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 England to Boris Godunov. The Progressive Tours assembly passed on into the next room. A guard standing next to the case said, "Mr. Kuran?" Without looking up, Hand nodded. "Follow me, slowly." No one from the Progressive Tours group was in sight. Hank wandered after the guard, looking into display cases as he went. Finally the other turned a corner into an empty and comparatively narrow corridor. He stopped and waited for the American. "You're Kuran?" he asked anxiously in Russian. "That's right." "You're not afraid?" "No. Let's go." Inwardly Hank growled, _Of course I'm afraid. Do I look like a confounded hero?_ What was it Sheridan Hennessey had said? This was combat, combat cold-war style, but still combat. Of course he was afraid. Had there ever in the history of combat been a participant who had gone into it unafraid? They walked briskly along the corridor. The guard said, "You have studied your maps?" "Yes." "I can take you only so far without exposing myself. Then you are on your own. You must know your maps or you are lost. These old palaces ramble--" "I know," Hank said impatiently. "Brief me as we go along. Just for luck." "Very well. We leave Orushezhnaya Palace by this minor doorway. Across there, to our right, is the _Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets_, the Great Kremlin Palace. It's there the Central Executive Committee meets, and the Assembly. The same hall used to be the czar's throne room in the old days. On the nearer side, on the ground floor, are the _Sobstvennaya Plovina_, the former private apartments of Nicholas First. The extraterrestrials are there." "You're sure? The others weren't sure." "That's where they are." "How can we get to them?" "_We_ can't. Possibly _you_ can. I can take you only so far. The front entrance is strongly guarded, we are going to have to enter the Great Palace from the rear, through the Teremni Palace. You remember your maps?" "I think so."