Dennison waited for several seconds.
"I don't know what happened."
"You rammed into this wall--you fool!"
"I went blank."
"Let 'im alone!" Zinc shouted.
"Shut up!" Landel yelled.
"I went blank .... that's all," Dennison repeated.
They rested a few minutes and then began creeping along, patrolling the main street, under radio orders, their guns silent, the enemy nowhere. Stopping at a barricaded intersection, where trees had fallen under bombing, where heaps of rubble smoked, the radio announced the official take-over of Gex.
They were radio-ordered to park with other machines under trees fringing a town garden: roses and shell holes, benches and crushed benches, paths that stopped suddenly: a small bronze figure was still upright under branches: the three men crawled from their cab and sat on a low stone wall, faces black, clothes grease-caked, bloody.
Zinc showed Dennison a gashed hand.