Hanging on

Hagendorf and Beame inside," Tooley said. He had stopped hugging himself, but he looked at Beame out of the corner of his eye as if he remained unconvinced that the lieutenant was alive.
        Kelly saw that getting Beame out of the box was going to be every bit as difficult as getting Emil Hagendorf out of the box, because Hagendorf was holding tightly to Beame to shield himself from further violence. Kelly could almost hear the clatter of Panzer tread, louder by the second… "We'll get a dozen men-"
        "No," Coombs said. "If we lift that box and Hagendorf starts jumping up and down or rocking in it, we'll fall with it. Someone'll break a leg. Or worse."
        "Worse-like Beame," Tooley said.
        "Beame's okay," Kelly said. He ignored the two of them and searched desperately for a solution. He could not leave the crate here and order the shed's demolition, for Hagendorf would probably be killed by collapsing walls. Major Kelly did not want to kill anyone. Petey Danielson had been enough… "I've got it!" he said, suddenly turning from the crate and crossing the musty room to the doorway where the workers stood in the sunlight and squinted curiously at him. He located one of his own men, Private Lyle Park, and spoke to him for a minute or two.
        Park was a tall, angular Tennessean, all bone and gristle, with a surprisingly gentle face as fine as water-carved, sun-bleached sandstone. He nodded vigorously as Kelly talked, then turned and disappeared through the press of jabbering villagers.
        "What's that cocksucking bastard up to now?" Coombs wanted to know.
        "I've always sort of liked Fark," Tooley said.
        "Not Fark. Kelly."
        "Oh, you're right about him!" Hagendorf cried from inside the crate. He had pulled the unconscious lieutenant over him like a coverlet, and he peered up at Coombs from the hollow of Beame's right armpit. "Kelly's a bastard. He-"
        "Oh, shut the fuck up," Sergeant Coombs said.
        A few minutes later, Private Park pushed back through the crowd and handed something to Kelly. The major took it, nodded, came back across the room. He walked straight up to the crate, holding a small object in one hand which was pressed flat against his thigh. He looked at Hagendorf who was still peeking at the world through the curious perspective of Beame's armpit. "Last chance."
        "You put me in here!" Hagendorf cried. "You did it!"
        Kelly sighed. He picked up a wine bottle, raised it, faked a swing.
        Hagendorf rolled the hapless lieutenant into the blow- and unwittingly bared one of his own pale, hammy, naked thighs.
        Raising the object Fark had fetched for him and which Tooley and Coombs now saw to be a hypodermic syringe from the hospital, Kelly plunged it into the surveyor's thigh just as he checked the downswing of the empty bottle and spared the unconscious Beame another wound.
        Hagendorf screamed, tried to throw off Beame. He scrabbled at the sides of the box, desperate to get up. The needle broke in his flesh. It dangled from his leg, focal point of a spreading circle of blood. In seconds, Hagendorf was fast asleep.
        Private Tooley shook his head admiringly. "You'd make a good pacifist. That was very clever. That puts an end to the Hagendorf crisis."
        Kelly looked down at the chalky, chubby man who was half-concealed by Lieutenant Beame. "Maybe not. If Hagendorf has gone over the edge-and if he hates me as much as he seems to, maybe he deliberately did a bad surveying job for the village. Maybe he sabotaged it."
        "Hagendorf wouldn't do that," Tooley said.
        "Hagendorf is crazy," Kelly said, dropping the ruined syringe. It clinked when it hit the packed-earth floor. "He was driven crazy by his own sanity. Before he came into the Army, he was too sane for his own good. His sanity drove him out of his mind. He saw everything in blacks and whites. When it came time for him to test his philosophy, Hagendorf could either be wholly sane or wholly insane. He was already wholly sane. So he had to become wholly insane." He looked at Tooley and Coombs and saw that they did not understand a word of it. They were looking at him as if he were wholly insane. "Hagendorf is a crazy wino," Kelly said, simplifying it for them. "He'll do anything. I'll have to check up on the work he finished yesterday before we go on with too much more of the building."
        On his way out of the shed,