with your Civil Administration crowd?"

M'zangwe grimaced. "I haven't had to put any of them under actual
arrest, so far, but we've had to keep Buhrmann away from the
communications equipment by force. He wanted to call you up and chew
you out for not evacuating everybody in the North to Konkrook."

"Is he crazy?"

"No, just scared. He says you're going to get everybody on Ullr
massacred by detail, when you could save Konkrook by bringing them all
here."

"You tell him I'm going to hold this planet, not just one city. Tell
him I have a sense of my duty to the Company and its stockholders, if
he hasn't; put it in those terms and he may understand you."

* * * * *

By 0330, it was daylight; the attacks against the north-west corner of the
perimeter stopped entirely. Wallingsby had the three-hundred-odd Skilkan
laborers at work; he had gathered up all the tarpaulin he could find, and
had the two sewing-machines in the tentmaker's shop running on sandbags.
Jules Keaveney, to von Schlichten's agreeable surprise, had taken hold of
his ARP assignment, and was doing an efficient job in organizing for
fire-fighting, damage-control and first aid. Colonel Jarman had his
airjeeps and combat-cars working in ever-widening circles over the
countryside, shooting up everything in sight that even looked like
contragravity equipment. Some of these patrols had to be recalled, around
1030, when sporadic nuisance-sniping began from the side of the mountain
to the west. And, along with everything else, Paula Quinton managed to get
a complete digest prepared of the situation elsewhere in the
Terran-occupied parts of the planet.

The situation at Konkrook was brightening steadily. The second wave of
Kankad's improvised airlift, reenforced by contragravity from
Konkrook, had come in; there were now close to two thousand fresh
Kragans on Gongonk Island and the mainland farms, Kankad himself with
them. The _Aldebaran_ had reached Kankad's Town, and was loading
another thousand Kragans.... There was nothing more from Keegark. A
message from Colonel MacKinnon had come in at dawn, to the effect that
the geeks had penetrated his last defenses and that he was about to
blow up the Residency; thereafter Keegark went off the air.... By
0730, the _Northern Star_ had landed the regiment Murderers, armed
with first-quality Terran infantry-rifles and a few machine-guns and
bazookas, at the Palace at Krink, and by 0845 sh