We're pulling out, lock, stock and barrel," Terrence told him.

"Pulling out? Whoweee! I knew Mrs. Fielding didn't raise her boy to be
a fried egg. Goodbye, Dust Bin! Hello, New Chi!" Bill was up on his
hands and knees pounding on his cot. "But what's the matter with you?
You like this place?"

"They're leaving the Rifles," Terrence said, zipping up his protective
coveralls as he left the room.

II

Stepping outside on Naraka with the full power of Alpha and Beta
Centauri beating down was like stepping into a river of fire. Even
with the cooling unit in his suit, Terrence was aware of the searing
heat that filled the parade ground. Looking off across the makeshift
native huts, he could see the bright sides of a huge space ship-like
object. The big dirigible _Sun Maid_ was lying in an open field. It's
a funny world, he thought to himself, where you have to use dirigibles
for planetary travel. But a dirigible was the only practical aircraft
when you had to use steam turbine engines because of the lack of
gasoline and the economic impracticability of transporting it in the
limited cargo holds of the occasional spacers that came out from Sol.

The Narakan Rifles were marching toward him now, the band doing
absolutely nothing for _The Wearing of the Green_. Three hundred big,
green bodied, beady eyed, frog-like creatures were marching in the
boiling heat with their non-coms croaking out orders in English which
might have come out of _Alice in Wonderland_.

As they marched by him, he snapped a salute. Watching them closely he
tried to find two men who were in step with each other or one man who
had his rifle at the right angle. Unable to find either, he stood
there conscious of failure; failure which went beyond mere military
precision however. Sloppiness at review could have been overlooked if
he had been able to find that the Narakans had any ability as fighting
men but after a year of training they seemed almost as hopeless as
they had at first. It wasn't that they were completely unintelligent.
In fact, other than the Galactic traveling Rumi, they were the only
extra-solar race of intelligent beings encountered by man so far. It
was just, he thought, that the hundreds of years during which the Rumi
had dominated their planet had reduced the Narakans to a state of
almost complete ineptitude.

He stood there as they passed in review three times because he knew
that his presence pleased and encouraged them. Then he