.. are you O.K.?" I whispered into her ear ... whispering partly because she was squeezing me so hard and I couldn't get enough air to speak normally....For a few moments she didn't say anything. Then she buried her face in my neck and mumbled something that I took to be "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy." Meg Sweetie ... tell me you're O.K., huh?"She nodded her head while keeping it buried. I just held her tightly and hoped she wouldn't crush me with her strong embrace. Finally she broke the hold. I made some coffee, and started the maker, got a couple of cups, sugar, and milk out. I thought about putting on some more clothes, but they were in the laundry. Oh well, but we were both over 60, or so, and I did not expect to have anything happen. I opened my side of the door, and before I could get the table arranged the other door opened. “Hello, ok if I come in”? “Yes I replied, come on in, the coffee is brewing”. “Here is the soap, and thanks, I needed to do the wash soon”, I replied,. They were tall, heavily muscled and looked either overpoweringly masculine or scary and dangerous. He looked... like Casper Milquetoast. Yet the most prominent Alpha Males from the last century were small men, Hitler and Stalin.Checking mailboxes He saw His party was on the top floor. "The penthouse?" He asked himself.In the elevator He composed Himself. Emotion would be counter-productive. He couldn't have that.The elevator opened to a single entry with a door opening to His left and another. Paolo knew from experience just how merciless and cruel these evil empires were. The Ninth Army’s Stormbringer Fleet had been reduced from a proud force of several thousand destroyers, battleships and spacecraft carriers to less than a hundred stragglers. The journey to here, the furthest destination to which such a space fleet had ever been consigned, from the Reich’s military bases on the Moon had been beleaguered by battles and skirmishes with the other two empires’ warships. Heavily armed.