continuously above. Except
at the very beginning of the battle, there had been little gunfire. He
wondered if both sides were running out of lift-and-drive missiles, or
if the fighting had gotten too close for anybody to risk using nuclear
weapons.

He was also worrying about the women and children among the released
prisoners.

"Why did the pirates bother with them?" he asked Sylvie.

"They used the women and some of the old men to do housekeeping
chores for them," she said. "Mostly, though, they were hostages; if
the men didn't work, Perales threatened to punish the women and
children. I wasn't doing any housework; I'm too good a mechanic. I was
helping on the ship."

"Well, what'll I do with them when the fighting starts? I can't take
them into battle."

"You'll have to; it'll be the safest place for them. You can't leave
them anywhere and risk having them recaptured."

"That means we'll have to detach some men to cover them, and that'll
cut our striking force down." He whistled at the sound-pickup of his
screen and told his father about it. "What do I do with these people,
anyhow?"

"You're the officer in command, Conn," his father told him. "Your
decision. How soon can you attack? We're almost through to the
crater."

"There's a vertical shaft right above us, and a lot of noise at the
top. We'll send up a couple of bomb-robots to clear things at the
shaft-head and follow with everything we have."

"Noncombatants and all?"

He nodded. "Only thing we can do." An old quotation occurred to him.
"'If you want to make an omelet, you have to break eggs.'"

He wondered who'd said that in the first place. One of the old
Pre-Atomic conquerors; maybe Hitler. No, Hitler would have said, "If
you want to make sauerkraut, you have to chop cabbage." Maybe it was
Caesar.

"We'd better send Gumshoe Gus up, first," Sylvie suggested.

"You handle him. Take a quick look around, and then pull him back.
We'll need him later." It was the first time he'd ever caught himself
calling a robot "him," instead of "it." He thought for a second, and
added: "Give your father and Mr. Vibart the controls for the two
window-washers; you handle the snooper."

He gave more instructions: Yves Jacquemont to turn his bomb-robot
right, Vibart to turn his left; the two lorries to follow the jeep up
the shaft, the scows to follow. Then he leaned back and looked at the
screens that had been rigged under the top of the jeep. A circle of
li