Only the infirmary circle stayed in the Bomb-Proof. Almost all the Slow-Polks slept out in the open yard.

It was strange to be inside such a quiet, almost empty Bomb-Proof.

Weird, the happy card-sharps! They numbered the card pips by the thin flicker of a single candle. It was odd to see them laugh so wildly as they shoved piles of Liberty's-head dollars about recklessly. They slapped the winner's back.

"Pair of threes is all I got - and, mind you, an ace!"

"Behold my eights and Nimble Jack!"

"I wasn't bluffin'. But I'm out."

"Gintlemin, I got tree fine lookin' ladies."

A triumvirate of filthy men, somehow eager to lose in poker, they gave up their aces in an atonement to Fate, to break the siege. The laughing card players shunned their luck, and let the loser win. Lose a little poker, win a little war. It was the only way they could contribute to victory.

The winner hissed and ticked. Just who was it who won? I recognized an automatonish form. Was it Franklin Stove? I wondered. Had he come back when I slept? I seemed to see him.

But no, it wasn't any metal man. It was only Socrates, wearing an old silk stovepipe. He hissed in laughter, and ticked the hoodoo bone against his teeth. Martha Miles shouted when she found him engaged in the sin of gambling. He gave her the money; it was hers, of course. She gave it back to the gamblers. She said she was sorely disappointed in what that had taught the rascal. She wouldn't let Old Sock keep one Liberty's head. The other gamblers went outside to throw their money as far as they could

"You seen Sarah, Ma'am?" I asked.

She turned her young face to me, then looked away. "Private Borginnis, since that we are no longer trapped down here, I choose not to keep company with that unfortunate girl," said Martha. "I would like to say what I hitherto have not said to you, that it is she who has lead you to the fallen state you are now in, it is she who has corrupted your flesh and your soul."

"That's enough of that," I warned her.

Asking Kelly I found out that Captain Miles had let out some men on scouting duty east, and some more made up a forage party west. The forage party had already come back with four buzzards, three rabbits, a lizard, and as much water as they could carry, only a few gallons. The scouting party had returned and gone out again; Kelly didn't know where Sarah was, but he'd agreed to a request for the Chickenhawk sharpshooter to go out with the scouts the second time.

Outside, there were shouts. I walked stiffly up the entryway into the bright morning. A mob was rushing out of the tents pitched a-new in the yard. They howled like madmen. All the five hundred filthy, exhausted men of the 7th Infantry "Cotton Balers" and the two dozen men from E Company, 2nd Artillery, plus all the camp-wives (where was Sarah?) rushed up the slopes of Fort Slow-Polk to witness the second round of Taylor's duel with Lunarista. We wounded folks limped up as best we could. A black cloud was lifting over William's Bond Crater.

Boom. Boom-boom...

Boom - boom...

We heard that cannonade for hours as Destiny's big guns made themselves manifest upon the Moon's little ones.

Then we heard the crackle and sputter of musketry.

A giant black cloud lifted up its hideous war head and grinned carnivorously. Its teeth flashed electric. Under its black grin, the Moon waned prematurely.

We saw a few Lunar zapadores running for the Cold Sea.

Then we saw the routed hussars, many of the horses without riders, splash straight into the sea, pell-mell.

Then we saw hundreds and hundreds of Moonmen running from the broken lines. Thousands fleed the U. S. iron. I saw the steam powered pumping of the wings of one of Ringgold's Flying Cannon, chasing them.

The enemy's panic was awful to witness, the way they threw themselves into the sea, spilling on top of one another and drowning.

- But Taylor and the boys had busted through! Fort Texas was liberated! As we saw the doughty lines of electric bayonetters march nigh, we cheered and cheered till hoarseness made us mum:

HIP HIP HOORAH!
HOORAH OLD ZACH AND THE BOYS!
HOORAH FER ROUGH `N' READY!
- THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE
U-NITED STATES!

The first messenger galloped to our fort. Down went our drawbridge - what news? what news? Five of our seven captains waited at the gate. He exchanged salutes, spoke a few words, listened, pulled the horse around and galloped off again.

