Before the Universe

AFTERWORD

In 1941 the Japanese creamed Pearl Harbor, and by the early part of 1942, it became clear to all of us that our interesting and developing world was being derailed onto a quite different track. Cyril found work as a war-industry machinist in Connecticut. He moved there with his new wife (a young femmefan called Mary G. Byers, by whom in time he had two children), and we lost touch for a while.

Around March of 1943 Cyril turned up in New York again. He had enlisted in the Army, in a special program for machinists which made him the envy of all draft-bait. It would give him sergeant's stripes as soon as he finished basic framing, and keep him busy repairing artillery well behind the lines instead of firing it, and being fired at, closer up. I had also volunteered, and was waiting for my orders. So the two of us stepped out for a drink to celebrate, which led to another drink, which led to one of the two drunkest nights I have ever spent in my life. (The other, six or seven years later, was also with Cyril.) When we woke in the morning, we shook hands tremblingly, not with emotion but with triple-distilled essence of terminal hangover. And Cyril went off to war, and so, a couple weeks later, did I.

We exchanged a little V-mail from time to time, but we didn't see each other again, or of course collaborate on anything, until the war was well over; but that belongs in Critical Mass.