But A Company made too much noise, and from the enemy outposts came blaster fire, directed not toward the paddock, but outward. In response, A Company's grenade launchers flashed, followed quickly by the pops of training grenades around the guard positions. No sooner had the grenades landed, then with blood-curdling shrieks, A Company's raiders rushed the enemy positions with fixed bayonets, blasters spewing soft pulses. Jael freed her rucksack and felt it jerk the dangle line.

She was almost down, and braked. Her feet touched lightly, three running steps using up her momentum. She hit her harness release, released her blaster tie-down, and crouched by the fence, ready to provide supporting fire as needed.

The capture teams were already in action. The intended prisoners consisted of twenty calves, each weighing about 250 pounds Terran. Unarmed though they were, the calves resisted, running madly to avoid would-be captors, and struggling when caught. One nearly trampled Jael. She fired a burst of soft pulses as it careened toward her, so that it fell skidding in its effort to turn. Someone grabbed it, threw it back down, and struggled to tie its hooves. After several minutes of running, wrestling, and whooping with laughter, the capture action ended with the landing of two floaters inside the paddock. Jerries dragged the "prisoners" to the ramps, then cut the ties and let them go. All that was left to do was muster, board the floaters and leave.

The mission was over.

It was at muster they learned that Isaiah Vernon was not with them, and no one had seen him since they'd jumped. Nor could anyone there pick up his transponder. Using one of the floaters' high-powered radios, Captain Mulvaney called Division.

Yes, he was told, Isaiah Vernon's transponder had activated, giving his geogravitic coordinate. An ambulance floater from the artillery range had already picked him up, and he was being rushed to the division hospital.

Why Division? Jael wondered. Didn't the artillery training camp have a hospital? Or perhaps his injuries weren't so bad. Somehow, though, it seemed to her they were.

They learned the next day how severe Isaiah's injuries were, when Captain Mulvaney reviewed their graduation exercise with the entire company. Division's umpires had given B Company's paragliders a grade of "very good." Then he told them about Isaiah. "Apparently Trainee Vernon's parasail malfunctioned," he said gravely, "after he'd jettisoned his reserve chute. He hit the ground very hard; his knees and leg bones were shattered. He also had broken lumbar vertebrae and critical internal injuries. The medics kept him alive with life support equipment and an injection of Stasis 1. They assured me there was no chance at all that he'd have lived long in that devastated body."

Mulvaney paused, and when he continued, used the trainee's given name. "Isaiah signed a warbot agreement last Sixmonth, so he's been bottled. When the sedative has worn off, he'll undergo therapy for neural trauma and be tested for neural functionality. But the conversion team doubts that he can function as a warbot."

After the CO had finished, Speaker Spieler led the company in a prayer for Isaiah-not simply for his survival, but beseeching God that their brother could fight as a warbot.

Afterward, more than thirty new agreements were signed by B Company trainees.

Esau considered signing, and talked to Jael about it. "That's fine, if you want to," she answered. "But I've decided not to. I want to have babies if I possibly can, whether I'm crippled or not."

Esau nodded. "Well then," he said firmly, "I won't either." And chuckled. "Because if you have babies, I want to be the father."

The War at Home

"Mr. Garmisch, Supervisor Reinholdt will see you now."

Paul Garmisch got uneasily to his feet. He didn't know what this was about, but a guilty conscience had made him wary. The production supervisor's receptionist was indicating a door. It had opened, and a neatly-dressed, athletic-looking man waited by it. He was not Supervisor Reinholdt, but neither was he an office assistant. He looked too hard, too sure.

"Come in, Mr. Garmisch," the man said.

The words, the tone were mild, but to Paul Garmisch they sounded sinister. Garmisch was addicted to adventure cubes, and now he realized what this man reminded him of. He looked like the CIS men on shows about crime detection.

Garmisch entered the office. It was not Production Supervisor Reinholdt who sat behind the desk. It was a woman, someone Garmisch had never seen before. Reinholdt stood to her left, somewhat removed. "Please sit down, Mr. Garmisch," the woman said, and beckoned toward a chair. To her right, also not close, was another man, seated in a chair with a monitor arm and key pad. A small, brown, wiry man with probing, deep-seeing eyes; inwardly Garmisch squirmed, trying to escape them. A foreign immigrant, he thought. Perhaps a Malay. He'd known a Malay family once. The parents had looked somewhat like this man.

The woman repeated herself. "Please be seated, Mr. Garmisch. I am Ms. Sriharan."

She did not identify her function. The omission troubled Garmisch, and so did the chair she'd indicated. He'd never seen one like it before. It stood apart, on a low, apparently portable platform. He stayed where he was. "What is this about?" he asked. His tone was neither challenging nor indignant. It was wary. Frightened.

"I am about to tell you. But first, please sit down." She still sounded affable, looked affable. Her name was foreign, perhaps Asian he thought, but from her blond hair and blue eyes, she could be pure German. Garmisch did not consider himself hostile to non-Germans. "Let them live here, work here, vote here." He'd said it more than once. But he regretted genetic mixing, certainly with non-Nordics.

It was, he knew, much too late to be prevented. Non-Nordics had been trickling in for centuries. Perhaps as far back as the Troubles. (In school, history hadn't taken with him.) After a few generations, little remained of their origins except foreign surnames, sometimes dark skin. African hair. He himself was of mixed origin; it was hardly avoidable. But in his case, so far as he knew, his non-German ancestors were Aryan: Moldavian, Polish, and Croat. In school he had even taken German as one of his electives, learning it well enough to carry on limited conversations.

"Mr. Garmisch," she said. Her voice was still mild. "If you do not sit down, I must arrest you."

Garmisch looked at her, then at "the CIS man," then the Malay. What is a Malay doing here? he wondered. And what is he thinking? Hesitantly he stepped to the chair and sat. Perhaps, he told himself, the questions would not be about what he feared. Perhaps he had no reason to worry.

"Thank you, Mr. Garmisch. Let me complete the introductions." She gestured toward the supposed Malay. "This is Forensic Technologist Balaug, and the gentleman who admitted you is Senior Investigator VerDoorn. Both are of the Commonwealth Internal Security Directorate. You already know Supervisor Reinholdt, of course. He was kind enough to let us use his office."

The security directorate! The confirmation added weight to the stone in Garmisch's belly. He looked from one to the other. Ms. Sriharan leaned back in her chair like someone who'd just eaten a very fine meal. "It has been brought to our attention," she said, "that military blasters assembled on your line have been found defective. The assembler program had been altered, and a small but essential component was omitted, converting each blaster to a small but quite deadly bomb. A man died testing one; it blew his head quite off, and his arms to the elbows. We trust you can enlighten us on how this came to be."