Climbing so close to an erupting volcano was tickling the dragon's tail.

The first thing Gabe saw as they pulled close was the flashing lights of Ruleton’s two police cruisers parked off to the side of the road—the new one Sheriff Dodd’s, the humble other the battered black-and-white that he’d hand-me-downed to his deputy, Ralph Simpson.

He held some friendly chat with Pabodie over the ether, and repeated his praise of the really marvelous drills that had helped him make his discovery.

If in fact […] they put the screws on Berlin in the way that Gromyko said they were going to, then we are... I know that we were bound to invade Cuba under those conditions.