to shake your head
in effort to achieve clarity; to realize the significance of it. A
spaceship with emissaries from a Galactic Confederation.

How simple if it had only landed in Washington, London or even Paris
or Rome, instead of here.

They avoided getting very near it, although the Russians weren't being
ostentatious about their guarding. There was a roped off area about
the craft and twenty or so guards, not overly armed, drifting about
within the enclosure. But the local citizenry was evidently well
disciplined. There were no huge crowds hanging on the ropes waiting
for a glimpse of the interplanetary celebrities.

Nevertheless, the Intourist guide went out of his way to avoid
bringing his charges too near. They retraced their steps back to
Manezhnaya Square from which they had originally started to see the
mausoleum, and then turned left through Alexandrovski Sad, the
Alexander Park which ran along the west side of the Kremlin to the
Borovikski Gate, on the Moskva River side of the fortress.

Paco said, "After this tour I'm in favor of us all signing a petition
that our guide be awarded a medal, _Hero of Intourist_. You realize
that thus far he has lost only two of us today?"

Some of the others didn't like his levity. They were about to enter
the Communist shrine and wisecracking was hardly in order. Paco
Rodriquez couldn't have cared less, being Paco Rodriquez.

The _stilyagi_ girl had been correct about the Kremlin being an
overgrown museum. Government buildings it evidently contained, but
above all it provided gold topped cathedrals, fabulous palaces
converted to art galleries and displays of the jeweled wealth of
yesteryear and the tombs of a dozen czars including that of Ivan the
Terrible.

* * * * *

They trailed into the Orushezhnaya Palace, through the ornate entrance
hall displaying its early arms and banners.

Paco encouraged the harassed guard happily. "You're doing fine. You've
had us out for more than two hours. We started with twenty-five in
this group and still have twenty-one. Par for the course. What happens
to a tourist who wanders absently around in the Kremlin and turns up
in the head man's office?"

The guide smiled wanly. "And over here we have the thrones of the
Empress Elizabeth and Czar Paul."

Unobtrusively, Hank dropped toward the tail of the group. He spent a
long time peering at two silver panthers, gifts of the first Queen
Elizabeth of