elvis midway down the torso. Their skins were
slate-gray and rubbery, speckled with pinhead-sized bits of quartz
that had been formed from perspiration, for their body-tissues were
silicone instead of carbon-hydrogen. Their narrow heads were
unpleasantly saurian; they had small, double-lidded red eyes, and
slit-like nostrils, and wide mouths filled with opalescent teeth.
Except for their belts and equipment, they were completely naked; the
uniform consisted of the emblem of the Chartered Uller Company
stencil-painted on chests and backs. Clothing, to them, was
unnecessary, either for warmth or modesty. As to the former, they were
cold-blooded and could stand a temperature-range of from a hundred and
twenty to minus one hundred Centigrade. Von Schlichten had seen them
sleeping in the open with their bodies covered with frost or freezing
rain; he had also seen them wade through boiling water. As to the
second, they had practically no sex-inhibitions; they were all of the
same gender, true, functional, hermaphrodites. Any individual among
them could bear young, or fertilize the ova of any other individual.
Fifteen years ago, when he had come to Uller as a former Terran
Federation captain newly commissioned colonel in the army of the Uller
Company, it had taken some time before he had become accustomed to the
detailing of a non-com and a couple of privates out of each platoon
for baby-sitting duty. At least, though, they didn't have the
squaw-trouble around army posts on Uller that they had on Thor, where
he had last been stationed.

An airjeep, coming in out of the sun, circled the crag-top fort and
let down onto the terrace next to von Schlichten's command-car. It
carried a bristle of 15-mm machine-guns, and two of the eight 50-mm
rocket-tubes on either side were empty and freshly smoke-stained. The
duraglass canopy slid back, and the two-man crew--lieutenant-driver
and sergeant-gunner--jumped out. Von Schlichten knew them both.

"Lieutenant Kendall; Sergeant Garcia," he greeted. "Good afternoon,
gentlemen."

Both saluted, in the informal, hell-with-rank-we're-all-human manner
of Terran soldiers on extraterrestrial duty, and returned the
greeting.

"How's the Jeel situation?" he asked, then nodded toward the fired
rocket-tubes. "I see you had some shooting."

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said. "Two bands of them. We sighted the
first coming up the eastern side of the mountain about two miles this
side of the Blue Spr