dismissed from his mind as too ridiculous to dwell on. And yet it sat in a dark corner and would not quite go away.

Did Hunter pick his recruits first, then murder them? It seemed impossible. Incredible.

And yet Hunter had known Savage was dead, known to the split second when to come in, when to shield, when to make the offer Was Hunter that powerful? That devious? It implied an enormous temporal power on Earth as well. Things would have had to be arranged.

There were other possibilities. There had to be other possibilities.

Santori might know.

4.

JOE SANTORI HAD had a good night. Tomorrow he was to be discharged from the Army, still whole and with nothing but three bitter years to show for it.

Out, man! The barracks had thrown one hell of a party for him, and Christina hadn't just been a good screw, she was a superb Italian screw that almost made him wish he had a couple more weeks in the area. He was also, at this point, quite high, as he returned to the barracks from her apartment.

As he walked across the quad, he was whistling an inane little song and his mind was a million miles from armies, barracks, and anything else less pleasant.

A man was leaning against the lamp post next to the barracks door but Santori paid little attention to him, taking him for one of the boys. As he drew closer, however, the figure took on a ghostly, shadowy shape and flicked a cigarette into the darkness, showering sparks.

There was something grotesque about the man, Santori thought -- sort of gorilla-like, yet oddly familiar. As he approached to within a few yards of the figure, it spoke to him.

"Hello, Joe," came an oddly familiar yet unplaceable voice, a deep, rich, distinctive bass that, once heard, was never forgotten. "Celebrating?"

"Yeah, man," Santori replied. "It's all over now."

"I agree, Joe, but not for the reasons you think. Remember me, Joe?" With that, the figure stepped full into the baleful half-light of the quad lamp posts.

Santori could never have forgotten the scarred face and huge, animal-like body he saw. His mouth flew open and he stepped back involuntarily and almost automatically made the sign of the cross. He continued to back away as the figure advanced.

"Don't run, Joe. It won't do you any good to run," said Paul Carleton Savage icily. "There's no hole deep enough for you to crawl into."

"But -- but -- you're dead! I saw--" Santori stammered.

"Yeah, Joe, I'm dead. You saw it. You saw McNally kill me, didn't you?"

"I -- I never planned on killin' you, Savage," he protested. "I never thought the sonovabitch would kill you!"

"But I was murdered, Joe," commented the other, matter-of-factly, "and you are what the law calls an accessory."

Images of the quad, of places to run, of people to run to, sped through Santori's brain. But where can you run from the dead? he asked himself. Now, deep in the back of his brain, Joe Santori's survival self tried to shout out a fact, a very important fact. His right arm! He's got a claw hand! his mind exulted. And that meant-- All the terror suddenly lifted, leaving him drained and angry. "You ain't dead, Savage," he accused the looming figure. "Ghosts don't have no machine parts. McNally only got your hand!"

Savage shook his head slowly from side to side. "You're right -- and wrong, too. I'm no ghost, Joe -- but McNally got me square in the back with that shot.

And I want him for that."

"Well, go and find him, then. You know I didn't have nothin' to do with shootin' you."

"That's what I have to ask you about, Joe. You see, the Army says McNally never existed."

"The hell he didn't!"

"Right. Tell me what you know about McNally, Joe, and our business -- yours and mine -- will be finished," Savage coaxed soothingly.

"You ain't gonna press charges?"

"No way, Joe. I'm not even in anymore. Tell me about McNally, Joe, and I promise you no one will ever know what happened -- then or now."

They were close together; the little corporal could smell stale tobacco and the remains of a pizza on the other's breath. It was somehow reassuring. There just wasn't any way Savage could be here -- but there'd always been stories of crazy things like this.

"Can't tell you much about him, Lieutenant," Santori began. "None of us were regulars with each other, you know. We seemed to be just picked up if we was available, regardless of unit. Only three of us were from the same outfit.

McNally was an add-on, like you. First time I ever saw him was during the mission briefing."

"You talked, though. Did he say anything about himself -- prior service, names, wife, anything?"

Santori shook his head. "Nothin'. He talked all the time about how crappy it was to get picked for the mission, how we was all short-timers and all."

"You were? All short-timers?" The little man nodded affirmatively.

"Everybody but me," Savage mused, more to himself than to Santori. "And you say McNally kept this up?"

"Yeah. Christ, Lieutenant, we was all spooked and sure we was all dead men by the time we hit the LZ."

"What about after? What happened then?"

"Well, McNally made his report in debriefing, then we both went over to the mess and had some coffee. He didn't talk much then. Well, hell, you know, after what happened and all. Just told me to stick to the story, and all. Pretty soon this small chopper puts down and he says good-bye and goes over and gets in it.

Zow, they're gone! Last I saw of him. I thought it was pretty weird at the time, but haven't thought about it since. Never saw or heard about him again. One thing bugged me at the time and keeps buggin' me, though."

"What's that?" Savage prompted.

"Well, if he was so set on killin' you, how come he pushes your body into the chopper bay instead of out of the way? I mean, if you'd rotted you couldn'ta come round like you did and. maybe show the bullet was a frag."

Savage's eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. "He did what?"

"Pushed ya in, he did. A couple of the boys saw this, and figurin' McNally had a change of heart or somethin' they pulled you all the way in. If it hadn'ta been for McNally, you'd be worm bait in the 'Nam jungle right now."

Savage stood for almost a minute in total silence, lost in thought. Then, deep inside, something seemed to snap. His head, which had started to droop, shot up, and a glazed look was in his eyes.

"Tell me something, Joe," he said very quietly, without a trace of emotion.

"That time you stuck that knife into my back -- would you have used it on me if I hadn't given in?"

Santori thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Hell, I really don't know. I wasn't gonna walk any five miles through Charley country."

"Thanks, Joe," Savage acknowledged. "I think it's time we parted company."

With that, the big man reached out and grabbed the little man in a bear hug. Santori had not survived the streets of Newark to be taken that easily.

Groaning, straining for breath, he still managed to get his pocketknife out and stab the larger man in the abdomen. Savage cried out in shock and pain and momentarily released his grip. Before he could recover, Santori was back at him, stabbing him repeatedly. In shock, Savage lost his balance and dropped to the ground. Santori efficiently cut his throat, and blood spurted all around. The victor sat down on the grassy plot between the barracks getting his breath back.