"Not yet; just patrols across the river so far. We've got to get out, O'Mara, and get out fast. They'll be all over us if we don't. The Colonel says for Norton to have everything ready to go. He wants the depot destroyed. Everything's got to go, everything we can't take along. The _Sun Maid_ won't have time for more than one trip. He wants the HQ company and the civilians on board by tomorrow morning at the latest." "What about the Rifles, sir?" "What? The what?" "The native troops, sir. The Narakan Rifles." Terrence grated. "The Rifles? Good God, man! We haven't time for nonsense. The Rifles are only Greenbacks, aren't they? You get Norton started burning those stores." Terrence put down the microphone very carefully to keep from slamming it down and stalked back into his quarters. Angrily he began to take his radiation clothing from its hooks on the wall. "What the devil is eating you?" demanded Bill Fielding. "We're pulling out, lock, stock and barrel," Terrence told him. "Pulling out? Whoweee! I knew Mrs. Fielding didn't raise her boy to be a fried egg. Goodbye, Dust Bin! Hello, New Chi!" Bill was up on his hands and knees pounding on his cot. "But what's the matter with you? You like this place?" "They're leaving the Rifles," Terrence said, zipping up his protective coveralls as he left the room. II Stepping outside on Naraka with the full power of Alpha and Beta Centauri beating down was like stepping into a river of fire. Even with the cooling unit in his suit, Terrence was aware of the searing heat that filled the parade ground. Looking off across the makeshift native huts, he could see the bright sides of a huge space ship-like object. The big dirigible _Sun Maid_ was lying in an open field. It's a funny world, he thought to himself, where you have to use dirigibles for planetary travel. But a dirigible was the only practical aircraft when you had to use steam turbine engines because of the lack of gasoline and the economic impracticability of transporting it in the limited cargo holds of the occasional spacers that came out from Sol. The Narakan Rifles were marching toward him now, the band doing absolutely nothing for _The Wearing of the Green_. Three hundred big, green bodied, beady eyed, frog-like creatures were marching in the boiling heat with their non-coms croaking out orders in English which might have come out of _Alice in Wonderland_.