mostly eurafs like himself, some afros and afrasians, not one pure asio. Blood tells, after all. You couldn't be fully human without some blood in your veins from the Cradle of Man. But that wouldn't stop him from saving those poor yellow bastards at Central, it just helped explain their moral collapse under stress. 'Can't you realize what kind of trouble you're making for us, Don?' Juju Sereng had demanded in his flat voice. 'We've made a formal truce with the creechies. And we're under direct orders from Earth not to interfere with the hilfs and not to retaliate. Anyhow how the hell can we retaliate? Now all the fellows from King Land and South Central are here with us we're still less than two thousand, and what have you got there on Java, about sixty-five men isn't it? Do you really think
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two thousand men can take on three million intelligent enemies, Don?**
'Juju, fifty men can do it. It's a matter of will, skill, and weaponry.*'
'Batshit! But the point is, Don, a truce has been made. And if it's broken, we've had it. It's all that keeps us afloat, now. Maybe when the ship gets back from Prestno and sees what happened, they'll decide to wipe out the creechies. We don't know. But it does look like the creechies intend to keep the truce, after all it was their idea, and we have got to. They can wipe us out by sheer numbers, any time, the way they did Centralville. There were thousands of them. Can't you understand that, Don?'
'Listen, Juju, sure I understand. If you're scared to use the three hoppers you've still got there, you could send 'em here, with a few fellows who see things like we do here. If I'm going to liberate you fellows singlehanded, I sure could use some more hoppers for the job.'
'You aren*t going to liberate us, you're going to incinerate us, you damned fool. Get that last hopper over here to Central now: that's the Colonel's personal order to you as Acting C.O. Use it to fly your men here; twelve trips, you won't need more than four local day periods. Now act on those orders, and get to it.' Ponk, off the air— afraid to argue with nun anymore.
At last he worried that they might send their three hoppers over and actually bomb or strafe New Java Camp; for he was, technically, dis-
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obeying orders, and old Dongh wasn't tolerant of independent elements. Look how he'd taken it out on Davidson already, for that tiny reprisal-raid on Smith. Initiative got punished. What Ding Dong liked was submission, like most officers. The danger with that is mat it can make the officer get submissive himself. Davidson finally realized, with a real shock, that the hoppers were no mreat to him, because Dongh, Sereng, Gosse, even Benton were afraid to send mem. TTie crcechies had ordered them to keep the hoppers inside the Human Reservation: and they were obeying orders. Christ, it made him sick. It was time to act. They'd been waiting around nearly two weeks now. He had his camp well defended; they had strengthened the stockade fence and built it up so mat no little green monkeymen could possibly get over it, and that clever kid Aabi had made lots of neat home-made land mines and sown *em all around the stockade in a hundred-meter belt. Now it was time to show the creechies that they might push around those sheep on Central but on New Java it was men they had to deal with. He took the hopper up and with it guided an infantry squad of fifteen to a creechie-warren south of camp. He'd learned how to spot the things from the air; the giveaway was the orchards, concentrations of certain kinds of tree, though not planted in rows like humans would. It was incredible how many warrens there were once you learned to spot them. The forest was crawling whh the things. The
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raiding party burned up that warren by hand, and then flying back with a couple of his boys he spotted another, less man four kilos from camp. On that one, just to write his signature real clear and plain for everybody to read, he dropped a bomb. Just a firebomb, not a big one, but baby did it make the green fur fly. It left a big hole in the forest, and the edges of the hole were burning.
Of course that was his real weapon when it actually came to setting up massive retaliation. Forest fire. He could set one of these whole islands on fire, with bombs and firejelly dropped from the hopper. Have to wait a month or two, till the rainy season was over. Should he burn King or Smith or Central? King first, maybe, as a little warning, since there were no humans left there. Then Central, if they didn't get in line.
'What are you trying to do?' said the voice on the radio, and it made him grin, it was so agonised, like some old woman being held up. 'Do you know what you're doing, Davidson?'
'Yep.'
'Do you think you're going to subdue the creechies?' It wasn't Juju this time, it might be that bigdome Gosse, or any of them; no difference; they all bleated baa.
'Yes, that's right,' he said with ironic mildness.
'You mink if you keep burning up villages they'll come to you and surrender—three million of mem. Right?'
'Maybe.'
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'Look, Davidson,' die radio said after a while, whining and buzzing; they were using some kind of emergency rig, having lost the big transmitter, along with that phony ansible which was no loss. 'Look, is there somebody else standing by there we can talk to?*'
'No; they're all pretty busy. Say, we're doing great here, but we're out of dessert stuff, you know, fruit cocktail, peaches, crap like that. Some of the fellows really miss it. And we were due for a load of maryjanes when you fellows got blown up. If I sent the hopper over, could you spare us a few crates of sweet stuff and grass *'
A pause. 'Yes, send it on over.'
'Great. Have the stuff in a net, and the boys can hook it without landing.' He grinned.
There was some fussing around at the Central end, and all of a sudden old Dongh was on, the first time he'd talked to Davidson. He sounded feeble and out of bream on the whining shortwave.
'Listen, Captain, I want to know if you fully realize what form of action your actions on New Java are going to be forcing me into taking. If you continue to disobey your orders. I am trying to reason with you as a reasonable and loyal soldier. In order to ensure the safety of my personnel here at Central I'm going to be put into the position of being forced to tell the natives here that we can't assume any responsibility at all for your actions.'
'That's correct, sir.'
'What I'm trying to make clear to you is mat
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means that we are going to be put into the position of having to tell them that we can't stop you
from breaking the truce there on Java. Your personnel there is sixty-six men, is that correct, well I want those men safe and sound here at Central with us to wait for the ShacUeton and keep the Colony together. You're on a suicide course and I'm responsible for those men you have there with you.'
'No, you're not, sit. I am. You just relax. Only when you see the jungle burning, pick up and get out into the middle of a Strip, because we don't want to roast you folks along with the creechies.'
'Now listen, Davidson, I order you to hand your command over to Lt. Temba at once and report to me here/' said the distant whining voice, and Davidson suddenly cut off the radio, sickened. They were all spla, playing at still being soldiers, hi full retreat from reality. There were actually very few men who could face reality when the going got tough.
As he expected, the local creechies did absolutely nothing about his raids on the warrens. The only way to handle them, as he'd known from the start, was to terrorise them and never let up on them. If you did that, they knew who was boss, and knuckled under. A lot of the villages within a thirty-kilo radius seemed to be deserted now before he got to them, but he kept his men going out to burn them up every few days.
The fellows were getting rather jumpy. He had
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kept them logging, since that's what forty-eight of the fifty-five loyal survivors were, loggers. But they knew that the robo-freighters from Earth wouldn't be called down to load up the lumber, but would just keep coming in and circling in orbit waiting for the signal that didn't come. No use cutting trees just for the hell of it; it was hard work. Might as well bum mem. He exercised the men in teams, developing fire-setting techniques. It was still too rainy for them to do much, but it kept their minds busy. If only he had the other three hoppers, he'd really be able to hit and run. He considered a raid on Central to liberate the hoppers, but did not yet mention this idea even to Aabi and Temba, his best men. Some of the boys would get cold feet at the idea of an armed raid on their own HQ. They kept talking about' * when we get back with the others.' They didn't know those others had abandoned them,
