o open
out, apparently directing the flight. By this time, there were ten or
twelve combat-cars and about twenty airjeeps at work. In the moving
view from the pickup-jeep, he saw what looked like a 90-mm rocket land
in the middle of a company that was still trying to defend itself with
small-arms fire on the road, wiping out about half of them.

"Make the most of it, boys," Barney Mordkovitz, his mouth full of
sandwich, was saying. "Heave it to them; you won't get another chance
like that at those buggers."

"Why not?" Colonel Paula Quinton wanted to know. Her military
education was progressing, but it still had a few gaps to fill in.

"The next time they're air-struck, they won't stay bunched,"
Mordkovitz replied. "A lot of them didn't stay bunched this time, if
you noticed. And they'll keep out from between the fences."

In the large screen, a quick succession of gun-flashes leaped up from
the direction of the Hoork River, shells began bursting over the scene
of the attack. The screen tuned to the pickup on the airjeep went
dead; in the big screen, there was a twinkling of falling fire. Almost
at once, thirty or forty rocket-trails converged on the gun-position,
and, for a moment, explosions burned like a bonfire.

"They had a 75-mm at the rear of the column," somebody called from the
big switchboard. "Lieutenant Kalanang's jeep was hit; Lieutenant
Vermaas is cutting in his pickup on the same wavelength."

The small screen lighted again. In the big screen, a cluster of
magnesium-lights appeared above where the Skilkan gun had been; in the
small screen, there was a stubbled grain-field, pocked with craters,
and the bodies of fifteen or twenty natives, all rather badly mangled.
An overturned and apparently destroyed 75-mm gun lay on its side.

Five or six fairly large fires had broken out, by this time, around
the point of attack. Von Schlichten nodded approvingly.

"I was wondering how long it'd take somebody to think of that," he
said. "Granaries and forage-stacks on some of these farms. They'll
burn for half an hour, at least." He looked at his watch. "And by that
time, it'll be daylight."

"As far as we know, that was the only 75-mm gun Firkked had," Colonel
Cheng-Li said. "He has at least six, possibly ten, 40-mm's. It's a
wonder we haven't seen anything of them."

"Well, there's no way of being sure," Jules Keaveney said, "but I
have an idea they're all at or around the Palace. Firkked knows about
how