“I’d sooner make ‘em kill me clean,” Edelsheim said at once. The Russians were not in a forgiving mood. After some of the things Hasso had seen and done in the east, he knew they had their reasons. Edelsheim had fought there longer. Chances were he knew more.

Another burst of submachine – gun fire made them both flatten out. They might have been ready to die, but neither one was eager. Hasso had seen a few Waffen-SS officers, realizing Germany could not prevail, go out against the Russians looking for death, almost like Japanese suicide pilots. He didn’t feel that way. He wanted to live. He just thought his chances were lousy.

Most of the bullets thudded into the wall in back of him. One spanged off something instead. The sound made Hasso turn around.

The Wehrmacht captain saw… a stone. It was perhaps a meter across, of brownish – gray granite, and looked as if it were dumped there at random. But, like the other exhibits in the museum, it had a sign above it explaining what it was. OMPHALOS, it said, and then, in Greek letters, what was presumably the same thing: OM?A?O?.

“What the devil’s an omphalos?” he asked Edelsheim. A couple of Russians scrambled out to drag off a wounded man. He didn’t fire. A minute’s worth of truce wouldn’t matter.

“Beats me,” the sergeant answered. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“Mineral.” Hasso jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Edelsheim looked, then shrugged. “I’d say that honking big rock is. What the hell is it?”

“It’s Greek to me,” Hasso said. But he was curious enough to crawl over to read the smaller print under the heading. When the world was falling to pieces around you, why not indulge yourself in small ways if you could? He wouldn’t get the chance for anything bigger – that seemed much too clear.