the squads peeled off and double-timed down the hot gut. man by man they dipped into the wet gut for their swim outside. they'd been drilled for speed in exiting. if the regiment were needed outside, the syphon could become a literal bottle-neck. as the last squad splashed into the antiseptic solution, hartford turned to colonel nef. "sir, i have a question," he said.
"hurry it up, mister."
"isn't this a bit extreme, sir? we're going out to take one man out of a primitive village where we're not even sure he's in trouble. and we're carrying enough firepower to blast into an armed city."
"i don't trust the gooks," the colonel said. "their bucolic way of life may be a fraud, designed to lull us into complacency. tonight we may discover that they're plotting the overthrow of the garrison, using weapons and tactics they've kept secret. i hope such is the case, lieutenant. it would give us adequate cause to wipe the stinkers off kansas and make this as clean a world as titan."
"sir...."
"move, mister," nef said. "piacentelli has been in stinkerville for fifty minutes. let's get him out."
the four trucks roared down the plateau toward the indigenous hominid hamlet at its foot. when the first axenite pioneers landed on the planet, bacteria-free as all men in space had to be, they'd set up camp near the spot where first regiment barracks now stood. they saw the fields of sunflowers, grown for food and cloth, and heard the natives call the nearest village kansannamura. from that time on, this world was kansas.
there was no moonlight—kansas has no moon—but the headlamps of the four vehicles were wasted against the bright ribbon of road, lighted as it was by the sheet of stars that melted together in a metallic ceiling over the night. the men sat with their rifles between their knees, the plastic sleeves stripped off. each of these dardick-rifles could fire a solid stream of death. each round of ammunition was fitted with a matrix that served as chamber, cartridge and the first fraction-of-an-inch of barrel. a magazine of forty such rounds could be hosed through the rifle in half a second. the troopers sped downhill, through sunflower fields black and silver in the light of the stars.
the personnel carriers and the jeeps scuffed to a halt by the village gate, the men scattering like shrapnel, according to the book. colonel nef spoke to hartford on the command-band. "move in, lieutenant. bring out piacentelli. any stinker resistance is to be treated as open rebellion."
"yes, sir." hartford spoke to his men: "first squad, lead scout, forward to the gate."
the scout, his plastic safety-suit and the glass of his helmet glinting highlights, scuttled to the gate. he kicked the gate open—piacentelli had evidently left it ajar—and entered, rifle-first. "first squad, follow me in column. open to line-of-skirmishers in the square. second squad, follow in the same manner. third squad; maintain your interval and stand ready."
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.
somewhere back in an alley a first-squad trooper tapped his trigger, jetting steel against overhanging roof-tiles. "nail that shot, mister!" nef demanded.
hartford heard the squad leader: "it's lieutenant piacentelli, sir. he's here."
"bring him out, man; bring him out!" nef's excited voice triggered a new string of rifle bursts.
hartford tongued his bitcher full-volume: "cease fire, you idiots! piacentelli, head for the square."
"stop it, for god's sake, stop it!" piacentelli shouted, his unamplified voice coming from a smoke-filled alley. hartford plunged into the dark smoke—a tear-gas grenade had set afire some of the sun-flower-paper room dividers, and kindled with them a row of wooden houses—and shouted for piacentelli. a blabrigar, as blind in the smoke as the men, blundered against hartford's helmet. "yuke! yuke!" the bird screamed, grabbing hold of the transceiver-antenna that horned up from the helmet. hartford grabbed the blabrigar and tossed it up above the melee. he heard it flying in circles, searching for its stinker owners, chanting the last words they'd said to it: "yuke! yuke! yuke!"—"go!"
everything was burning. even through the safety-suit hartford suffered from the heat. he retracted his i-r goggles, useless in all this smoke. nef called. "i'm coming in, mister." hartford acknowledged. great. one more blind man wandering in the smoke was what he needed.
he tongued his bitcher loud and shouted; "gabe! come this way. gabe! gabe!" the heat was intolerable. he positive-pressured his suit, ballooning the fabric away from his skin. how hot, he wondered, would the rounds packed into the butt of his dardick-pistol have to get before they exploded?
as though in answer, a snap of gunfire sounded from the fog ahead. some meat-head had spooked. there were more shots as other troopers fired at their fantasies. "cease fire, damn it!" nef shouted over the command-circuit. "if anyone was hurt by you idiots, i'll court-martial every man with smoke in his gun barrel." hartford hurried on. ahead of him in the alley he heard colonel nef's voice, uncharacteristically soft. "hartford, join me. i've found piacentelli." ahead in the smoke was a pinkness: the scarlet-suited commander kneeling above a body on the bricks.
here in the open of planetary air, available to all the microscopic beasts of kansas, piacentelli was wearing only class b's; his sneakers, shorts and tee-shirt. the center of the shirt sopped blood from the bullet-hole that funneled into axenite lieutenant piacentelli's chest.
nef stood. "the decontamination vehicle should be standing by," he said. "get piacentelli outside. we may be able to save him." he sounded unhopeful.
hartford draped his friend's body across his shoulder. the smoke was bad, but he'd memorized his course through it. the air sucked in through his filter was clean, but hot. his helmet steamed opaque. as he stumbled out, blind, but guided by the colonel's voice, two men came forward to take piacentelli over to the decontamination vehicle parked by the village gate. in the cooler air hartford's helmet cleared. a girl gnotobiotician from the decontamination squad pressed the pickup of her helmet's "ears" against piacentelli's bloody chest.
she looked up. "he's dead, sir," she said.
nef's voice boomed from his bitcher. "burn the stinker village!" he shouted. "these gooks will pay for piacentelli's death with their homes."
hartford felt imminent danger of vomiting, bad business in a safety-suit. he fought it as he looked around. the column of smoke rising from the buildings already fired was sweeping around, carried by the morning wind that poured off the plateau. everything within the walls of the rammed-earth houses would be incinerated. kansannamura was destroyed. "regroup by the vehicles," hartford spoke to his troopers. he walked back to his jeep, the village flaming behind him.
the decontamination squad checked hartford's safety-suit, and found it sound despite its roasting. piacentelli they cocooned in plastic: he was contaminated and dangerous. as the five trucks rolled back toward the barracks, they met families of indigenous hominids, smoke-stained, who retreated back into the sunflower-fields as the troopers drew near them. the stinkers seemed to have salvaged little from the flames beyond an occasional blabrigar, perched on an old man's shoulder, or now and then a camelopard, fitted with a saddle and carrying a blanket-wrapped bundle of clothing and cooking-pots.
