e southern end of the perimeter--King Firkked's regulars,
reenforced by Zirk tribesmen and levies of townspeople, all of whom
seemed to have firearms, were filtering in through the ruins of the
labor-camp and the wreckage of the equipment-park--and there was
renewed sniping from the mountainside. The long afternoon of the
northern autumn dragged on; finally, at 2200, the sun set, and it was
not fully dark for another hour. For some time, there was an ominous
quiet, and then, at 0030, the enemy began attacking in force, driving
herds of livestock--lumbering six-legged brutes bred by the North
Ullerans for food--to test the defenses for electrified wire and
land-mines. Most of these were shot down or blown up, but a few got as
far as the wire, which, by now, had been strung and electrified
completely around the perimeter.

Behind them came parties of Skilkan regulars with long-handled
insulated cutters; a couple of cuts were made in the wire, and a
section of it went dead. The line, at this point, had been rather
thinly held; the defenders immediately called for air-support, and
Jarman ordered fifteen of his remaining twenty airjeeps and five
combat-cars into the fight. No sooner were they committed than the
radar on the commercial airport control-tower picked up air vehicles
approaching from the north, and the air-raid sirens began howling and
the searchlights went on.

As a protection from the sudden fury of the summer and winter gales,
the buildings were all low, thick-walled, and provided with steel
doors and window-shutters which were electrically operated and
centrally controlled. These slammed shut in every occupied building.
The contragravity which had been sent to support the ground-defense at
the south side of the Reservation turned to meet this new threat, and
everything else available, including the four heavy airtanks, lifted
up. Meanwhile, guns began firing from the ground and from rooftops.

There had been four aircars, ordinary passenger vehicles equipped with
machine-guns on improvised mounts, and ten big lorries converted into
bombers, in the attack. All the lorries, and all but one of the
makeshift fighter-escort, were shot down, but not before explosive and
thermoconcentrate bombs were dumped all over the place. One lorry
emptied its load of thermoconcentrate-bombs on the control-building at
the airport, starting a raging fire and putting the radar out of
commission. A repair-shop at the ordnance-de