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yielding."
"Where does this put us?"
"We are a civilian scientific project. You are under orders of General Maith.
I am under your orders. I
don't know about Edith."
"Can I draft her, or do I have to get you to get General Maith to do it?"
"Listen, don't do that," Edith protested. "I still have to work for Government
House, and this martial rule won't last forever. They'll all be prejudiced
against me "
"You can shove your Government job on the air lock," Miles told her. "You'll
have a better one with
Planetwide News, at half again as much pay. And after the shakeup at
Government House, about a year from now, you may be going back as director of
EETA. When they find out on Terra just how badly this
Government has been mismanaging things there'll be a lot of vacancies."
The shoonoon had been watching the fighting in the viewscreens. Then somebody
noticed that the spot of light on the navigational globe was approaching a
coastline, and they all rushed forward for a look.
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Travis and Edith slept for a while; when they returned to relieve him, Alpha
was rising to the east of
Bluelake, and the fighting in the city was still going on. The shoonoon were
still wakeful and interested;
Kwanns could go without sleep for much longer periods than Terrans. The lack
of any fixed cycle of daylight and darkness on their planet had left them
unconditioned to any regular sleeping-and-walking rhythm.
"I just called in," Travis said. "Things aren't good, at all. Most of the
natives in the evacuee cantonments have gotten into the native city, now, and
they've gotten hold of a lot of firearms somehow. And they're getting nasty in
the west, beyond where Gonzales is occupying, and in the northeast, and we
only have about half enough troops to cope with everything. The general wants
to know how you re making out with the shoonoon."
"I'll call him before I get in the sack."
He went up on the bridge and made the call. General Maith looked as sleepy as
he felt; they both yawned as they greeted each other. There wasn't much he
could tell the general, and it sounded like the glib reassurances one gets
from a hospital about a friend's condition.
"We'll check in with you as soon as we get back and get our shoonoon put away.
We understand what's motivating these frenzies, now, and in about twenty-five
to thirty hours we'll be able to start doing something about it.
The general, in the screen, grimaced.
"That's a long time, Mr. Gilbert. Longer than we can afford to take, I'm
afraid. You're not cruising at full speed now, are you?"
"Oh, no, general. We're just trying to keep Alpha level on the horizon." He
thought for a moment. "We don't need to keep down to that. It may make an even
bigger impression if we speed up."
He went back to the observation deck, picked up the PA-phone, and called for
attention.
"You have seen, now, that we can travel around the world, so fast that we keep
up with the Sky Fire and it is not seen to set. Now we will travel even
faster, and I will show you a new wonder. I will show you a new wonder. I will
show you the Sky Fire rising in the west; it and the Always-Same will seem to
go backward in the sky. This will not be for real; it will only be seen so
because we will be traveling faster.
Watch, now, and see." He called the bridge for full speed, and then told them
to look at the Sky-Fire and then see in the screens where it stood over
Blue-lake.
That was even better; now they were racing with the Sky-Fire and catching up
to it. After half an hour he left them still excited and whooping gleefully
over the steady gain. Five hours later, when he came back after a nap and a
hasty breakfast, they were still whooping. Edith Shaw was excited, too; the
shoonoon were trying to estimate how soon they would be back to Bluelake by
comparing the position of the Sky
Fire with its position in the screen.
General Maith received them in his private office at Army HQ; Foxx Travis
mixed drinks for the four of then while the general checked the microphones to
make sure they had privacy.
"I blame myself for not having forced martial rule on them hundreds of hours
ago," he said. "I have three brigades: the one General Gonzales had here
originally, and the two I brought with me when I took over here. We have to
keep at least half a brigade in the south, to keep the tribes there from
starting any more forest fires. I can't hold Bluelake with anything less than
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