The Kragans were already setting about their after-battle chores. A couple of hundred more Kragans, led by Native-Major Kormork, the co-parent of young with King Kankad, came up at the double and stopped in front of Company House. * * * * * "We were in quarters, aboard the _Aldebaran_ and in the guest-house at the airport," Kormork reported. "We were attacked, fifteen minutes ago, by a mob. We took ten minutes beating them off, and five more getting here. I sent Native-Captain Zeerjeek and the rest of the force to re-take the supply-depot and the shops and lorry hangars, which had been taken, and relieve the military airport, which is under attack." "Good enough. I hope you didn't spread yourself out too thin. What's the situation at the commercial airport?" "The two ships, the _Aldebaran_ and the freighter _Northern Star_, are both safe," Kormork replied. "I saw them go on contragravity and rise to about a hundred feet." "Whose crowd is that you have?" he asked the Terran lieutenant who had taken over command of the first force of Kragans. "Company 6, Eighteenth Rifles, sir. We were on duty at the guardhouse; fighting broke out in the direction of the native barracks. A couple of runners from Captain Retief of Company 4 came in with word that he was being attacked by mutineers from the Tenth N.U.N.I., but that he was holding them back. So Captain Charbonneau, who was killed a few minutes ago, left a Terran lieutenant and a Kragan native-lieutenant and a couple of native-sergeants and thirty Kragans to hold the guardhouse, and brought the rest of us here." Von Schlichten nodded. "You'd pass the military airport and the power-plant, wouldn't you?" he asked. "Yes, sir. The military airport's holding out, and I saw the red-and-yellow danger-lights on the fence around the power-plant." That meant the power-plant was, for the time, safe; somebody'd turned twenty thousand volts into the fence. "All right. I'm setting up my command post at the telecast station, where the communication equipment is." He turned to the crowd that had come out onto the porch from inside. "Where's Colonel Cheng-Li?" "Here, general." The Intelligence and Constabulary officer pushed through the crowd. "I was on the phone, talking to the military airport, the commercial airport, ordnance depot, spaceport, ship-docks and power plant. All answer. I'm afraid Pop Goode, at the city power-plant, is done for; nobody answers there, but the TV-pickup is still on in the load-dispatcher's room, and the place is full of geeks. Colonel Jarman's coming here with a lorry to get combat-car crews; he's short-handed. Port-Captain Leavitt has all the native labor at the airport and spaceport herded into a repair dock; he's keeping them covered with the forward 90-mm. gun of the _Northern Star_. Lorry-hangars, repair-shops and maintenance-yards don't answer." "That's what I was going to ask you. Good enough. Harry Quong, Hassan Bogdanoff!"