Their new commanding officer is not so cheerful, and his feelings appear to be shared by everyone in the entire section. The musicians are greeted without being welcomed and saluted without being honored. The people who have been working in this building—far from being overawed by their status as guys who not only worked on an actual ship until recently but furthermore have been very close to things that were exploding, burning, etc., and not as the result of routine lapses in judgment but because bad men deliberately made it happen—do not seem to feel that Lawrence and his bandmates deserve to be entrusted with this new work, whatever the hell it is.