Hartford ran, pistol in hand, through the open gate. It was like charging some Roman ruin unpeopled for three centuries, like a field exercise with boulders marking obstacles to be won. There was no sign of natives. Their shop-boards hung bearing the picture-script the Kansans used, quiet as the marbles in a cemetery. Hartford directed first squad in a sweep through the alleys, searching for Piacentelli. Second squad clattered through the gate behind them, took up a skirmish line, and moved in to cover the square as first squad disappeared into the doorways and alleys of Stinkerville. The village, except for its beasts, might have been deserted. These animals, camelopards used for riding and to carry burdens, woke and gazed serenely down at the interrupters of their vegetable dreams, blinking their liquid half-shuttered eyes. Boots clattered on cobblestones. The houses were unlighted. "Throw on your i-r," Hartford ordered. As they moved into the dark, narrow ways, the men beamed infra-red light from the projectors on their safety-suits, the bounced-back, invisible light being transduced to black-and-green chiaroscuro by passage through the stereatronic goggles dropped inside their helmets. "Turn the Stinkers out, Mister," Nef command-banded. "Into the houses," Hartford signaled. Ahead, a boot slammed wood, and hinges burst. To the restless night sounds of the camelopards in their stalls, the click of military boots on brick, and the rustle of rifles against safety-suits was added the whispering of families rousing from their beds. Hand in hand from father to mother to elder brother, down the scale to the youngest, the Kansans stumbled out into their little courtyards. "_Ano hito wa dare desu ka?" "Abunai yo!" "Shikata ga nai...._" * * * * * "Any sign of Piacentelli yet?" Nef demanded. "Not yet, sir," Hartford signalled. "Feed a candle into every building, Lieutenant. We'll get these Gooks in the open and interrogate till we find our man." "Done and done, sir," Hartford said, stepping out of the way of a little girl fleeing toward the village square with an even littler girl strapped to a pack-board on her back. He passed on the order. "Fire in ten seconds, nine, eight ... now!" Each man of first squad tossed a Lake Erie Lightning Universal Gas Candle through the window nearest him. A little over a second later a dozen grenades spit out a cloud of smoke with a hiss like a bursting fire-hose, and the outer air was filled with an eye-stinging gas. The Indigenous Hominids spilled out of their homes in all directions now; coughing, choking, children rubbing the smoke particles into their half-wakened eyes. Two camelopards, blinded like their masters, blundered into the square, tears streaming from their reproachful eyes, twelve feet above the pavement. Second squad's men danced clear of the beasts and hallooed them out the gate.