ive thousand, with twenty-odd
guns and close to a hundred machine guns. He'd last about as long as a
pint of trade gin at a Sheshan funeral. The only thing was, before he
and the crew of the combat car were killed, they'd wipe out about ten
or fifteen of our vehicles and a couple of hundred men, and they would
be the men and vehicles in the lead.

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. The men you are after are here, under guard. If any of them
are guilty of any crimes, and if you can show any better authority
than an armed mob to deal with them, they may, may, I said, be turned
over for trial. But they will not be taken from this spaceport by
force, as long as I or one of my men remains alive."

"That's easy. We'll get them afterward," Joe Kivelson shouted.

"Somebody may. You won't," Ranjit Singh told him. "Van Steen, hit that
ship's boat first, and hit it at the first hostile move anybody in
this mob makes."

"Yes, sir. With pleasure," another voice replied.

Nobody in the Rebel Army, if that was what it still was, had any
comment to make on that. Lieutenant Ranjit turned to me.

"Mr.