faced, so horrible that it couldn't be confided to their women and children. Would a knowledge of that dreadful thing, she asked herself, break the morale on the home planet?

Wilson had changed the subject. He told her about the fine things he had read in books and heard from older men of that past before the beginning of the struggle. It reminded her of the fairy tales she had read as a child. It seemed impossible that a girl could have fine clothes and a house and a husband and children all her own. She couldn't grasp it. She felt that she wouldn't know how to live if there weren't rules to go by. She remembered vaguely when she was very small, that her mother prepared meals in a big white kitchen, but there was little reality in the memory.

He accompanied her back to the dorm and on the way talked of things that stirred forlorn unrest in her body. It was a sense of tingling, suppressed under memory of Darth Brady.

Lifting her to the windowsill, he pressed his lips against her ear and whispered, "I've made another request of the Council to send me out." His arms held her tight enough to stop her trembling. Then he released her and was gone.

Food became scarcer as summer became fall and fall became winter. Monkey meat was served twice a week. Hydroponics were the main diet and the bulk had to be made up of edible leaves and woodfibre.

First news of the big break-through came on Christmas Eve. The bulletin was not supposed to go up until all in the factory had had an hour to sing carols or do whatever they wished. But somebody made a mistake. Under the wreaths of holly on the bulletin board it told in a few words how Sector One had been breached. It told of withdrawals, reorganization and shortening of defenses.

On Christmas Day the story was worse. It was not definite as bulletins usually were, but it gave the information that Sector Two was crumbling.

Two days after Christmas she overheard men talking at the groundcar ramps. Their voices were tense, restrained. They said that the links of the chains were snapping and that a strike was sure to come. They talked hopefully of new weapons, better ships that would swing the balance of power in favor of Earthmen.

Sue had heard talk of new weapons and ships many times before. They always seemed to be in the future. She slipped away from the ramps and volunteered an extra hour's work in the factory.

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