The voice stopped. Mulvaney got to his feet and stepped again to the lectern. Well, Martin, he thought, scanning his Jerries, it's time to earn your pay. "All right, men, stand up in place, and stretch. Really stretch, so you feel it."

They did, with a chorus of groans.

Mulvaney grinned. "Now stamp your feet!"

Boots drummed on the plank floor.

"All right, now turn to the men around you; tell them hello, and shake hands with them." After half a minute of confusion and laughter, everyone had been included. "Good. Now tell them you're glad they're here. And mean it." He paused to let the chatter play out. "All right, at ease. Sit down." They stilled and sat. "We have something very important to talk about."

He paused a long moment, letting them wait. "Who of you," he asked, "will tell us why you're here, instead of back home on New Jerusalem?"

A hand shot up. "Recruit Isaiah Vernon," Mulvaney said, "tell us about it."

"Captain, sir, it's because invaders have come, invaders not made in the image of God. They're conquering human worlds, and killing the people on them. If we stayed, we'd be killed, too. Here we're learning to drive them away."

"Right," Mulvaney said. "At last report they'd definitely captured fourteen human worlds, and probably two others. Those we've heard from say the Wyzhnyny"-he paused, pronouncing the name carefully again-"the Wyzhnyny were killing everyone they came to, including those who tried to surrender."

Mulvaney scanned his audience again, his eyes stopping on Esau. "Recruit Esau Wesley, suppose we don't get back to New Jerusalem soon enough, and the Wyzhnyny take it. What then?"

"Then we'll drive them off, sir."

Mulvaney frowned. "Why not leave in-say a month from now? That should get us there in time."

"Fine, if we're ready. But if we're not, and we go, the Wyzhnyny will beat us."

"Exactly right. And believe me, you're a long way from ready. You're coming along well, very well, but you're far from ready." His gaze found his religious advisor. "Recruit Spieler, you trainees are all from New Jerusalem, so it's obvious why you should return there to defend it. Or regain it. But I'm a Terran. All your cadre are. Why should we go there to fight?"

The somber Spieler got to his feet. As recruits went, he was old, twenty-seven Terran years. "Captain Mulvaney, sir, long ago, God put Adam and Eve on Terra, and they were fruitful, and multiplied. Then, in His own good time for His own good reasons, He shepherded folks out to the stars. But all of Adam's progeny are God's children, created in His own image and saved by the sacrifice of His own son. It is the duty of us all to drive out these"-he paused, struggling with the pronunciation-"these Wiz-nin-ee."

"Well said, Spieler." Once more Mulvaney scanned his audience, making them wait. He was no orator, but he knew how to communicate. "So," he said, changing directions on them, "what did you think of the cube? Anyone?"

"Exciting, sir," someone called. Someone else followed with "We've got some idea now of what fighting will be like."

"Recruit Jael Wesley, what did you think of it?"

"Sir, it made me realize the cost of being in this war. If we lose, we'll all die. But even winning, lots of us will."

"Good observation. Recruit Spieler, what about death?"

"Sir, we'll all die sometime. If not on the battlefield, then maybe in bed. But death isn't the thing to fear. Hell is, and next after Hell, the destruction of the human race." Spieler paused, then went on. "Most of us here-maybe all of us-when we die, we'll go to Heaven and be with the Lord."

"Thank you, Recruit Spieler." Another hand rose as he said it. "Recruit Esau Wesley, what have you got to add?"

"Sir, I was wondering about the warbots. The cube said every regiment was supposed to have them. And those folks it showed would have been in bad trouble if it wasn't for warbots. But I haven't seen or heard of any in our whole division."

Mulvaney stood tall, sure of himself. He made them wait again, tightening their attention. "I was coming to that, Wesley," he said, "but I'm glad you brought it up. What do you suppose a warbot is?"

"Sir, it's a kind of machine."

"Ah. That's right, as far as it goes. But they're more than that." Again he pointed. "Recruit Vernon, do machines have souls?"

"No, sir. Only people have souls."

"And brains?"

"I suppose they have artificial brains, sir."

Mulvaney nodded. "You certainly might think that. But actually a bot has both a soul and a human brain."

There wasn't a sound from his audience, but it seemed to Mulvaney he sensed doubt, resistance. "I have a sister who's a bot," he went on. "A different model than shown in the cube. She's a medic bot."

Esau hadn't sat back down yet. "Sir," he said, "your sister?"

"My sister. She was a nurse, until she came down with a condition called `cascade syndrome'-the breakdown of one body part after another. By age thirty she was expected to die at any time. The last time I heard from her was since we arrived here on Luneburger's World. She'd volunteered to have her central nervous system-that's her brain, her spinal cord and nerve connections-removed from her body and put into what's called a `bottle.' Then the bottle was put into a machine called a `servo'-the sort of machine you saw in the cube. Without the human central nervous system, and the soul associated with it, the servo is a useless piece of machinery. It's the combination-the servo, the central nervous system and the soul-that makes a warbot. Or in Audrey's case a battlefield medic bot.

"And therein lies the reason the 1st New Jerusalem Division has no warbots yet; why no division has anything like as many as it should. People don't get converted into warbots unless they're badly crippled, or they're dying of something.

"Because becoming a bot is final. If someone becomes a bot, and later wishes he hadn't, it can't be undone. So even severely disabled people, who may feel tempted, often can't bring themselves to take that final step. And until the past month, many people who were willing weren't sufficiently disabled to qualify. Now recruitment for what is called `bottling' has picked up. So the 1st New Jerusalem Division should have at least a partial contingent of warbots when we leave."

There Mulvaney stopped and simply stood, the silence longer than before, as if he were looking for the words to continue. Finally he nodded, as if to himself. "When we get to New Jerusalem, we cannot expect replacements for our casualties. You noticed in the cube that not all the casualties were Wyzhnyny; not even close. We'll have a medical battalion to treat our wounded; Indis-people from another heavyworld called Epsilon Indi Prime."

Again he paused. "There will also be damaged warbots. We'll have spare servos-warbot bodies-and bottles can be transferred from damaged servos to replacement servos. But in some of the damaged servos, the human inside will have been killed. And we'll need to replace them if we can.

"So-" This was the hard part. His new pause was not for effect; he was groping. "So what we need," he said carefully, "are volunteers. People like you and me, who'll agree in writing that if we're disabled or mortally wounded, our central nervous system-our brain and spinal cord-can be bottled and installed in a warbot. Division will have specialists to do the job."

Once more he paused, sensing his audience was ill at ease with this. "We don't know now which of you will receive such wounds," he went on. "So beginning next week we'll start training all of you in how to operate as a warbot. The training modules are expected to arrive next Twoday. The same ship is also bringing a platoon of real warbots to continue their training here. Later you'll do tactical exercises with them."

A hand shot up. "Yes, Recruit Arvet?"