Hanging on

attacked, when they could forget their fear and indulge their senses. Sex, Kelly had long ago concluded, was essential if a man were to hang on. If a man couldn't fuck now and then, he'd start taking chances, lose his grip. You can't hang on if your grip is gone.
        Sex was as important to survival as was cowardice.
        That night, two days after the Panzers, Major Kelly and Lily Kain went down the green slopes-which were actually mostly brown and burnt and all muddied by the tracks of dozers and other equipment, but which appeared nonetheless Elysian to them in their rutting heat-went under the bridge to a patch of generally undisturbed grass by the edge of the oiled, burbling, light-flecked river. There, with little time for the niceties of civilized romance, the major undressed her and lowered her to the grass, preparatory to putting it to her.
        Overhead, on the bridge floor, there were sounds like autumn leaves rustled by the wind-or like a gentle rain pattering out of the open heavens. It was good background music for their performance.
        Now and then during the day when the major caught a glimpse of Lily Kain in her dancer's costume as she was on her way to or from the mess hall, he would comment to Lieutenant Beame, his right-hand man, on the fine structure of the woman. He would say, under his breath because he actually was breathless, "She has one of the finest bodies I've ever seen!"
        Beame was a virgin, though he thought no one knew he was. He believed that his best defense against discovery and ridicule was cool indifference, since he thought the world's greatest lovers were really rather coolly indifferent except when they were in bed. Beame would say, "Oh, well, a body is a body."
        "Tits," Major Kelly would say. "She has the finest pair of tits I've ever seen, big and round and pointing right at the sky."
        "Tits are tits," Beame would say.
        "And those legs! Sleek, trim-longest legs I've ever seen!"
        And Beame would say, "Legs are legs."
        One day when he felt like teasing Beame, Kelly had gone his usual horny litany, then added, "She has the sexiest thumbs I've ever seen!"
        And Beame had said, "Thumbs are thumbs." Then he had realized what he'd said. He blushed. "Yeah," he had added, "she does have nice thumbs."
        And she had a nice body, too. It was all breasts and hips and firm buttocks and legs. Very little waist. Right now, Major Kelly didn't care about her mind or her personality, her religion, politics, or even about her moderately bad breath. He only cared about her wonderful body. He lay beside her, kissing her forehead, her eyes, her pert nose, then her lips, sucking on her tongue until he thought he might swallow it. He took handfuls of her jugs which she offered him with a graceful arching of her back, and he pondered the engineering miracle of those breasts. They were engineering miracles. He should know: he was an engineer. He tested those jugs for solidity and texture, squeezing and releasing them, massaging them with his fingertips and palms. He swept his hands up their undersides to gauge their thrust, took the big hard nipples between thumb and forefinger and gently turned them this way and that, making them even larger. A miracle. Two miracles, perfectly matched. He caressed and bounced and licked those miracles until he felt he was ready to explode with an infusion of divine power.
        Overhead, the pattering sound ceased and was replaced by the soughing of the wind.
        Major Kelly let the wind help build the atmosphere of sweet sensuality, and when he felt that it had been built high enough, he took off his own fatigues. He seemed to be moving through syrup, undressing so slowly that he would never finally be unfettered and able to achieve penetration. A man on a slow-motion film, he peeled off his shirt and, an eternity later, pulled off his shoes and then his trousers. It was, he thought, like that old mathematical riddle: if a chair is ten feet from the wall, and if you keep moving it half the distance to the wall, how many moves will it take until the chair is touching the wall? The answer, of course, is that the chair will never be touching the wall. It will get closer and closer through an infinite number of moves but can never, theoretically, be finally there. Right now, as he pulled off his shorts, Kelly thought that he was the chair while Lily was the wall. They were never