An occasional bullet cracked and whined through the misty room. Near him a man gasped frantically for air. On the sunny field a wounded man screamed for help.

"There's a garage downstairs," Rashid said. "In case the copter doesn't get here on time, I've got a man filling wine bottles with gasoline."

"We'll stop them, Sarge. Don't worry."

Rashid ran off. Read stared across the green land and listened to the pound of his heart. What were the Belderkans planning? A mass frontal attack? To sneak in over the top of the hill?

He didn't think, anymore than a rabbit thinks when it lies hiding from the fox or a panther thinks when it crouches on a branch above the trail. His skin tightened and relaxed on his body.

"Listen," said a German. Far down the hill he heard the deep-throated rumble of a big motor.

"Armor," the German said.

The earth shook. The tank rounded the bend. Read watched the squat, angular monster until its stubby gun pointed at the station. It stopped less than two hundred yards away.

A loud-speaker blared.
ATTENTION UN SOLDIERS.
ATTENTION UN SOLDIERS.
YOU MAY THINK US SAVAGES
BUT WE HAVE MODERN WEAPONS.
WE HAVE ATOMIC WARHEADS,
ALL GASES, ROCKETS
AND FLAME THROWERS. IF YOU DO NOT SURRENDER
OUR PREMIER, WE WILL DESTROY YOU."

"They know we don't have any big weapons," Read said. "They know we have only gas grenades and small arms."

He looked nervously from side to side. They couldn't bring the copter in with that thing squatting out there.

A few feet away, sprawled behind a barricade of tables, lay a man in advanced shock. His deadly white skin shone like ivory. They wouldn't even look like that. One nuclear shell from that gun and they'd be vaporized. Or perhaps the tank had sonic projectors; then the skin would peel off their bones. Or they might be burned, or cut up by shrapnel, or gassed with some new mist their masks couldn't filter.

Read shut his eyes. All around him he 

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