"No. Our plan is the same. Find out all we can and return to Earth. Seers has to know. He doesn't want to prepare a secret attack unit to send up here unless he's absolutely sure it's necessary." "Even if we live long enough to find out something, how do we get back to Earth? By teleportation?" "We'll have to get a ship, or try," Danton said. The sound of explosions drifted to them, the flat reverberating roar of bombs. Van Ness looked to the right and said, "That way. And not so far either." * * * * * Ten miles from the lake, the three crawled into the dense brush beside the trail. They could hear now the approach of laboring gasoline motors, the shouts of men. Danton waited. He waited tensely, as though somewhere inside of him was a knowledge of what he waited for. The moons moved across the high valley. The light was clear, still, with a reddish cast. Purple shadows bent and swayed in the slight and cooler wind. Through the odd light, a column of wheezing amtracs came. Broad wheels grinding, coughing engines, voices murmuring, bodies wearily slogging, humans, weary ghosts. Van Ness whispered, "Looks as though they're in retreat." Danton nodded. Van Ness said, "The wounded, the dead and the dying. I guess you 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."