tion--and the natives at work in the fields were being watched by
more military and police vehicles. The carniculture plants, where
Terran-type animal tissue was grown in nutrient-vats, were even more
heavily guarded, and the native city was being patroled from above and
the streets were empty, even of the hordes of native children who
usually played in them.

The Terran city had no streets. Its dwellers moved about on
contragravity, and tall buildings rose, singly or in clumps, among the
landing-staged residences and the green transplanted trees. There was a
triple wire fence around it, the inner one masked by vines and the
middle one electrified, with warning lights on. Even a government
dedicated to the betterment of the natives and unwilling to order
military action against them was, it appeared, unwilling to take too
many chances.

Major General Denis Maith, the Federation Army commander on Kwannon, was
considerably more than willing to find a temporary home for his witch
doctors, now numbering close to two hundred. He did insist that they be
kept under military guard, and on assigning his aide, Captain Travis, to
co-operate on the project. Beyond that, he gave Miles a free hand.

Miles and Travis got very little rest in the next ten hours. A
half-company of engineer troops was also kept busy, as were a number of
Kwannon Planetwide News technicians and some Terran and native mechanics
borrowed from different private business concerns in the city. Even the
most guarded hints of what he had in mind were enough to get this last
co-operation; he had been running a news-service in Bluelake long enough
to have the confidence of the business people.

He tried, as far as possible, to keep any intimation of what was going
on from Government House. That, unfortunately, hadn't been far enough.
He found that out when General Maith was on his screen, in the middle of
the work on the fourth and fifth floors of the Suzikami Building.

"The governor general just screened me," Maith said. "He's in a tizzy
about our shoonoon. Claims that keeping them in the Suzikami Building
will endanger the whole Terran city."

"Is that the best he can do? Well, that's rubbish, and he knows it.
There are less than two hundred of them, I have them on the fifth floor,
twenty stories above the ground, and the floor's completely sealed off
from the floor below. They can't get out, and I have tanks of sleep-gas
all over the place which can be ope