"Pass the word to look sharp," Stagwell said. "They're almost here."

"Yes, sir," Miller said. He sat down on the housing cover of a nearby vehicle and began talking to net control, his voice relayed throughout the tactical position on pocket radios like the one he was using. "All right, jarheads; get both eyes open. They're coming in. Don't get enthusiastic. First man fires without orders, I '11 have him up on battalion punishment and cut a stripe off him. Remember, these are civilians, but they're a little dockered out ..."

Five minutes later, the air cars and scows began to land in a ragged, jumbled disorder about seventy meters from the line Stagwell had established.

Holloway shifted his weight, and crossed his left foot over his right knee. He knocked out his pipe on his boot heel, blew through the stem, and put the pipe in his pocket. He unslung his rifle.

Stagwell signaled his engineer sergeant. Floodlight portables illuminated the scene with a blue-white light from about sixty feet overhead, where theircontragravity sleds bobbed at the end of umbilical tethers.

"Uh-Major," Miller said from his location behind the nearby vehicle, "hadn't you two better find cover? You're awfully easy to shoot at out there."

"What?" Stagwell said, grinning."And let them think we take them seriously?"

ZNPF Captain Joe Holderman stood looking out the window of the headquarters and smoothed his flawlessly groomed mutton-chop whiskers. Outside, in the barracks quadrangle, the floodlights reflected garishly off the vitrilite paving of the drill yard. A few hours ago, the yard had been swarming with men as George Lunt assembled forty constables and led them off in patrol jeeps toward fuzzy Valley. Behind him, he heard footsteps as someone entered the room. That would be Jordan Nunez, coming in a half-hour ahead of the watch-change to get up-to-date on what was happening before he relieved Holderman and took the new watch.

Nunez sat down and started scrolling incident-log items up the readout screen.

He let out a whistle and muttered something when he ran onto the entry about Fuzzy Valley.

Holderman didn 't turn around."Too many rats in the box, Jordy," he said.

Nunez stopped the scrolling. "Rats? Whattaya mean, rats, Joe? You know there's no rats around here."

Holderman turned and looked at him. "Too many rats in the box, Jordy," he said again. "In Mallorysport. You get too many rats in a box, they start to eat their way out."

The mob was milling around. Holloway could see Hugo Ingermann in the forefront. Poor, crazy Ingermann. Sunstones had finally done it forhim-unhinged his mind.

"It's your territory, Mr. Commissioner," Stagwell said, and handed Holloway the audio pickup.

The mob swirled aimlessly for a few minutes, humming and buzzing with the conversation of anger and indecision, as Ingermann harangued them from the open cargo floor of a work scow. There were periodic shouts and curses from individuals, unintellible at this distance, and a good deal of fist-shaking.

Presently the crowd turned and began to surge like a thick lava flow toward the Marines' positions on the line.

Holloway had earlier had reservations about the overhead lighting, but now he saw why Stagwell did it. Misdirection; it gave the mob a focal point to keep their attention in more or less one place-the place Stagwell wanted them positioned. Good thing they had sent all the Fuzzies down into the woods at the south end of the valley. This could turn pretty ugly before it was over.

The vanguard of the mob moved forward perhaps thirty meters, still being swelled by people from among the grounded vehicles, before Holloway stopped them. There appeared to be close to a thousand of them.

Holloway raised the audio pickup to his mouth.

The mob moved another ten meters, their pace punctuated with muted shouts and muttered curses.

"HOLD IT!" Holloway's voice boomed and reverberated as it was amplified over the loudspeakers of a dozen or so of the Marine vehicles strung across the valley. "This is Jack Holloway," the amplified voice said, "Commissioner of Native Affairs. This is a legally established Fuzzy Reservation." His words made ghostly echoes as the sound of the amplified voice coming from different locations reached the listeners' ears at slightly different times. "Your presence here is a violation of law," he said. "/ order you to disperse."

