"Go through the wall. Across the lawn. Right up to the door, and never mind the frippery they've got all over the place—have your adjutant tell them to bill us for damage. Samms is shot in the shoulder. Not too serious, but I'm taking him to the Hill, where I know he'll be safe. What have you got on top of the umbrella, the Boise or the Chicago? I haven't had time to look up yet."
"Both."
"Good man."
Jack Kinnison started at the monstrous tank, which was smashing statues, fountains, and ornamental trees flat into the earth as it moved ponderously across the grounds, and licked his lips. He looked at the companies of soldiers "frisking" the route, the grounds, and the crowd—higher up, at the hovering helicopters—still higher, at the eight light cruisers so evidently and so viciously ready to blast—higher still, at the long streamers of fire which, he now knew, marked the locations of the two most powerful engines of destruction ever built by man—and his face turned slowly white.
"Good Lord, Dad!" he swallowed twice. "I had no idea ... but they might, at that."
"Not 'might', son. They damn well would, if they could get here soon enough with heavy enough stuff." The elder Kinnison's jaw-muscles did not loosen, his darting eyes did not relax their vigilance for a fraction of a second as he Lensed the thought. "You boys can't be expected to know it all, but right now you're learning fast. Get this—paste it in your iron hats. Virgil Samms' life is the most important thing in this whole damned universe! If they had got him then it would not, strictly speaking, have been my fault, but if they get him now, it will be."
The land cruiser crunched to a stop against the very entrance, and a white-clad man leaped out.
"Let me look at him, please..."
"Not yet!" Kinnison denied, sharply. "Not until he's got four inches of solid steel between him and whoever wants to finish the job they started. Get your men around him, and get him aboard—fast!"
Samms, protected at every point at every instant, was lifted into the maw of the ninety-sixty; and as the massive door clanged shut Kinnison heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. The cavalcade moved away.