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happens to be leading us is blown sky-high and comes back to earth in a thousand unrecognizable pieces.
    So the prisoner was not lying, the Information Service is not staffed by gullible fools but by highly intelligent people doing a grand job of work... and getting us blown up in the process. Perhaps it's a T mine, fashioned specially with tanks in mind. If that's the case, you've certainly had it: hardly anyone survives a T mine. If it's an S mine, on the other hand, the outlook isn't quite so grim: you might well survive with only the loss of your legs. Well, that's not such a very great tragedy in these days of warfare. They'll fit you up with a pretty good pair of artificial limbs, and if you're not actually a certifiable cretin you'll probably be accepted for an N.C.O.'s training course. There are quite a few legless men in training nowadays. It could be worse. You can sign on for thirty-six years, expect to be a Feldwebel after perhaps fifteen to eighteen years, retire at sixty-five with a fat pension.
    0n the whole, therefore, when we weren't actually engaged on the job, we regarded mines as mixed blessings. On the one hand, you stood to lose your life; on the other hand, you stood only to lose your legs--with the enormous advantage of being invalided out of the front line once and for all. But let there be no mistake about it: it was no use losing one leg, or one arm. It had to be both or nothing. There were many one-legged men at the front, while those with one arm were so thick on the ground that you regarded them as entirely normal, well-equipped human beings. Major Hinka, for example, had waved his right arm goodbye a couple of years ago, and he had been in the thick of the action ever since.
    And now, for the moment, it was me leading the column, me wearing the boots, me risking life and limb. With my nerves alert for the first sign of danger, I cautiously bent down and flattened a clump of thick grass. Something there... something metallic? Directly behind me, Porta and the Legionnaire came to a halt. A strong temptation to turn and run. Unfortunately impossible. Slowly I bent down and laid my ear to the ground. Did I hear a faint ticking, or was that merely my coward's imagination? Was it a magnetic mine or a delayed-action mine? Already I was soaked with sweat, my teeth clacking nervously together, my knee-caps dancing a jig. It was a mine, all right. Silent, for the moment, but none the less dangerous on that account. A cobra was less to be feared. The tips of my fingers felt the shape of the invisible, antennae, the rounded dome, the shatteringly thin panel of glass. It was a classic T mine.
    This is the moment. Control yourself, overcome fear if you want to go on living. Remember everything they taught you... Two fingers under the dome, two turns to the left... but slowly, slowly... Break the glass and that's the end of you, Sven, my lad! Pray to God there's no hidden wire, that it's not linked up to other mines. They use their cunning, the sods that lay these death-traps ... Two turns. That's that bit done. Now--two millimetres higher up, three turns to the right... It's not moving! The bastard's not moving! What in blazes is that supposed to signify? A new sort of mine? One they haven't told us about? Christ Almighty, let me get out of here! To hell with their courts martial and their charges of cowardice! I want to go on living. With any luck the war: will be over before they have time to sentence me.
    My mind tells me to turn and run. Coldly and deliberately, my body stays exactly where it is. All right, I'm still here. So what do I do next? Take the damned thing out before I've defused it? Why not, it's only tantamount to suicide?
    All the time I'm sitting doing nothing, the damn mine is lying there smug in the earth. Staring up at me. Mocking me. And then a new and horrific idea occurs: could it be a delayed-action bugger? Still gripping the dome with my right hand, I slide my left underneath the body