"THIRD PLATOON!" the men shouted. They'd turned up their bitchers to a volume the blabrigars couldn't match. Disgusted, the birds flapped their scarlet wings and flew off across the sunflower fields. "'Toon," one rear-flier chanted, "'toon, 'toon, 'toon." "_Worst platoon?_" Hartford asked. "FIRST PLATOON!" That was for the benefit of Lieutenant Piacentelli, commanding the tail-end of the Regiment, the platoon marching on either side of the lumbering Decontamination Vehicle, their safety-suit filters clogging with the dust. "_Sound off!_" Hartford shouted. "ONE, TWO!" * * * * * That'll rattle the windows in Stinkerville, Hartford thought. He pitched his descant louder and higher. "_Sound off!_" "THREE, FOUR!" "_Run 'er on down!_" "ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR; ONE, TWO, THREEP--FURP!" The men of The Terrible Third were grinning through the face-plates of their helmets, rejoicing in their reputation as the loudest bunch in the Regiment, happy to help Hartford in waging his mock-feud with Lieutenant Piacentelli. They'd been classmates at the Axenite Academy; they'd been room-mates in the Barracks until Pia's recent marriage to a Service Company officer. Hartford lowered his bitcher to a confidential tone. "Square up, men; march tall; look rough and dirty. Show the Stinker girls what they're missing. HUP, HUP, HUP. Sling those rifles square. Mondrian, you march like you're wearing skis: HUP, twop, threep, furp!" Up and down the column came the commands of sergeants and platoon-commanders, getting their troopers in parade-trim for the march through Kansannamura: "Stinkerville." Somewhere up front a company was singing the anthem of the Axenite troopers, "Oh, Pioneers!" The chorus of twelve dozen men, their bitchers full-up, filled the Kansan air and echoed from the walls ahead. Stinkerville, all white-washed, with flakes of mica glittering in the sunlight, sprawled across the road that led to the Barracks. The village wall, designed to keep wild camelopards from roaming the streets and to keep the tame beasts out of the sunflower-fields, was some eight feet tall. Some Indigenous Hominid had heard the Regiment's clatter and song, for the gates of Kansannamura were open, the brick streets were clear of Stinker commerce. The village seemed deserted. A few blabrigars perched on the tiled eaves of the rammed-earth houses, making echoic comments on the sounds of the troopers, singing fleeting snatches of "Oh, Pioneers!" A camelopard stretched its ridiculous, three-horned head at the end of its fathom of neck to peer, big-brown-eyed, at the caravan of fishbowl-headed men. Up at the head of the column the Regiment's flags were unfurled and the Regimental Band was skirling the Anthem; men were counting cadence as their boots clicked over the scrubbed bricks of Stinkerville's streets. * * * * *