the enemy began attacking in force, driving
herds of livestock--lumbering six-legged brutes bred by the North
Ullrans for food--to test the defenses for electrified wire and
landmines. 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.

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 air-tanks, 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 ordnance-depot was set on fire, and a
quantity of small-arms and machine-gun ammunition piled outside for
transportation to the outer defenses blew up. An explosive bomb landed
on the roof of the building between Company House and the telecast
station, blowing a hole in the roof and demolishing the upper floor.
And another load of thermoconcentrate, missing the power-plant, set
fire to the dry grass between it and the ruins of the native-troops
barracks.

* * * * *

Before the air-attack had been broken up, the soldiers of King Firkked
and their irregular supporters were swarming through the dead section
of wire. They had four or five big farm-tractors, nuclear-powered but
unequipped with contragravity-generators, which they we