Mobs are a little different from soldiers, and our Rebel Army was
still a mob. Mobs don't like to advance into certain death, and they
don't like to advance over the bodies and wreckage of their own
forward elements. Neither do soldiers, but soldiers will do it.
Soldiers realize, when they put on the uniform, that some day they may
face death in battle, and if this is it, this is it.
I got the combat car and the lone soldier in the turban--that would
look good in anybody's history book--and moved forward, taking care
that he saw the _Times_ lettering on the jeep and taking care to stay
well short of the deadline. I let down to the street and got out,
taking off my gun belt and hanging it on the control handle of the
jeep. Then I walked forward.
"Lieutenant Ranjit," I said, "I'm representing the _Times_. I have
business inside the spaceport. I want to get the facts about this. It
may be that when I get this story, these people will be satisfied."
"We will, like Nifflheim!" I heard Joe Kivelson bawling, above and
behind me. "We want the men who started the fire my son got burned
in."
"Is that the Kivelson boy's father?" the Sikh asked me, and when I
nodded, he lifted the phone to his lips again. "Captain Kivelson," the
loudspeaker said, "your son is alive and under skin-grafting treatment
here at the spaceport hospital. His life is not, repeat not, in
danger.
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