could say we've come home again."

Danton slowly licked his lips. The fifty-years war against the Oligarchs hadn't been like this. His war had been swift and clean and shiny as the metal cities that went with the bright hot flames of atomic fission. Now the smells of sweating men drifted to him, the smell of blood and of death.

Weary, white-faced, shabbily-uniformed men filing by. Many hobbled, wounded, swinging along in a freakish dance. Crude stretchers carrying others, somewhat resentfully. Amtracs hauled still others, some wounded, others dying, some already dead. The sounds of bombardment edged nearer through the moonlight. The column moved faster. And Danton noticed then that the women were there, uniformed, hardly distinguishable from the men.

The ground jarred. Projectiles screamed. An amtrac rose up in a blossoming cone, fell apart, metal shining and bodies disintegrating. A small detachment swung in squarely toward Danton's position. The three men faded back into deeper concealment.

A tired, thickly-bearded line-officer barked an order. "Thomas! Rennin! Take the bodies away at once. According to the map, there's a disposal mart half a mile east!"

The torn bodies were rolled onto stretchers and carried into the shadows.

Danton thought: some pestilence probably. They have to get rid of the bodies fast. But why under the stress of immediate attack?

The line-officer was saying, "Men. We've been under constant attack for eighty-five days. Our survival depends on orderly retreat until we combine forces with Rudolph's Second Army."

A woman stopped walking. Her face was streaked with dirt. She yelled, "Why doesn't the Power give us some real weapons? With a real power gun we could kill every Redbird that—"

The line-officer brought his revolver up, fired. The back of the woman's head exploded as the flattened bullet came out. The officer's face twitched. "Barrows! Select a man, take her to the disposal mart."

"Yes, sir."

After the body was gone, Danton stared dazedly at the spot where the woman had fallen. The officer was saying, "Any reference to the Powers other than that necessitated by duty and reverence, is punished immediately by execution." Then the officer sat down and looked blankly into the moonlight. That was a quotation from a manual, 

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