conditions, and Sanders got General Maith to
use troops to break the strike. I wish we could give you credit for
putting us onto this, but it's too late now."

He nodded. The story was that a battalion of infantry had been sent in
to rescue a small detail under attack by natives, and that more troops
had been sent in to re-enforce them, until the whole of Gonzales'
brigade had been committed.

"That wasted an hour, at the start," Gonzales said. "We lost two native
villages burned, and about two dozen casualties, because we couldn't get
our full strength in soon enough."

"You'd have lost more than that if Maith had told the governor general
the truth and requested orders to act. There'd be a hundred villages and
a dozen plantations and trading posts burning, now, and Lord knows how
many dead, and the governor general would still be arguing about whether
he was justified in ordering troop-action." He mentioned several other
occasions when something like that had happened. "You can't tell that
kind of people the truth. They won't believe it. It doesn't agree with
their preconceptions."

Foxx Travis nodded. "I take it we are still talking for nonpublication?"
When Miles nodded, he continued: "This whole situation is baffling,
Miles. It seems that the government here knew all about the weather
conditions they could expect at periastron, and had made plans for them.
Some of them excellent plans, too, but all based on the presumption that
the natives would co-operate or at least not obstruct. You see what the
situation actually is. It should be obvious to everybody that the
behavior of these natives is nullifying everything the civil government
is trying to do to ensure the survival of the Terran colonists, the
production of Terran-type food without which we would all starve, the
biocrystal plantations without which the Colony would perish, and even
the natives themselves. Yet the Civil Government will not act to stop
these native frenzies and swarmings which endanger everything and
everybody here, and when the Army attempts to act, we must use every
sort of shabby subterfuge and deceit or the Civil Government will
prevent us. What ails these people?"

"You have the whole history of the Colony against you, Foxx," he said.
"You know, there never was any Chartered Kwannon Company set up to
exploit the resources of the planet. At first, nobody realized that there
were any resources worth exploiting. This planet was just a