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Around us the cries of the reradually faded Some of them metamorphosed statistically fro quietly on either side of us Others either passed out or gave up un from a dead soldier, told the others to wait, and headed across the napalround a badly burned soldier called toI could do for him I went to the tank, and the metal hatch was still too hot to handle The hatch was unfastened, whichit, since after all they were not engaged with ground forces, or that they had escaped fro to escape I couldn’t tell without opening the hatch There was a general stench of burned flesh, but there was no way of knohether it caeneral aroion

I went back to Tuppence and Dhang It had been a while since our last ry Tuppence was particularly shaken Her eyes swept the battlefield, and she kept shaking her head "Why doesn’t everybody leave everybody alone," she said "I do not dig jungles Rele and rip it up and pave it with asphalt?" She had said this several times in the course of the journey "I’ll take it all back now Any jungle’s better than this"

"All the jungles will be gone soon"

"Because of this? Bombs?"

"Not just that Call it the advance of civilization There’s no rooles anyles or deserts left We’ll clear the jungles and irrigate the deserts, and I suppose someday we’ll even level all the mountains, except for the ones we save for ski slopes And instead of snakes and insects and animals and birds, there will be rows and rows of little square houses where there used to be jungles and deserts and h to eat, and no one will die of sickening diseases, and everyone will speak Esperanto and have 27 children and pensions when they’re old and nondenominational services when they die And they’ll all join bowling leagues and corass and watch color television, and when they talk to each other, Esperanto will be as good as anything else because they won’t really have anything to say"

"Evan-"

"Every toill have a park for the children to play in, and the park will have trees and shrubs for the people to look at And the larger toill have zoos so that the children can go to them and look at all the birds and animals that used to inhabit the earth Everybody will buy frozen food at the superet thirty-four percent fewer cavities and die of lung cancer Everybody will be able to travel to far-off countries where everybody else lives in the saoes to the sae and eats the same food" I looked at the scorched earth, and I turned around and looked at the wild green jungle "And it doesn’t even matter ins here," I said, "because either way it will turn out the san aid until the whole country turns into one big Levittown If the Communists win, they’ll create the sort of worker’s paradise you find all over Eastern Europe, with every house a perfect gray concrete block cube It’ll take theer because they don’t have as lier There’s a suburb of Cracow built since the war that looks as though it belongs on the outskirts of Cleveland You can’t bla monotony, it’s the wave of the future"

"There’s a part of Nairobi that’s getting like that"

"Of course"

"I think I’ht side," I said "For all that’s wrong with today’s world, it’s still better than tomorrow’s"

The next tihtly warain in a hurry The tank had been carrying a full crew of three, and they were still inside it but in far poorer condition than when they stalled out Ihelped me empty the tank and disinfect it with petrol frole to vomit and returned to collect Tuppence and find out whether or not the tank still worked

It was in surprisingly good shape, considering the condition of the crew A triumph of modern warfare, I decided – one could destroy people without ruining valuable ets inside the tank until I found the right coine turned over but stalled dead after a few seconds I guessed that it was out of fuel Perhaps the heat had caused the fuel in the tank to vaporize, leaving a little in the carburetor to get it started I’h of a mechanic to knohether or not that’s what happened, but Dhang and I collected fuel from two of the boain, and it ran

We clied fro a sort of un We also collected several cans of fuel that had been aboard one of the troop carriers The Chinese writing on itto me, so I didn’t knohether one was supposed to run tanks on it or start charcoal fires in a barbeque pit I also didn’t kno ht of running dry in the middle of the demilitarized zone

We left the tank’s hatch open to combat claustrophobia and asphyxiation, and we made ourselves as comfortable as possible The control panel was in Russian, which helped I settled art in Sahara"This baby’ll start," I said "All yuh gotta do is talk nice to her We can beat the Krauts to the next water hole and hold ’eets back with help" It wasn’t a bad impression, but I could have saved , certain that I had just said sonificance, insisted on a full literal translation and then asked what it meant I told hion That set his Tuppence was lucky she couldn’t understand

The T-34 is a reasonably good tank They gave us a hard time in Korea, and while I suppose they’re considered obsolete now, this one wasn’t so bad The steering was sih unco of security it conveyed I suddenly kne a box turtle feels when he draws in his head and legs and closes the hinge on his plastron All at once we didn’t have to worry about a thing It didn’t even matter if the locals becah them while the bullets bounced off us No North Vietnah to fire a bazooka at one of his own tanks just because it seemed to be out of position We had itcolumn of foot soldiers, the incredible value of our new vehicle made itself dra way off By the tiht of them, they had formed ranks on either side of the roadway to afford us easy passage They took their caps off at our approach, and as we reached thelad to see us, they wanted to wish us all manner of luck on our way to meet the enemy I fished around the control panel for a horn button to answer their salute I guess tanks don’t have horns, perhaps because they are not afraid of collisions I gave up the hunt, took up a pistol, opened the hatch, and snapped off a volley of shots at the heavens The soldiers roared their approval After we had passed theht, the sound of their hoarse applause still echoed around us

"They really got excited," Tuppence said

"Yes"