and Constabulary officer pushed
through the crowd. "I was on the phone, talking to the military
airport, the commercial airport, ordnance depot, spaceport, ship-docks
and power-plant. All answer. I'm afraid Pop Goode, at the city
power-plant, is done for; nobody answers there, but the TV-pickup is
still on in the load-dispatcher's room, and the place is full of
geeks. Colonel Jarman's coming here with a lorry to get combat-car
crews; he's short-handed. Port-Captain Leavitt has all the native
labor at the airport and spaceport herded into a repair dock; he's
keeping them covered with the forward 90-mm gun of the _Northern
Star_. Lorry-hangars, repair-shops and maintenance-yards don't
answer."

"That's what I was going to ask you. Good enough. Harry Quong, Hassan
Bogdanoff!"

His command-car crew front-and-centered.

"I want you to take Colonel O'Leary up, as soon as my car's brought
here.... Hid, you go up and see what's going on. Drop flares where
there isn't any light. And take a look at the native-labor camp and
the equipment-park, south of the reservation.... Kormork, you take all
your gang, and half these soldiers from the Eighteenth, here, and help
clear the native-troops barracks. And don't bother taking any
prisoners; we can't spare personnel to guard them."

Kormork grinned. The taking of prisoners had always been one of those
irrational Terran customs which no Ulleran regarded with favor, or
even comprehension.

VIII.

Authority of Governor-General von Schlichten

There was fresh intelligence from Konkrook, by the time he returned to
the telecast station. Mutiny had broken out there among the laborers
and native troops, who outnumbered the Terrans and their Kragan
mercenaries on Gongonk Island by five thousand to five hundred and
fifteen hundred respectively. The attempt to relieve Jaikark's palace
had been called off before the relief-force could be sent; there was
heavy and confused fighting all over the island, and most of the
combat contragravity and about half the Kragan Rifles had had to be
committed to defend the Company farms across the Channel, on the
mainland, south of the city. There had also been an urgent call for
help from Colonel Rodolfo MacKinnon, in command of Company troops at
the Keegark Residency, and another from the Residency at Kwurk, one of
the Free Cities on the eastern shore of Takkad Sea.

He called Keegark; a girl, apparently one of the civilian telecast
technici