For the first time in the six months that she had
been in charge of the orphan school in Dust Bin, Terrence decided that
maybe she was pretty after all. He wasn't sure whether it was the high
color which excitement lent to her usually pale face or if Bill
Fielding was right in saying he had been on Naraka too long, but Joan
Allen was beginning to look good to him. At the moment the feeling
wasn't at all mutual.

"Is it true that the Defense Force is pulling out and leaving the rest
of us to the Rumi?"

Terrence took off his helmet and let the rapidly cooling air strike
his head. "Not exactly, teacher," he said, "The Fifth is pulling out
but so are all the Terrans in Dust Bin. Everyone's being ordered back
to Little Texas. That's why the _Sun Maid_ is standing by."

"All the Terrans, Lieutenant? What about the people here who depend on
us? What about my children?"

O'Mara somehow couldn't quite look either of them in the face. He
muttered something about having to get back to his command post and
started out the door. Joan called after him as she noticed his limp,
"Lieutenant, I'm sorry, I didn't know you have been wounded."

"Oh, it's nothing ... nothing," he said, hurrying away, his neck
reddening from something more than the attention of Beta Centauri. How
in the name of Naraka's sixty devils could you tell a woman that one
of your own non-coms had stepped on your foot and nearly broken your
instep?

The battalion straggled into Dust Bin during the night. It hadn't
exactly fought its way back from the river but had had enough
casualties to make the men nervous and jumpy without tempering them at
all. One of the casualties had been Lt. Colonel Upton. Now Major
Chapelle was in command. The men of the battalion were nervous but
Chapelle was riding on the thin edge of panic. He ordered everyone on
board the _Sun Maid_ at once and then countermanded the order and
formed a defense perimeter around the town. He threw out patrols which
were unable to contact any Rumi on the Dust Bin side of the river.

The next morning Terrence was summoned to Government House for an
officers' conference. As he hurried along its single street, Dust Bin
was in a state of confused and helpless excitement. The three or four
hundred Narakans who made up its population were all in the street or
square. Many of them were carrying their belongings on their shoulders
and looked as if they were only waiting for an order of some kind to
send