"Nifflheim with you, Holloway!" Ingermann yelled. "We came for sunstones! Suns tones that belong to the people!"

"Yeah! We want what's ours!"

"You got no right ..."

"Gonna keep 'em for yourself?"

"This for your reservation!"

Ingermann turned to the mob. "You see?" Ingermann hooted. "Why should we starve while they get rich from sunstones?"

The mob was rumbling viciously, like an angry volcano. Weapons were being brandished in the air.

"/ warn you!" Holloway said into the pickup. "We will use force. GO HOME!1'

Ingermann turned back toward Holloway and made a derisive gesture. "You can bully your Fuzzies and your flunkies, old man," Ingermann jeered, "but you can't bully us!"

More clamor from the mob. "What're we waitin' for?" "We can take "em." "Come on!" "Sunstones, SUNSTONES!" In the front of the mob, a few knots of peopletook two or three steps forward.

"You'll be the first to get it, Ingermann," Holloway said. The rolling, amplified voice made it plain that he meant it. Just to punctuate his point, Holloway clipped the pickup onto his pocket, twisted his feet to dig his boots in, and levelled his rifle from the offhand position-taking a sight picture on Ingermann's chest.

"Okay, okay," Sergeant Major Miller said into his pocket radio. "Take your line of sight. Let's put the volley shot about two feet over their heads. If that doesn't stop 'em, pick your targets and go for it. On my mark, now-ready- ready."

Ingermann turned pale, but he was a desperate man, now, and he had already come this far. If Holloway broke up his mob, he would very likely be arrested on the spot before he could get away. Surely they, too, must know he was wanted for attempted murder in Mallorysport. He grabbed a rifle from someone, raised it to his shoulder, and fired.

Standing where he was, Holloway was a slightly higher elevation than the mob.

The shot took him from below, in the upper left arm. The impact spun him. When he felt the slap of the bullet hitting him, he tried to get off his shot on Ingermann, but he was already in motion and only succeeded in dropping the man next to Ingermann.

Holloway spun halfway around and went down. Ingermann raised the rifle triumphantly over his head and waved the mob forward.

There was a roaring, deafening noise, drowning out the screaming mob, as all the Marines fired a single shot at the same time, sending a sheet of bullets shrieking over the mob's head. They hesitated and ducked, then began running forward, firing as they came.

Rows of people in the front began falling. The charge slowed, faltered, and then broke, as the mob turned and ran back to take cover in the maze of grounded vehicles. From there, they began shooting again. Buried in the rabbit warren of vehicles, as they were now, it was going to be Nifflheim's own job to root them out.

Stagwell got down on one knee and lifted Hollo way's head. "You get elected, Jack?" he asked.

Holloway coughed through colorless lips. "No, but I got nominated pretty good," he whispered. "Are you okay?" Stagwell asked. "I'm going to be fine,"

Jack said. "The thing damned near bounced off me. Get me out of mis draft."

Bullets were whining through the air around them.

"Hey, Roy," Stagwell shouted to his sergeant major. "Bear a hand, here."

Miller came over in a short, crouching run. Stagwell stood up. There were flat, splatting sounds and little geysers of dirt shot up around his feet.

They picked up Holloway and carried him over behind the vehicle where Miller had been. Stagwell still had his pipe in his mouth. "Better get a medic over here," Stagwell said to Miller. Miller was already talking into his pocket net radio.

Blood was soaking Jack's left sleeve. Stagwell reached into his hip pocket and got out a wireman's clasp knife. He slit the sleeve from wrist to shoulder and pulled the fabric away. "Hold your arm over your head, Jack, "he said. "It'll slow up the bleeding.""I can't move it," Jack said.

Stagwell wiped the knife blade on his pants leg and folded it up. "Mmmmm," he said. "It's probably busted, then."

He sat back on his haunches and re-lighted his pipe. "Well-medic'll be here in a minute."

