was here picking up air-crews."

"Call him. Tell him to take the _Aldebaran_ to Kankad's Town, at once;
as soon as he arrives there, which ought to be about 1100, he's to
pick up all the Kragans he can pack aboard and take them to Konkrook.
From then on, he'll be under Them M'zangwe's orders."

"To Konkrook?" Keaveney fairly howled. "Are you nuts? Don't you think
we need reenforcements here, too?"

"Yes, I do. I'm going to try to get them," von Schlichten told him.
"Now pipe down and get out of people's way."

He crossed the room, to where two Kragans, a male sergeant, and the
ubiquitous girl in the orange sweater were struggling to get a big
circular TV-screen up, then turned to look at the situation-map. A
girl tech-sergeant was keeping Paula Quinton and Mrs. Jules Keaveney
informed.

"Start pushing geeks out of the Fifth Zirk Cavalry barracks," the
sergeant was saying. "The one at the north end, and the one next to
it; they're both on fire, now." She tossed a slip into the wastebasket
beside her and glanced at the next slip. "And more pink pills back of
the barracks and stables, and move them a little to the northwest;
Kragans as skirmishers, to intercept geeks trying to slip away from
the cavalry barracks."

"Though why we want to do that, I don't know," Mrs. Keaveney said,
pushing out a handful of pink pills with her billiard-bridge. "Let
them go, and good riddance!"

"I never did like this bridge-of-silver-for-a-fleeing-enemy idea,"
Paula Quinton said, evicting token-mutineers from the two northern
barracks. "There's usually two-way traffic on bridges. Kill them here
and we won't have to worry about keeping them out."

Of course, it was easy to be bloodthirsty about pink pills and white
pills. Once, on a three-months' reaction-drive voyage from Yggdrasill
to Loki, he had taught a couple of professors of extraterrestrial
zoology to play _kriegspiel_, and before the end of the trip, he was
being horrified by the callous disregard they showed for casualties.
But little Paula had the right idea; dead enemies don't hit back.

A young Kragan with his lower left arm in a sling and a daub of
antiseptic plaster over the back of his head came up and gave him a
radioprint slip. Guido Karamessinis, the Resident-Agent at Grank, had
reported, at last. The city, he said, was quiet, but King Yoorkerk's
troops had seized the Company airport and docks, taken the _Procyon_
and the _Northern Lights_ and put guards aboard