f their vocal organs, any more than we can speak their
languages without artificial aids. But I can talk to him in Lingua
Terra without having to put one of those damn gags in my mouth, and he
can pass my instructions on to the others. He's been a big help; I'll
be sorry to lose him."

"Lose him?"

"Yes, his year's up; he's going back to Uller on the _Canberra_. You
know, it's impossible to keep some trace of fluorine from the air in
the handling-machines, or even out on the orbiters, and it plays the
devil with their lungs. He wanted to stay on another three months, to
help with the next shot, but the medics wouldn't hear of it.... He's
from Keegark, wherever on Uller that is; claims to be a prince, or
something. I know all the other geeks kowtow to him. But he's a damn
good worker. Very smart; picks things up the first time you tell him.
I'll recommend him unqualifiedly for any kind of work with
contragravity or mechanized equipment."

They all had drinks, now, except the chief engineer, who wanted a
rain-check on his.

"Well, here's to us," Murillo said. "The first A-bomb miners in
history...."

I.

Commander-in-Chief Front and Center

General Carlos von Schlichten threw his cigarette away, flexed his
hands in his gloves, and set his monocle more firmly in his eye,
stepping forward as the footsteps on the stairway behind him ceased
and the other officers emerged from the squat flint keep--Captain
Cazabielle, the post CO; big, chocolate-brown Brigadier-General
Themistocles M'zangwe; little Colonel Hideyoshi O'Leary. Far in front
of him, to the left, the horizon was lost in the cloudbank over Takkad
Sea; directly in front, and to the right, the brown and gray and black
flint mountains sawed into the sky until they vanished in the
distance. Unseen below, the old caravan-trail climbed one side of the
pass and slid down the other, a sheer five hundred feet below the
parapet and the two corner catapult-platforms which now mounted 90-mm
guns. On the little hundred-foot-square parade ground in front of the
keep, his aircar was parked, and the soldiers were assembled.

Ten or twelve of them were Terrans--a couple of lieutenants,
sergeants, gunners, technicians, the sergeant-driver and
corporal-gunner of his own car. The other fifty-odd were Ulleran
natives. They stood erect on stumpy legs and broad, six-toed feet.
They had four arms apiece, one pair from true shoulders and the other
connected to a pseudo-p