e had returned with
another regiment, the Jeel-Feeders. The three-street lane connecting
the Palace and the Residency had been widened to six, and then to
eight.... Guido Karamessinis, at Grank, was still at uneasy peace with
King Yoorkerk, who was still undecided whether the rebels or the
Company were going to be the eventual victors, and afraid to take any
irrevocable step in either direction.

* * * * *

At 1100, Paula Quinton and Barney Mordkovitz virtually ordered him to
get some sleep. He went to his quarters at Company House, downed a
spaceship-captain's-size drink of honey-rum, and slept until 1600. As
he dressed and shaved, he could hear, through the open window, the
slow sputter of small-arms-fire, punctuated by the occasional
_whump-whump-whump_ of 40-mm. auto-cannon or the hammering of a
machine-gun.

Returning to his command-post at the telecast station, the
terrain-board showed that the perimeter of defense had been pushed out
in a bulge at the north-west corner; the TV-screen pictured a crude
breastwork of petrified tree-trunks, sandbags, mining machinery,
packing-cases and odds-and-ends, upon which Wallingsby's native
laborers were working under guard while a skirmish-line of Kragans had
been thrown out another four or five hundred yards and were exchanging
potshots with Skilkans on the gullied hillside.

"Where's Colonel Quinton?" he asked. "She ought to be taking a turn in
the sack, now."

"She's taking one," Major Falkenberg told him. "General Mordkovitz
chased her off to bed a couple of hours ago, called me in to take her
place, and then went out to replace me. Colonel Guilliford's in the
hospital; got hit about thirteen hundred. They're afraid he's going to
lose a leg."

More reports came in. The entire garrison of the small Residency at
Kwurk, the most northern of the eastern shore Free Cities, had arrived
at Kankad's Town in two hundred-foot contragravity scows and five
aircars. Two of the aircars arrived half an hour behind the rest of
the refugee flotilla, having turned off at Keegark to pay their
respects to King Orgzild. They reported the Keegark Residency in
ruins, its central buildings vanished in a huge crater; the _Jan
Smuts_ and the _Christiaan De Wett_ were still in the Company docks,
both apparently damaged by the blast which had destroyed the
Residency. One of the aircars had rocketed and machine-gunned some
Keegarkans who appeared to be trying t