"Where's Ingermann?" Jack asked through gritted teeth.

Stagwell put the knife back in his hip pocket. "When they started to charge, he disappeared in the crowd," he said. "They just enveloped him."

Holloway made several unsavory remarks of along the lines of hoping Ingermann was among the people in the front who had been shot.

A medic came to a sliding stop on his knees. He was festooned with pouches and packs of supplies and equipment.

"Take a look at the Commissioner, Corey," Miller said. "He copped one."

Corey got out an osteo-sono-scan and jacked one end of a wire into it. He ran the sensor head up and down Jack's upper arm. "Bullet's not in him," he said in a businesslike way, "but I get an interruption in the pattern. I think it broke the bone and ricocheted back out. Let's see." He put the sono-scan away, then dug a wrap-scope out of his musette bag. He fixed the lensatic cuff around Jack's arm at the wound site and energized the field. In the direct view the flesh appeared to melt away from the bone, showing a ragged break much like a greenstick fracture, with little chips floating around it.

Corey made some adjustments that weakened the field of the device, and a network of blood vessels and nerves appeared in a web around the bone. He sat back at watched it for a few seconds, then turned off the field. "You got a busted humerus, Mr. Commissioner," he said as he began re-stowing the wrap-scope. "The fracture's kinda nasty, because of the shattering, but it's not completely separated- and none of your big vessels or nerves got clipped."

He wiped down the wound with an antiseptic/anasthetic solution and sprayed the entry and exit wounds with a fibrous aerosol that would make the blood cells web together and stop the bleeding. He put a cuff around Jack's wrist and stapled it to the front of his shirt. "Come on," he said, standing up and helping Jack to his feet. "We'll get you over to the aid station and start to work on you."

Jack stood, weaving slightly on his feet. "Wait a minute," he said. "Where's m'rifle?"

Stagwell got to his feet and looked out to where Jack and himself had been standing. "I see it, "he said. "Stand fast a minute." He walked out into the open, puffing his pipe, and picked up Jack's 6-mm Sleeker. He blew the dust away from the bolt as he returned and handed the weapon to Jack. "I'll be around and see you in a while," he said. "Right now, I gotta mind the store."

The firing had died down to an occasional rattle of shots an hour later when it started to rain.

The Marines had the mob pinned down among their vehicles . They made no attempt to flush them out, sleep gas them, or mount any kind of attack.

Stagwell's orders were to render assistance-if requested by CommissionerHolloway-make no offensive moves, use the minimum force necessary to protect his own men and keep the mob from the hypership wreck and the cavern, and, should the mob fail to disperse peaceably, keep it bottled up so no one got away. He had a canopy of combat cars overhead to see to the latter point.

Occasionally, one of the mob's vehicles nervously attempted to lift off; it was systematically disabled on the ground. Things were getting downright quiet.

Stagwell looked up at the sky, letting the first big drops strike his face.

"Wouldn't you know it," he said. "The whole damned place is drying up and blowing away for want of rainfall-but let us get into a little action and right away somebody sends us some mud. I swear, mud follows Marines around like fleas follow a dog."

The rain started coming down harder, steadily. Then, with his face still upturned, Stagwell saw the spherical shape settling toward them. Well, it was about time. He had begun to think the Navy had lost the bus schedule. That's the way it was; the Marines get their work done while they're waiting for the Navy. Stagwell turned his pipe upside down so it wouldn't get put out with a wild raindrop.

They couldn't make headway against the Marines and they couldn't escape from where they were. And now it was raining.

Thump. Thump. Thump. "Ingermann never told us about this part," Harris said as he occupied himself with sticking his pocket knife into the wooden deck of the work scow- over and over again.

"I wish to Nif flheim they 'd just do something," Joey said. Joey was Harris'

partner. "This waitin' is gettin' on my nerves something awful."

"Well, stick your head out and see if it's still raining," Harris said.

'That'll give you somethin' to do."

