It was too fast for that. He opened his eyes.

The turret and top armor of the tank had vanished. The two massive
treads had been toppled over, one to either side. The body had collapsed
between them, and it was running sticky trickles of molten metal. He
blinked, rubbed his eyes on the back of his hand, and looked again. Of
all the many blasted and burned-out tanks, Soviet and UN, that he had
seen, this was the most completely wrecked thing in his experience. And
he'd done that with one grenade....

Remembering the curious manner in which, at the last, the tank had begun
firing at something to the side, he looked around, to see the crumpled
body in the pale violet-gray trousers and the plum-brown coat. Finding
his carbine and reloading it, he went over to the dead man, turning the
body over. He was an old man, with a white mustache and a small white
beard--why, if the mustache were smaller and there were no beard, he
would pass for Benson's own father, who had died in 1962. The clothes
weren't Turkish or Armenian or Persian, or anything one would expect in
this country.

The old man had a pistol in his coat pocket, and Benson pulled it out
and looked at it, then did a double-take and grabbed for his own
holster, to find it empty. The pistol was his own 9.5 Colt automatic. He
looked at the dead man, with the white beard and the vivid blue
neck-scarf, and he was sure that he had never seen him before. He'd had
that pistol when he'd come down the ravine....

There was another pistol under the dead man's coat, in a
shoulder-holster; a queer thing with a thick round barrel, like an old
percussion pepper-box, and a diaphragm instead of a muzzle. Probably
projected ultrasonic waves. He holstered his own Colt and pocketed the
unknown weapon. There was a black plastileather-bound notebook. It was
full of notes. Chemical formulae, yes, and some stuff on sonics; that
tied in with the queer pistol. He pocketed that. He'd look both over,
when he had time and privacy, two scarce commodities in the Army....

* * * * *

At that moment, there was a sudden rushing overhead, and an instant
later, the barrage began falling beyond the crest of the ridge. He
looked at his watch, blinked, and looked again. That barrage was due at
0550; according to his watch, it was 0726. That was another mystery, to
go with the question of who the dead man was, where he had come from,
and how he'd gotten hold of Benson's