"Then what--? In God's name what--?"
"I am here," Chris said in so low a tone his voice scarcely carried
through the pulsing air, "because I promised."
"Promised? Promised who--when--?"
"Because I said it. Lo, I shall be with you always, even unto the end
of the world."
The colonel stared--and remembered. He turned the color of ashes. His
right hand, ungoverned, made upon brow, shoulders and chest the sign
of the Cross. His knees bent tremblingly.
But before he could genuflect the man called Chris touched his arm.
"Don't, colonel!"
The officer, in his distraction, was muttering a woman's name, over and
over.
Chris smiled painfully. "I am here." He glanced, then, at the watching
gunners.
The colonel looked that way, too, and recovered something of his
fighting smile. They were--after all--his command. It wouldn't do
to let them see him prostrate. The gunners responded to the direct
glance--and the return of the smile--by a brightening of their eyes
and a faint curving of the corners of their mouths; their attention
went back to duty--the duty of scanning the void outside the domes of
plexiglass.
"My Lord--" the colonel all but whispered--"what shall we do?"
"Return."