The angle made aiming impossible. But by luck and the intensity of the barrage another man, the carpenter's son, had toppled to his death.

"Sky-Eye! Get your butt down here!" Nef bellowed. "Decontamination Team! Bring the vehicle to the mouth of the canyon. We've got men septic." He tongued-on his bitcher and bellowed at the troopers. "On the double, through the ditch."

"Yuke!" Hartford shouted to the men far up the wall, in the niche that held the Daibutsu. "Go!"

The sappers at the back of the giant bronze statue bent to their levers. The tons of metal scooted slowly forward, hit the fat-smeared edge of the shelf. As quietly as a man rocking forward in prayer, the Daibutsu dropped head-down into the ravine. It struck the bottom with the sound of a great gong, and rocked, unshattered, plugging the throat of the canyon, standing as a dam. The hands of the Enlightened One were held in the positions of Protection and of Giving; His face bore still a quiet smile. About the head of the image a fountain of water burst, squeezed up from the stream below. "Namu Amida Butsu!" Takeko said, cuddled against Hartford, staring down.

"Keep down," he said. He lifted his suit-radio and flicked on the transmission-switch. "This is Lee Hartford, late of the First Regiment," he announced. "The safety-suits of most of you have been breached. There is not room for more than three of you in the Decontamination Vehicle. You are not septic. I repeat: you have not been contaminated. Kansas is as safe for you as the Barracks, or Titan, or the M'Bwene planets, or in the cells at Luna. You do not need your safety-suits on Kansas."

"Find that man and gun the traitor down," Nef's voice demanded from the speaker on his suit.

"I am coming out unarmed," Hartford radioed.

"Fire the moment you see him," Nef said. One of the officers had his Dardick-pistol drawn, his eyes traversing the canyon walls.

"No, sir!" Felix's voice snapped from his bitcher. "You can't shoot the man till he's had a chance to speak."

"Go to the rear at once, Private Felix," Nef bellowed.

Felix pointed his handgun toward Nef. "No, sir," he replied. "Hartford was my C.O., and an honest man. I'll hear him before I see him killed. Or by my life, sir, I'll kill you after him."

"This is treason," Nef 

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