es, 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 exactly regulation map-markers, but I've seen stranger things
used.... Captain Malavez!"

"Yes, sir?" The girl captain, rushing past, her hands full of
teleprint-sheets, stopped in mid-stride.

"What we need," he told her, "is a big TV-screen, and a pickup mounted
on some sort of a contragravity vehicle at about two to five thousand
feet directly overhead, to give us an image of the whole area. Can
do?"

"Can try, sir. We have an eight-foot circular screen that ought to do
all right for two thousand feet. I'll implement that at once."

Going into a temporarily idle telecast booth, he called Konkrook, and
finally got Themistocles M'zangwe on the screen.

"How is it, now?" he asked.

"Getting a little better," the Graeco-African replied. "Half an hour
ago, we were shooting geeks out the windows, here; now we have them
contained between the spaceport and the native-troops and labor
barracks, and down the east side of the island to the farms. We have
the wire around the farms on the island electrified, and we're using
almost all our combat contragravity to keep the farms on the mainland
clear." He hesitated for a moment. "Did you hear about Eric Blount and
Lemoyne?"

Von Schlichten shook his head.

* * * * *

"The whole party that were at Orgzild's palace wer