"Getting a little better," the Graeco-African replied. "Half an hour ago, we were shooting geeks out the windows, here; now we have them contained between the spaceport and the native-troops and labor barracks, and down the east side of the island to the farms. We have the wire around the farms on the island electrified, and we're using almost all our combat contragravity to keep the farms on the mainland clear." He hesitated for a moment. "Did you hear about Eric Blount and Lemoyne?" Von Schlichten shook his head. * * * * * "The whole party that were at Orgzild's palace were massacred. Some of them were lucky enough to get killed fighting. The geeks took Eric and Hendrik alive; rolled them in a puddle of thermoconcentrate fuel and set fire to them. When we can spare the contragravity, we're going to drop something on the Kee-geek embassy, over in town." Von Schlichten grimaced, but he'd expected something like it. He told M'zangwe about King Kankad's offer. "His crowd ought to be coming in in a couple of hours. What can you scrape up to send to Kankad's Town to airlift Kragans in?" "Well, we have three hundred-and-fifty-foot gun-cutters, one 90-mm. apiece. The _Elmoran_, the _Gaucho_, and the _Bushranger_. But they're not much as transports, and we need them here pretty badly. Then, we have five fertilizer and charcoal scows, and a lot of heavy transport lorries, and two one-eighty-foot pickup boats." "How about the _Piet Joubert?_" von Schlichten asked. "She was due in Konkrook from the east about 1300 today, wasn't she?" M'zangwe swore. "She got in, all right. But the geeks boarded her at the dock, within twenty minutes after things started. They tried to lift out with her, and the Channel Battery shot her down into Konkrook Channel, off the Fifty-sixth Street docks." "Well, you couldn't let the geeks have her, to use against us. What do you hear from the other ships?" "_Procyon's_ at Grank; we haven't had any reports of any kind from there, which doesn't look so good. The _Northern Lights_ is at Grank, too. The _Oom Paid Kruger_ should have been at Bwork, in the east, when the gun went off. And the _Jan Smuts_ and the _Christiaan De Wett_ were both at Keegark; we can assume Orgzild has both of them." "All right. I'm sending _Aldebaran_ to Kankad's, to pick up more reenforcements for you." * * * * * Leaving the booth, he heard, above the clatter of communications-machines and the hubbub of voices, Jules Keaveney arguing contentiously. Evidently Colonel Cheng-Li's efforts to drag the Resident out of his despondency had been an excessive success. "But it's crazy! Not just here; everywhere on Ullr!" Keaveney was saying. "How did they do it? They have no telecast equipment." "You have me stopped, Jules," Mordkovitz was replying. "I know a lot of rich geeks have receiving sets, but no sending sets."