Asked it like a cat, Esau thought, waiting for the mouse to move. He told the master sergeant how many chin-ups he'd done, and about the fifty pushups, not withholding what they'd been for.

The ex-marine looked at the couple appraisingly. "That's quite an eye you've got there, Recruit."

Esau said nothing. He looked like he could chew rocks.

"What happened? I'm asking you, Recruit Esau Wesley."

"My wife was disrespectful, Sergeant. So I upbraided her, and she struck me."

"Disrespectful? Really! And upbraided! My my!" The mockery was thick. "Tell me what you said, as exactly as you can."

Esau did. The sergeant turned his eyes to Jael. "Is that the way you remember it, Recruit Jael Wesley?"

She nodded. "Yes, Sergeant," she said quietly, and Henkel turned again to Esau.

"Where exactly did this happen?"

"In the mess hall, Sergeant. In line, by the tray stack. Then the cook kicked us out without breakfast."

"Um-hmm. You're in 2nd Platoon, right?"

"Yessir."

"Recruit Esau Wesley, go sit in that chair." He pointed. "Recruit Jael Wesley, you sit in that one." He pointed at the opposite end of the row, then turned to the company clerk who'd been watching with half a grin. "Corporal, go tell Sergeant Hawkins what we've got here. This is his problem. For now, anyway."

The clerk left briskly, and was back in five minutes. Hawkins, on the other hand, didn't hurry. He finished his breakfast first. If Henkel had wanted him right away, he'd have said so.

Meanwhile, for the most part Esau avoided looking at his wife. But he was angry. His left eye was swollen half shut. It would be black, too, and everyone would be talking about it. He shot an occasional, resentful glance at Jael, but she never returned it, simply faced straight ahead, her expression stony. It struck him then how pretty she was in profile. And how strong her character, even if she was in the wrong. His anger softened.

When Hawkins arrived, he took them both outside, without berating them at all. "Esau Wesley," he said, "drop down and give me forty. On my count." As Esau got down, Hawkins continued. "Jael Wesley, drop down and give me twenty-five."

"What!?" Esau demanded, looking up. "Me forty and her twenty-five? That's unfair!"

"And that, Recruit Esau Wesley, is backflash," Hawkins said calmly. "Which will cost you. But not now. Later. And for her, twenty-five is as hard as forty is for you. Harder. Now, on my count… "

When they'd finished and stood before him, Hawkins told them their idiocy had cost them breakfast, because they had less than ten minutes before muster. "Report to me at the orderly room this evening, both of you, at 2030 hours. Among other things, I will tell you then what your punishment is. You, Esau Wesley, for repeated backflash. And you, Jael Wesley, for striking another recruit."

Then Hawkins turned and walked away. They needed more than punishment, he told himself, but he wasn't sure what.

From muster, where the trainees gave their cadre twenty-five more pushups, B Company jogged three quarters of a mile to a lecture shed, where they dropped down and did another twenty-five before entering. Then they filed inside and took their seats on wooden benches, benches hard enough, the trainees were less likely to fall asleep, despite their heavy exercise regimen.

The presenter was a major from Division, who stood before them in a clean, pressed field uniform. He also wore a crimson turban, instead of the field caps of the company cadre.

"What you're about to watch on the screen," he began, "is a presentation of regimental and small unit tactics. While you watch it, try to spot just what's going on. The better you understand it, the better fighting men you'll be, and the less likely you'll be killed. Afterward we'll go over it again.

"Incidentally, it is not a recording of actual fighting. So far as we know, there hasn't been any actual fighting with the invaders. They've attacked only undefended colonies. But the animated visuals you'll see"-he gestured at the large wall screen-"are as realistic as they can be made. Realistic enough to be mistaken for real."

The entire company cadre was there, including Captain Mulvaney and Master Sergeant Henkel. The cube was one of a set newly arrived from Terra, via pod, and none of the company staff had seen it before. The major had, the night previous. It had its own audio, but he had a list of questions to expect, and tips on how to deal with them.

The audience watched the whole forty-five-minute first run-through without a pause. Captain Mulvaney would have bet that none of them dozed. Then they got a fifteen-minute break that began and ended with pushups for the trainees, with time to rassle around or use a field latrine in between. Afterward the same cubeage was shown again, but this time with numerous built-in pauses where a voice-over discussed the tactics they were watching. When that run-through was finished, there was another break like the first-pushups, latrine, and more pushups.

Afterward the major took questions, almost all of them from the cadre. That went on till it was time to leave for lunch. Outside, the trainees gave their cadre a quick twenty-five, then double-timed briskly in a column of fours to the company area, where there was just time for another twenty-five and to wash up before their noon meal-broiled ground beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, crisp green beans, bread and butter with apple sauce, rich bread pudding, and coffee.

The 1st cook didn't say a word to Esau and Jael, and they said nothing to each other. They simply ate as if they hadn't eaten for a day. Actually it had been eighteen hours.

After the noon meal and the break that followed, the company mustered, did pushups, then jogged to the regiment's physical training area. 2nd Platoon began its workout on "the log yard." Each five-man fire team had its own log, which massed roughly two hundred and fifty pounds, Terran. Working together, they lifted it to their collective right shoulders, then to arms' length overhead, then down onto their left shoulders, and back onto the ground. From there they repeated the sequence in \reverse, and again, and again, until they had to fight it up. Esau was the leader of his five-man fire team, a team that unfortunately included not only Jael, but Isaiah Vernon, two of the weakest in the platoon. Esau had put himself in the middle, between Jael and Isaiah, to make up for their lack of strength. Before they were done, he was gritting his teeth, partly from exhaustion, partly exasperation.

That done, they did twenty-five pushups. Then, driven by barking second-tier cadre, they ran hard to the chin-up bars, a bar per man, where they alternated between sets of ten chin-ups, fifteen pushups, and thirty side-straddle hops, each exercise serving as rest from the one before. After six rounds of those, they jogged to the obstacle course and ran it, climbing walls on knotted ropes, shinnying up rough-textured poles, vaulting or bellying over low fences, crawling through culverts, and ending with a hard, sixty-yard sprint.

They finished on what the Terran trainees had termed "the junkyard." The name had been passed on by the second-tier cadre. It had rows of stout iron pipes, the ends of which had been stuck in tins of concrete before it hardened. Each crude barbell massed roughly seventy pounds Terran, hefting about eighty-eight on Luneburger's World. The exercises were led by a husky second-tier cadreman, a corporal, who'd finished twenty-six weeks of training only three weeks earlier, and was in superb condition. Mostly they did high repetition cleans and jerks. To rest between sets, they lay on the ground and did leg raises, pushups, and situps.

They'd been in the PT area every day since they'd been at Camp Mudhole (which so far had been more of a dust hole), but never had they been pushed as they were this day. It was in the junkyard that Isaiah Vernon collapsed in the sun. Two cadremen helped him into the shade until an ambulance arrived.