The ground operation was a nightmare of a different sort. He went down in a command car, with Paytrik Morland and a couple of others. There were missiles and gun batteries. There were darting patterns of flights of combat vehicles, blazing gunfire, and single vehicles that shot past or blew up in front of them. Robots on contragravity--military robots, with missiles to launch, and working robots with only their own mass to hurl, flung themselves mindlessly at them. Screens that went crazy from radiation; speakers that jabbered contradictory orders. Finally, the battle, which had raged in the air over two thousand square miles of mines and refineries and reaction plants, became two distinct and concentrated battles, one at the packing plant and storage vaults and one at the power-unit cartridge factory. Three pinnaces came down to form a triangle over each; the _Space Scourge_ hung midway between, poured out a swarm of vehicles and big claw-armed manipulators; armored lighters and landing craft shuttled back and forth. The command car looped and dodged from one target to the other; at one, keg-like canisters of plutonium, collapsium-plated and weighing tons apiece, were coming out of the vaults, and at the other lifters were bringing out loads of nuclear-electric power-unit cartridges, some as big as a ten liter jar, to power a spaceship engine, and some small as a round of pistol ammunition, for things like flashlights. Every hour or so, he looked at his watch, and it would be three or four minutes later. At last, when he was completely convinced that he had really been killed, and was damned and would spend all eternity in this fire-riven chaos, the _Nemesis_ began firing red flares and the speakers in all the vehicles were signaling recall. He got aboard the _Space Scourge_ somehow, after assuring himself that nobody who was alive was left behind. There were twenty-odd who weren't, and the sick bay was full of wounded who had gone up with cargo, and more were being helped off the vehicles as they were berthed. The car in which he had been riding had been hit several times, and one of the gunners was bleeding under his helmet and didn't seem aware of it. When he got to the command room, he found Boake Valkanhayn, his face drawn and weary, getting coffee from a robot and lacing it with brandy. "That's it," he said, blowing on the steaming cup. It was the battered silver one that had been in front of him when he had first appeared in the _Nemesis'_ screen. He nodded toward the damage screen; everything had been patched up, or the outer decks around breached portions of the hull sealed. "Ship secure." He set down the silver mug and lit a cigar. "To quote Garvan Spasso, 'Nobody can call that chicken-stealing.'" "No. Not even if you count Tizona giraffe-birds as chickens. That Gram gum-pear brandy you're putting in that coffee? I'll have the same. Just leave out the coffee." XIV