me from the same
county!"

"They aren't any great shakes for brains but you can't take anything
away from me boys for willingness."

"Willingness! Hooray! They're willing, so what? So is a Suzi Swamp
lizard. What'll it get them? A week after they pull the Terran forces
out, the Rumi will gobble up the lot of them. Maybe they'll gobble
them and us before we pull out. Who could fight in this place? Who'd
want to fight? I say, to hell with Naraka! It's so near to hell
already with those two blasted suns blazing sixteen hours a day. Let
the Rumi have the stinking planet! Let them have the whole Centaurian
System!"

"Speaking of pulling out, I wouldn't be surprised if Dust Bin wasn't
the next place we let go of...."

Fielding raised himself on one elbow, "No kidding? Where did you hear
that?" His sunburned and blistered face was alight with excitement.

"Well, you know how it's been. When we first came here twenty years
back, we drove the Rumi out of all this country and more or less took
their cat feet off the Narakan's backs but now that so much of the
Earth garrison has been pulled all the way back into the Solar System,
the Rumi are acting up again. So much so that the dope I got is that
we may be pulling everything back into the Little Texas peninsula to
wait for reinforcements and it will take four years for those to come
out from Mars."

"Great! Great! But.... Ah, it's too good to be true. Can't you just
picture Fielding and O'Mara parading down Dobi street in New Chicago
with their first lieutenant bars on their collars? Say, you don't
suppose that's why the _Sun Maid_ is sticking around out here, do you?
Imagine, free transportation! A two hour trip to New Chi!"

"I'd sure hate to march those two hundred miles at this time of year!"

"March? Through those swamps? Every time we run a patrol through
them...."

Fielding was interrupted by a knock on the door and a skinny young
Terran with sergeant's chevrons on his shorts stuck his head through
from the other room and said, "Major Chapelle's on the voice radio,
sir. He's calling from battalion headquarters and wants Captain
Norton."

"Tell him Norton's up playing footsies with the Resident's wife,"
Fielding said, "You'd think those people down at the river would have
enough to do without bothering us in the heat of the day, wouldn't
you?"

The sergeant looked shocked and started to withdraw his head. Terrence
frowned Fielding into silence and called to