A warehouse across the square was on
fire and three Rumi had darted from behind it. In one brief glance he
saw those long barreled spring guns of theirs and the tall, graceful
bodies and the feline faces under the plastic protective clothing.

He snapped four shots at them and saw one fall. Then he began to
slither along the ground raising enough dust to mask his movements.
There were half a dozen of them in the square when he reached the rear
door of the schoolhouse. Several gleaming plastic bolts smashed into
the wooden outer door a second after he had raised up to open it and
then had dropped back down.

Norton fired from the residency and momentarily scattered the Rumi and
Terrence was inside the school room and racing for the side window
from which he could get a clear line of fire at the raiders. He had a
brief glimpse of Joan Allen, the school teacher, standing in a corner
of the room with the tiny green figures of native children huddled
around her. Then he was at a window and had beaten out the heavy
protective glass and was firing into a mass of the catmen, firing and
cursing as his gun emptied. He cursed in a stream of Martian, English
and Greenback profanity as he forced another clip into the gun.

"Lieutenant O'Mara, if you'll be so kind as to restrain your language
in front of these children," a voice said from over his shoulder.

Terrence reached back and felt something soft and forced it over
against the wall out of the line of the window. Then he risked a quick
look which was almost his last. A spring gun bolt burned a groove in
the windowsill next to his head and smashed into the blackboard across
the room.

"Lieutenant O'Mara, would you mind telling me what this is all about?"
came the same calm determined woman's voice from beside him. He fired
again at a darting figure across the square and saw it stumble before
he had to drop to his haunches as the window above him was smashed and
scattered by bolts and glass rained down about his head.

He put another clip into his gun and cursed because he had only two
left. He turned his head briefly and had a quick glimpse of a white
face framed in straight dark hair and a small, neat figure in a yellow
dress.

"Rumi attack. One of their patrols must have gotten around the
battalion."

A husky, whimpering little sound made him look down. A native child or
pollywog as the Terrans called them was clinging desperately to the
teacher's skirt. His tiny web