Joey heaved a big, moist sigh and opened the side hatch of the scow.

Miraculously, the rain seemed to have stopped. "Hey, Harris," he said, "it ain't rainin' no more, but I can't see any stars."

Harris came over to the hatch and stood beside him, looking upward. He held out his hand. "You're right, Joey," he said. "It's stopped."

Suddenly, they were both blinded by an intense light.

A two-thousand-foot diameter light cruiser hovering at one hundred feet will shed the rain from a rather large patch of ground, and that was exactly what the San Pablo was doing. She kicked on all her bottom lights at once, illuminating the scene as brightly as high noon on a sunny day. The loudhailer sounded like the crack of doom as the click of the pickup switch was transmitted over speakers powerful enough to carry sound for a mile.

"CEASE FIRING-OR WE'LL VAPORIZE ALL OF YOU WHERE YOU STAND!".

In the claimjumpers' camp everyone was wet and nervous.

Chapter 44.

"Vee-dahl, dammit! You're gettin'to be an old woman." Helton stood with his feet apart and his arms folded across his chest.

Sergeant Beltran re-located his cigar in the exact mathematical center of hismouth. "Now, you listen here, Gunnie. My boys just swabbed down the deck of this mess tent, an' now that we got this wet weather, there's only two ways anybody comes in here-with clean boots or in their sock feet; an' that goes for you, the Colonel, the Captain, an' the corporal of the guard. So, you either go over to the water-point, there, and clean 'em up with a stiff brush or you peel 'em off and put 'em back on when you leave." He pointed to the pile of muddy boots under the tent fly in front of the inflatable dining tent.

The rain was still drizzling on Hugo Ingermann. Mud and water had gotten inside his shoes and it gooshed rhythmically through his socks as he trotted into the deep woods. He was certain that he had contracted at least double pneumonia, from the way his lungs wheezed each time he took a breath, but he kept moving-because the only way to get away from the fiasco at Fuzzy Valley was to take off on foot and hope for the best, whatever it might be.

He was momentarily frozen with fear when he saw the aircar hovering over him.

But then he realized that it had no police markings-and there was no way to escape from it in any case. He stood there, dumbfounded, with his face turned toward the sky and the rain falling on him as the vehicle settled down toward him.

Rain beaded on all the surfaces of the aircar as it hovered a few inches off the ground, so mat Hugo Ingermann could not see who was inside at the controls, but the side hatch opened from the inside control and a friendly voice said, "Come in, sir, and out of the rain."

Hugo Ingermann would have climbed into that aircar with the devil himself, just to get in out of the rain-the rain that had been beating on his skull ever since he left Fuzzy Valley. In the dim light he could not make out the face of his benefactor, but the friendly voice said,"Climb over in back, there, and get out of those wet clothes. You'll find some blankets in the locker."

Hugo Ingermann did just that, wringing the water out of his sopping clothes and he took them off and arranged them over the warm air inlet to dry. He curled up in a warm cocoon of blankets and slept.

"Hey! You^re not supposed to be up and around," Stag-well admonished.

Jack Hollo way gave him a haughty stare. "I'm the Commissioner," he said.

"It's my job to be 'up and around,' as you put it."

George Lunt had set up a command post at the approximate spot where Stagwell drew his battle line and his ZNPF cops were systematically disarming and making arrest reports on the members of the mob that were still on their feet.

George was wondering where in the world he was going to find detention space for all of them until he could turn them over to Max Fane and the Central Colonial Courts for arraignment.

Holloway was squatting on his heels next to the field table where George Lunt was processing paperwork. "Did you find Ingermann yet?" he asked, for perhaps the hundredth time.

Stagwell caught up with him there."Jack, dammit, you 're under the care of my medical officer. Now, will you get back to the hospital tent and lie down?"

"I will not!" Holloway said. "I feel fine-and I have things to do." He waved his broken arm defiantly in the sling.