Stinkerville, all white-washed, with flakes of mica glittering in the sunlight, sprawled across the road that led to the Barracks. The village wall, designed to keep wild camelopards from roaming the streets and to keep the tame beasts out of the sunflower-fields, was some eight feet tall. Some Indigenous Hominid had heard the Regiment's clatter and song, for the gates of Kansannamura were open, the brick streets were clear of Stinker commerce. The village seemed deserted. A few blabrigars perched on the tiled eaves of the rammed-earth houses, making echoic comments on the sounds of the troopers, singing fleeting snatches of "Oh, Pioneers!" A camelopard stretched its ridiculous, three-horned head at the end of its fathom of neck to peer, big-brown-eyed, at the caravan of fishbowl-headed men. Up at the head of the column the Regiment's flags were unfurled and the Regimental Band was skirling the Anthem; men were counting cadence as their boots clicked over the scrubbed bricks of Stinkerville's streets.

But no Kansan, Stinker, Indigenous Hominid, Gook or Native watched. No cowboy youngsters stared at the gunned-and-holstered men from another planet. No elders looked down their noses at the brash invaders. No mothers wiped their hands on their aprons as they thought of their sons, and the fleshly price they'd pay for freedom. No teenage girls, those patrons of parades, watched with lips half-open with apprehension and audacious thoughts about the hundreds of gift-wrapped young man marching past. This planet could have as well been named Coventry as Kansas, Hartford thought. Out the far gate of Kansannamura marched Third Platoon, Company "C," then First Platoon, flanking the Decontamination Vehicle. A villager came from the house nearest the gate and closed it. He did not look after the two columns of men winding up through the fields of sunflowers to the high plateau where they lived.

The sight of the Barracks gave the men's steps a new swing and spring. After three weeks of sleeping in safety-suits; of breathing, sweating, drinking, eating and excreting through germ-barrier valves and tubing, the prospect of stripping off the plastic battle-dress was seductive. Inside that eight stories of windowless, doorless stone were gardens where the troopers could walk barefoot on the grass, pools whose water could splash their naked skin. In the Barracks were the three hundred Service Company women who made the big stone box home to their three thousand men.

The men of First Regiment massed on the parade-ground. While they stood At Ease, their plastic-sleeved rifles and packs growing heavier by the minute, their 

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