trying to outrace each other to the trunk highway and they arrived at
the intersection almost simultaneously. You can't possibly imagine the
hideous clatter when you have two stubborn armored divisions and an
obstinate mechanized one all trying to occupy the same road at once. I
could hear it all the way back here." Plekoskaya belched delicately.
"General, do wash off the dust of the road and join me at table."

[Illustration]

"No thank you. If that's all the delay is, it should be cleared soon and
we'll be moving again. I'll want to be with my division."

"General Kodorovich, you evidently don't understand what has happened.
The word that has been passed from the most forward units, which are in
the city itself, to the rear ones, indicates that Moscow is the hub of
one vast military traffic jam thirty to perhaps fifty miles deep and
growing worse all the time as new groups are moving in."

"But I must get to the city," Kodorovich insisted. "I have orders to
surround the Kremlin, seal off MVD headquarters and--"

"Ease your mind," Plekoskaya interrupted. "The Kremlin is well
surrounded. General Smolledin is deployed around the walls; General
Alexeiev is deployed around General Smolledin; General Paretsev is
deployed around Alexeiev and so on to the outskirts of the city. Those
of us out here, of course, cannot deploy off the roads, for, who knows,
tomorrow the Minister of Agriculture may be Premier and he may not take
it kindly if we trample the collectives."

"How can you just sit there and do nothing when the people's government
is in some kind of danger?" Kodorovich said with some heat.

"It is very simple," Plekoskaya said with mild irritation and sarcasm.
"I merely bend at the knees and hips and have a lunch of a weight
adequate enough to keep me from floating off my chair and rushing about
seeking trouble. Of course it takes years of experience to learn how to
do this and most important, _when_." In kindlier tones Plekoskaya
continued. "Whatever it is that is happening in the Kremlin and the
other hotbeds of intrigue will have to happen without us. There is no
telling who, if anyone, is in control. Conflicting orders have been
coming over the military radio depending upon which clique controls
which headquarters. Why do you know, my dear Kodorovich, already this
morning the 124th has alternately been ordered to march to Moscow and a
dozen other places including downtown Siberia."

Kodorovich did not smi