We saw our columns marching to us, weary with victory. Came the dusty dragoons, leading their sweaty steeds, and the wobbly wheeled caissons of the Flying Cannon, wings folded on their iron hinges, and the giant electromagnetic cannons, pulled by teams of eight oxen each. What's this? - furnaces dark and artillery pennants dipped down? Was Major Ringgold mourned, then? - the man who studied Napoleon, who hammered wings on ordinance, whose fleet cannon could lead a charge, dead? (Aye, Ringgold laid among the slain, his legs severed from his trunk by a Lunar cannonball. Rumor said it hit one leg, pierced through the saddle and the spine of his steed, to the other leg.)

More soldiers filed on down, bringing the stiffly laden mess wagons, and the walking wounded, singing, "...I'm lonely, my darlin', since partin' with you..."

When I put on my Regular blouse, which Sarah had dirt-scrubbed hard to get the blood out of it, and left folded on my Infirmary bedroll, I found this crookedly-printed note in my pocket:

DEER JACK WELL IM SORY BUT WE ANT MARY'D NO MORE I'M SO SORY BUT I WARNED YU DIDDEN I & YEWD NEVAR LET ME SAY IT YEWD FUSS & ID FUSS THATS WY I WROTT THIS I CUDDEN SAY IT IM SORY IM NO GUD FER YU & YUR NO GUD FER ME IM A KORN KOB WITCH & YU ANT WHAT I THOT YU WAS YU AR A SKOLLERLEE FELLER GOOD LUK SARAH.

PS IF YU HAF AN EKSTRA CAWPEE OF THAT BUK A BOWT NAPOLLYN PLEZ SAND IT TO ME ID LYK THAT SARAH.

I saw Milly Jellison, sitting in the shadow of a 6-pounder and knitting. Her belly was starting to show that she was pregnant. "Say Ma'am do you know where Sarah is?" The camp women were dependably attentive to such details.

Milly looked at me. "I heard she'd gotten a-holt of some Mooner horses and came back with Cappy Seawell to get a few men to help tracking down the Metal Man. She said one of Taylor's scouts thought he saw a feller like him around William's Bond Crater."

"So you think she's sweet on that automaton?" I said dryly. I figured Sarah never had a chance to give P. P. F. S. the carefully printed love note, he having flown the coop. The Cotton Balers didn't know whether to call it desertion or not, seeing as he had suffered so much abuse from us. Still, most folks didn't care either way. He was a bit too weird and Whiggish for the most of us.

"You think so?" Milly said with a shake of her red-locked head that was either a gesture of sympathy or incredulousness, or maybe both.

"Didn't she tell you she don't love me no more?" I asked.

"Shoot, Mr. Borginnis, do you think a girl could love a Metal Man?"

"Wouldn't some girls prefer a Metal Man?"

"How you talk," she chided me.

I reread Sarah's note. (I mean the one addressed to me. I'd left the other in her apron.) So what did she think I was? Had I changed or was she wrong all the while? I couldn't remember what I was a week ago, especially. I couldn't figure what she thought I was.

I went looking for Kelly. He seemed to know all about it. He wanted me to sign up as a stretcher-bearer; it would look good on my poor record. I didn't have to do anything, though, seeing as I was on sick call, he would just note that I volunteered. "All right," I said, "but I have a permission to request." He gave me written permission to hunt for our lost mule. He thought I wanted to go off and be alone with Nature like Young Werther.

At the gate I asked which way Captain Seawell rode off. Featherstone pointed out their hoof-trail was pointed out to me. I limped behind them, heading east on the trail of the Metal Man, grumbling, "Princess-Vice President Sarah Stove!"

I didn't know what I was going to do. Maybe I was going to do a little bushwhacking in the name of True Love. Maybe I was going to do a little score settling electric musket retribution in the name of Joseph Bently. Maybe this was my chance to get even with my bad luck. - Slaying that Moral Engine'd be like slaying an Agent of our Flawed Creator. That there was no divine justice, ha! I'd teach that highfaluting automatonal righteousness, man, machine, angel, or devil may he be!

But this was my own vanity and error. Prince-President Franklin Stove was in large part an engine, certainly, in the form of a man, certainly, with astonishing preternatural powers of Babbage Calculating Machine cognition - to the point of suspecting diabolic inspiration, it seemed, so much - too much - did he - it, it! - know - and yet - as I soon found out - all simple categorical suppositions to solve the mystery of his nature were false, when they excluded the key element - the elective element - the bestial element of its intelligence -

Things did not happen like I expected.

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