be he can find
additional transport for you. I'll call him."

"I'll send off what force I can, at once," Kankad promised. "How does
it go with you at Skilk?"

"We're holding, so far," he replied. "Paula is with me, here; she
sends her friendship."

Captain Inez Malavez, the woman officer in charge of the station, put
her head into the booth.

"General! Immediate-urgency message from Colonel O'Leary," she said.
"Native laborers from the mine-labor camp are pouring into the
mine-equipment park. Colonel O'Leary's used all his rockets and
MG-ammunition trying to stop them."

"Call you back, later," von Schlichten told Kankad. "I'll see what
Them M'zangwe can do about transport; get what force you can started
for Konkrook at once."

He left the booth, removing his geek-speaker. "Barney!" he called.
"General Mordkovitz! Who's the ranking officer in direct contact with
the Eighteenth Rifles? Major Falkenberg?"

"That's right."

"Well, tell him to get as many of his Kragans as he can spare down to
the equipment-park." He turned to Inez Malavez. "You call Jarman; tell
him what O'Leary reported, and tell him to get cracking on it. Tell
him not to let those geeks get any of that equipment onto
contragravity; knock it down as fast as they try to lift out with it.
And tell him to see what he can do in the way of troop-carriers or
lorries, to get Falkenberg's Rifles to the equipment-park.... How's
business at the lorry-hangars and maintenance-yard?"

"Kormork's still working on that," the girl captain told him. "Nothing
definite, yet."

In one corner of the big room, somebody had thumbtacked a
ten-foot-square map of the Company area to the floor. Paula Quinton
and Mrs. Jules Keaveney were on their knees beside it, pushing out
handfuls of little pink and white pills that somebody had brought in
two bottles from the dispensary across the road, each using a
billiard-bridge. The girl in the orange sweater had a handful of
scribbled notes, and was telling them where to push the pills. There
were other objects on the map, too--pistol-cartridges, and cigarettes,
and foil-wrapped food-concentrate wafers. Paula, seeing him,
straightened.

"The pink are ours, general," she said. "The white are the geeks." Von
Schlichten suppressed a grin; that was the second time he'd heard her
use that word, this evening. "The cigarettes are airjeeps, the
cartridges are combat-cars, and the wafers are lorries or
troop-carriers."

"Not exact