lk. The natives started off toward the village on the
mound, munching Extee Three and trying out their new knives. This
time tomorrow, half of them would have bandaged thumbs.

* * * * *

The Marine riflemen and submachine-gunners were coming in, slinging
their weapons and lighting cigarettes. A couple of Navy technicians
were getting a snooper--a thing shaped like a short-tailed tadpole,
six feet long by three at the widest, fitted with visible-light
and infra-red screen pickups and crammed with detection
instruments--ready to relieve the combat car over the village.
The contact team crowded into the Number One landing craft, which
had been fitted out as a temporary headquarters. Prefab-hut elements
were already being unloaded from the other craft.

Everybody felt that a drink was in order, even if it was two hours
short of cocktail time. They carried bottles and glasses and ice to
the front of the landing craft and sat down in front of the battery
of view and communication screens. The central screen was a two-way,
tuned to one in the officers' lounge aboard the _Hubert Penrose_,
two hundred miles above. In it, also provided with drinks, were
Captain Guy Vindinho and two other Navy officers, and a Marine
captain in shipboard blues. Like Gofredo, Vindinho must have gotten
into the Service on tiptoe; he had a bald dome and a red beard, and
he always looked as though he were gloating because nobody knew
that his name was really Rumplestiltskin. He had been watching
the contact by screen. He lifted his glass toward Meillard.

"Over the hump, Paul?"

Meillard raised his drink to Vindinho. "Over the first one.
There's a whole string of them ahead. At least, we sent them away
happy. I hope."

"You're going to make permanent camp where you are now?" one of
the other officers asked. Lieutenant-Commander Dave Questell;
ground engineering and construction officer. "What do you need?"

There were two viewscreens from pickups aboard the 2500-foot battle
cruiser. One, at ten-power magnification, gave a maplike view of the
broad valley and the uplands and mountain foothills to the south. It
was only by tracing the course of the main river and its tributaries
that they could find the tiny spot of the native village, and they
couldn't see the landing craft at all. The other, at a hundred
power, showed the oblong mound, with the village on its flat top,
little dots around a circular central plaza