Hank said, "Wait. How long is this going to take? And can you help me if you want to? Where are these extraterrestrials?"
Georgi looked down at him. "They're in the Kremlin. How closely guarded we don't know, but we can find out."
"The Kremlin," Hank said. "I was hoping they stayed in their own ship."
"Rumor has it that they're quartered in the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, the Great Kremlin Palace. We'll contact you later—perhaps." He stuck his hands in his pockets and strode away, in all appearance just one more pedestrian without anywhere in particular to go.
One of the younger boys, the ham who had first approached Hank, smiled and said, "Perhaps we can talk a bit more of radio?"
"Yeah," Hank muttered, "Swell."
The next development came sooner than Henry Kuran had expected. In fact, before the others returned from their afternoon tour of the city. Hank was sprawled in one of the king-sized easy-chairs, turning what little he had to work on over in his mind. The principal decisions to make were, first, how long to wait on the assistance of the stilyagi, and, if that wasn't forthcoming, what steps to take on his own. The second prospect stumped him. He hadn't the vaguest idea what he could accomplish singly.
He wasn't even sure where the space aliens were. The Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, Georgi had said. But was that correct, and, if so, where was the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets and how did you get into it? For that matter, how did you get inside the Kremlin walls?
Under his breath he cursed Sheridan Hennessey. Why had he allowed himself to be dragooned into this? By all criteria it was the desperate clutching of a drowning man for a straw. He had no way to know, for instance, if he did reach the space emissaries, that he could even communicate with them.