foot graves and the Earthman in a
seven foot one. "Those dirty, lousy, stinking...." Bill Fielding was
beating his fist into the palm of his hand. "We got one of them alive
this time, Terrence. Hannigan knows a little of their lingo. His old
man escaped from one of their breeding pens on the other side of the
Muddy. He's working him over."

In the twenty odd years that Terrans and Rumi had occupied different
halves of the same planet, the number of men who had learned the Rumi
language wouldn't have filled a small room. So Terrence was surprised
at Bill's information and hurried toward the place where the
interrogation was taking place. Before he got there, he heard a
piercing cat cry which ended in a gurgle and when he reached the group
of Greenbacks, Hannigan was wiping his bayonet on the grass. He stood
looking down at a Rumi officer whose throat was neatly slit from furry
ear to furry ear. Then fists clenched on his hips, he confronted his
men.

"I don't suppose it ever occurred to you bunch of dimwits that we
might have gotten some information out of this guy. He might have
talked, you know."

"He talk," grinned Hannigan, "he talk plenty. He feared we might hurt
him. We tell him no hurt if he talk.... Ha!"

"He say big flyship down, Mr. Lieutenant," said O'Shaughnessy.

"What? What do you mean?" demanded O'Mara.

"Flyship ... _Sun Maid_ crash in storm.... Rumi find."

"Good God! The _Sun Maid_!" Terrence gasped, "That storm the first
night!"

"They surround and attack Terrans. These ones on way to join attack
when meet us," O'Shaughnessy went on.

"He tell where ship down," Hannigan said, "it near bend in Big Muddy ...
place I know. Ten, twenty mile back."

The Greenbacks were watching the Terrans, fingering their bayonets
eagerly and hugging their rifles. Terrence had the impression that
they were beginning to like their jobs. He turned to Bill Fielding,
"Well, Bill, it looks like we came about twenty miles too far."

Bill grinned, "Yep, I guess so. Come on, soldiers, fall in. We got
work to do back here a piece."

A two hour's forced march with the sun beating down and the sound of
firing growing closer. Only a column of Greenbacks could have done it
and only a crazy Irishman would have asked them to. They came up over
a rise and looked down a gentle slope toward the brown twisting snake
that was the Big Muddy. On its banks lay the broken shape of the
airship and swarming across a burned circle ar