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"Did Dick Canidy get home yet?" A year before, when both Ed Bitter and Dick Canidy were flying instructors-and roommates-at the Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, Ed had brought Dick to The Plantation in Alabama.

The Plantation was an antebellum mansion and several hundred thousand acres of pine trees her father, Ed's uncle, hoped one day to turn into newsprint. Dick Canidy looked like the answer to a maiden's prayer in his white Navy uniform with the gold wings of a Naval Aviator pinned to his manly breast, and she would have cheerfully given him her pearl of great price right there on the carpet in the library of The Plantation had he asked for it. Or shown a slight interest in it. But he hadn't.

He had made it perfectly clear that he regarded her as a college girl, beneath his consideration, and a relative of Eddie to boot. But an hour after Ann Chambers had first set eyes on Dick Canidy, she had decided that didn't matter. She was going to marry him. His disinterest in her hadn't changed that decision, only made her realize that the way to capture this man was not to stare soulfully at him and wiggle her tail.

She would have been perfectly willing to do that, too, but that wasn't going to work. The way to catch this man was, she knew, to become his pal, his friend, a buddy in skirts. The birds-and-the-bees business would come later. She barely managed to start this, by talking flying with him-she had her commercial single-engine license, an Instrument rating, and 520 hours in her father's stagger-wing Beechcraft-asking intelligent questions, putting him at ease, when Dick and Ed set off for China to save the world for democracy. That had reduced her campaign to letter writing. Funny letters, the envelopes containing more clippings she thought would interest him than text. But she did just happen to mention that she had quit college and was working for the Memphis Advocate and hoped to get overseas as a correspondent. He had responded as a pal. Without even mentioning what he was doing in the war, he wrote about China and about the problems of navigation where there were no navigation aids and about how difficult it had been to reassemble crated airplanes with a Chinese work force. And then the letters had stopped.

She had no idea why, but there was a chance that Ed Bitter knew something she didn't. "Why do you ask about him?" Ed Bitter replied as the elevator doors closed. And then he remembered that Ann had had a schoolgirl crush on Dick Canidy. "Yes or no," she said.

"Simple question, simple answer."

"He's been home for some time," he said.

THE SECRET WARRIORS X ST The way he said that alarmed her. It was evident in her voice. "He's been hurt?"

"No," he said.

"He has not been hurt."

"Then what?"

"He was sent home months ago,' Ed said. "Why?"

"Is that important?"

"It wouldn't be if you weren't reluctant to tell me."

"If you have to know," Ed said, 'he was rel

ieved."

"What does that mean?" Ann asked. "He was-discharged-from. the AVG," Bitter said.

"Under not quite honorable circumstances."

"What, exactly, were those 'not quite honorable circumstances'?" Ann demanded. "It was alleged that he refused to engage the enemy." She looked at him intently and saw that he was telling her the truth. "He must have had his reasons," she said loyalty.

"Where is he?"

"I have no idea," Ed said.

"Under the circumstances, I don't think he wants to see me. Or, for that matter, you."

"I would like to hear his side," Ann said. "I really don't know where he is, Ann," Ed Bitter said.

"My advice is to leave it that way." The elevator was by then at the eighth floor. The operator opened the door and they stepped into a corridor. He followed Ann down the corridor. She stopped before a door, took a key from her pocket and unlocked it, and stepped inside.

She waved for him to follow her inside. There was a sitting room, with doors opening off either side. "Sarah!" Ann called. A door opened.

And Sarah stood framed in it-with an infant in her arms. She looked at Ed Bitter and then away. Ann went to her and took the child.

What the hell is all this? "Don't tell me that's yours," he said to Ann.

"Okay. I won't tell you it's mine," Ann said agreeably.

"It's not mine. It's yours."

She walked to him and abruptly handed him the infant.