ork, the
co-parent of young with King Kankad, came up at the double and stopped
in front of Company House.

* * * * *

"We were in quarters, aboard the _Aldebaran_ and in the guest-house at
the airport," Kormork reported. "We were attacked, fifteen minutes
ago, by a mob. We took ten minutes beating them off, and five more
getting here. I sent Native-Captain Zeerjeek and the rest of the force
to re-take the supply-depot and the shops and lorry hangars, which had
been taken, and relieve the military airport, which is under attack."

"Good enough. I hope you didn't spread yourself out too thin. What's
the situation at the commercial airport?"

"The two ships, the _Aldebaran_ and the freighter _Northern Star_, are
both safe," Kormork replied. "I saw them go on contragravity and rise
to about a hundred feet."

"Whose crowd is that you have?" he asked the Terran lieutenant who had
taken over command of the first force of Kragans.

"Company 6, Eighteenth Rifles, sir. We were on duty at the guardhouse;
fighting broke out in the direction of the native barracks. A couple
of runners from Captain Retief of Company 4 came in with word that he
was being attacked by mutineers from the Tenth N.U.N.I., but that he
was holding them back. So Captain Charbonneau, who was killed a few
minutes ago, left a Terran lieutenant and a Kragan native-lieutenant
and a couple of native-sergeants and thirty Kragans to hold the
guardhouse, and brought the rest of us here."

Von Schlichten nodded. "You'd pass the military airport and the
power-plant, wouldn't you?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. The military airport's holding out, and I saw the
red-and-yellow danger-lights on the fence around the power-plant."

That meant the power-plant was, for the time, safe; somebody'd turned
twenty thousand volts into the fence.

"All right. I'm setting up my command post at the telecast station,
where the communication equipment is." He turned to the crowd that had
come out onto the porch from inside. "Where's Colonel Cheng-Li?"

"Here, general." The Intelligence and Constabulary officer pushed
through the crowd. "I was on the phone, talking to the military
airport, the commercial airport, ordnance depot, spaceport, ship-docks
and power plant. All answer. I'm afraid Pop Goode, at the city
power-plant, is done for; nobody answers there, but the TV-pickup is
still on in the load-dispatcher's room, and the place is full of
geeks. C