Irish bogs
couldn't be this bad."

Terrence checked his map, shielding his flashlight carefully. "We'll
be out of the worst of this by tomorrow morning," he said.

"If we live until tomorrow morning," Fielding replied, "those Rumi
have eyes like the blasted jungle cats they're descended from."

"I don't think we have much to worry about until we get out of the
swamps. I doubt if their patrols would penetrate very deeply into this
mess."

"How about the radio? Has Polasky been able to get through to Fort
Craven?" asked Fielding.

O'Mara shook his head, "no. You know what Beta's radiations do to
radio reception this time of year. Even at night it takes a powerful
transmitter to reach farther than twenty or thirty miles."

Later in the night, with a good ten miles of swamp country between him
and the enemy, Terrence called a halt on a slightly raised spot of
almost dry ground. The unwearied Greenbacks and the exhausted Terrans
dropped down in huddled groups. The patrols that had penetrated to the
edge of the swamp came in to report that they had contacted no Rumi
ahead. Terrence munched a can of cold beans and fell over in an
exhausted sleep to the sound of O'Shaughnessy placing sentries about
the camp.

* * * * *

The next day's march was a nightmare to the lieutenant. If anything,
the heat and humidity were worse in the swamps than they had been in
Dust Bin and the going got tougher every mile. The mud was softer and
the undergrowth had to be cut away by bayonet-wielding Narakans before
the main body could move through. Terrence had thrown off his battle
armor and lost his radiation helmet somewhere in the morass as had
other of the Earthmen. Hannigan had prepared a thick mess of mud and
grass which the Terrans applied to exposed parts of their bodies.

Late in the afternoon of the second day the Narakan Rifles came to a
tepid little stream that marked the end of the swamps, and for the
first time Terrence ordered a rest of longer than two hours. Bill
Fielding was lying flat on his back in the grass beside the stream
with his feet dangling in the water, shoes and all, when O'Mara
dragged himself wearily back from inspecting the pickets and flopped
down beside him.

"If I never to my dying day see another speck of mud," Fielding
muttered as he ate a bar of tropical chocolate that was as mud covered
as he was, "I'll still have seen more than all the Fieldings for two
hundred yea