getting
out the biocrystals. Three of the plantation airjeeps, each with a pair
of machine guns, were guarding them, but they didn't seem to be having
any trouble. He saw Sanders in another jeep, and had Heshto put the car
alongside.

"How's it going, Paul?" he asked over his radio. "I see you have some
help, now."

"Everybody's from Qualpha's, and from Darshat's," Sanders replied. "The
Army had no place to put them, after they burned themselves out." He
laughed happily. "Miles, I'm going to save my whole crop! I thought I
was wiped out, this morning."

He would have been, if Gonzales hadn't brought those Kwanns in. The
klooba was beginning to wither; if left unharvested, the biocrystals
would die along with their hosts and crack into worthlessness. Like all
the other planters, Sanders had started no new crystals since the hot
weather, and would start none until the worst of the heat was over. He'd
need every crystal he could sell to tide him over.

[Illustration]

"The Welfarers'll make a big forced-labor scandal out of this," he
predicted.

"Why, such an idea." Sanders was scandalized. "I'm not forcing them to
eat."

"The Welfarers don't think anybody ought to have to work to eat. They
think everybody ought to be fed whether they do anything to earn it or
not, and if you try to make people earn their food, you're guilty of
economic coercion. And if you're in business for yourself and want them
to work for you, you're an exploiter and you ought to be eliminated as a
class. Haven't you been trying to run a plantation on this planet, under
this Colonial Government, long enough to have found that out, Paul?"

Brigadier General Ramon Gonzales had taken over the first--counting
down from the landing-stage--floor of the plantation house for his
headquarters. His headquarters company had pulled out removable
partitions and turned four rooms into one, and moved in enough screens
and teleprinters and photoprint machines and computers to have outfitted
the main newsroom of _Planetwide News_. The place had the feel of a
newsroom--a newsroom after a big story has broken and the 'cast has gone
on the air and everybody--in this case about twenty Terran officers and
non-coms, half women--standing about watching screens and smoking and
thinking about getting a follow-up ready.

Gonzales himself was relaxing in Sanders' business-room, with his belt
off and his tunic open. He had black eyes and black hair and mustache,
an