"I don't trust the Gooks," the colonel said. "Their bucolic way of life may be a fraud, designed to lull us into complacency. Tonight we may discover that they're plotting the overthrow of the Garrison, using weapons and tactics they've kept secret. I hope such is the case, Lieutenant. It would give us adequate cause to wipe the Stinkers off Kansas and make this as clean a world as Titan." "Sir...." "Move, Mister," Nef said. "Piacentelli has been in Stinkerville for fifty minutes. Let's get him out." The four trucks roared down the plateau toward the Indigenous Hominid hamlet at its foot. When the first Axenite Pioneers landed on the planet, bacteria-free as all men in space had to be, they'd set up camp near the spot where First Regiment Barracks now stood. They saw the fields of sunflowers, grown for food and cloth, and heard the natives call the nearest village Kansannamura. From that time on, this world was Kansas. There was no moonlight--Kansas has no moon--but the headlamps of the four vehicles were wasted against the bright ribbon of road, lighted as it was by the sheet of stars that melted together in a metallic ceiling over the night. The men sat with their rifles between their knees, the plastic sleeves stripped off. Each of these Dardick-rifles could fire a solid stream of death. Each round of ammunition was fitted with a matrix that served as chamber, cartridge and the first fraction-of-an-inch of barrel. A magazine of forty such rounds could be hosed through the rifle in half a second. The troopers sped downhill, through sunflower fields black and silver in the light of the stars. * * * * * The personnel carriers and the jeeps scuffed to a halt by the village gate, the men scattering like shrapnel, according to the book. Colonel Nef spoke to Hartford on the command-band. "Move in, Lieutenant. Bring out Piacentelli. Any Stinker resistance is to be treated as open rebellion." "Yes, sir." Hartford spoke to his men: "First squad, lead scout, forward to the gate." The scout, his plastic safety-suit and the glass of his helmet glinting highlights, scuttled to the gate. He kicked the gate open--Piacentelli had evidently left it ajar--and entered, rifle-first. "First squad, follow me in column. Open to Line-of-Skirmishers in the square. Second squad, follow in the same manner. Third squad; maintain your interval and stand ready."