It hurled the Lensman down, rolled him over and over, slammed him against the backstop. Again and again he struggled upright, only to be hurled again to ground as the riflemen, really playing the game now, swung their leaden hail from part to part of the armor, and varied their attack from steady fire to short, but savage, bursts. But finally, in spite of everything the gun crew could do, Kinnison learned his controls.
Then, drivers flaring, he faced that howling, chattering muzzle and strode straight into the stream of smoke- and flame-enshrouded steel. Now the air was literally full of metal. Bullets and fragments of bullets whined and shrieked in mad abandon as they ricocheted off that armor in all directions. Sand and bits of concrete flew hither and yon, filling the atmosphere of the dugout. The rifle yammered at maximum, with its sweating crew laboring mightily to keep its voracious maw full-fed. But, in spite of everything, Kinnison held his line and advanced. He was a bare ten feet from that raving, steel-vomiting muzzle when the firing again ceased.
"Twenty thousand, sir," the officer reported, crisply. "We'll have to change barrels before we can give you any more."
"That's enough!" snapped Haynes. "Come out of there!"
Out Kinnison came. He removed heavy ear plugs, swallowed four times, blinked and grimaced. Finally he spoke. "It works perfectly, sir, except for the noise. It's a good thing I've got a Lens. Even though I was wearing plugs, I won't be able to hear a sound for three days!"
"How about the springs and shock absorbers? Are you bruised anywhere? You took some real bumps."
"Perfect—not a bruise. Let's look her over."
Every inch of that armor's surface was now marked by blurs, where the metal of the bullets had rubbed on the shining alloy, but that surface was neither scratched, scored, nor dented.
"QX, boys—thanks," Kinnison dismissed the riflemen. They probably wondered how any man could see through a helmet built up of inches-thick laminated alloys, with neither window nor port through which to look; but if so, they made no mention of their curiosity. They, too, were patrolmen.