After about fifteen rounds, the mortar stopped shooting. That was painfully developed doctrine. If you kept banging away from the same place too long, the Lizards would get you. Besides, they were going to be calling in air support any minute now. You didn’t want to lose artillery, even a little old mortar. If they couldn’t find you, they couldn’t shoot you.

One of the high school buildings had caught fire. Lizards skittered out of it. Auerbach drew a bead on one, fired. The Lizard sprawled on the ragged grass and lay there kicking. Auerbach shot at another one, to no visible effect. He swore.

Some of his men had got into Lakin itself, so fire came at the consolidated high school from three sides of a ring. Auerbach pricked up his ears-some of the weapons firing from, that direction weren’t regulation Army issue. That meant the locals had joined in the fight. Auerbach wanted to pound his head against the dirt of the shallow foxhole he’d scraped out for himself. The cavalry was going to have to get the hell out in a couple of minutes. Did the Lakinites or whatever they called themselves think the Lizards would give them a big kiss on the cheek for trying to make like soldiers?

He turned to the radioman. “Call our boys in town and tell ’em to get out. Tell ’em to bring out as many of the townies with guns as they can.” He laughed. “Those folks don’t know it yet, but they just joined the Army.” Several of his troopers had joined in the same highly informal way. If you were willing to put your neck on the line to fight the Lizards, Uncle Sam was more than willing to give you a chance to do it by the numbers.

When firing in Lakin began to die down, Auerbach also ordered his troops on the left to pull back. Now he used his machine guns to cover the retreat and keep the Lizards from getting too enthusiastic about pursuit. The troopers had made a lot of raids on Lizard-held small towns. They knew the drill. You wanted to get back to your horses and scatter before the Lizards brought in their planes and helicopters and splattered you all over the landscape.

You could tell at a glance the new fish the troopers were bringing out of Lakin, and uniforms or their absence had next to nothing to do with it. The civilians who’d taken up arms against the Lizards didn’t know how to take cover, they didn’t know how to move, they hesitated before doing what somebody told them. About what you’d expect from three or four farmers in bib overalls and… two girls?

Auerbach did a double take. Sure as hell, a couple of young women toting.22s were trotting back with his soldiers. One of them wore overalls, too; the other was in a dress. He played back in his head the orders he’d given the radioman. He’d saidtownies; he hadn’t saidmen, if the troopers claimed they were just following orders, they’d have a point.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he muttered. That sort of thing had happened before, but, like anybody, he hadn’t expected it to happen to him. He hoped the girls could ride. He’d have horses for them; he’d seen a couple of his men go down. Companions were helping others along.

There were the horses, in a little hollow that shielded them from being spotted from the high school. The mortar was already broken down and packed away. Here came the machine gun crews. The 1919A2 had been developed especially for cavalry; with the weapons came light metal fittings that attached to the standard pack saddle and carried gun, tripod, a spare parts chest, a spare barrel, and three small ammunition chests. Getting everything ready for travel took bare moments.

Auerbach turned to the civilians who’d taken up arms against the Lizards. “Can you ride, people?” Even in farm country like this, it wasn’t a given, the way it would have been a generation before.

But nobody said no, for which he was duly grateful. The newcomers gave their names as they mounted-or, in a couple of cases, clambered onto-the horses of cavalrymen who wouldn’t need them any more. What anybody called Lorenzo Farquhar was doing in Lakin, Kansas, was beyond Auerbach, but it wasn’t his business, either.

The woman in overalls was named Penny Summers; her father Wendell was there, too. The other one was Rachel Hines. She said, “I’ve wanted to shoot those things ever since they came here. Thanks for giving me the chance.” Though she showed a lot of leg mounting, she swung into the saddle as smoothly as any of the men.

When everyone was horsed, Auerbach said, “Now we scatter. You new people, pick a trooper and stick close to him. Rendezvous point is Lamar, Colorado. See you there in a couple of days. Let’s ride.”

Scattering was the best way to make sure attack from the air didn’t wipe out your whole command. Some of the troops galloped off to the north, some to the south toward the Arkansas, some straight off to the west. Auerbach headed northwest himself, to be in the middle of things when the air attacks came. Not that he could do anything about them, but his job was to try…

Penny Summers and her dad rode with him. They weren’t horse-folk like his troopers, but they kept up-and everyone was going flat out, too. Hearing a swelling roar in the air behind him, he roweled his gelding with his spurs, wringing out of it every ounce of speed it had. A hammering noise rang through the roar, as if God’s jalopy had developed a knock.

The damage was done in the few seconds before the fighter plane screamed overhead, close enough for Auerbach to see the seams and rivets on the underside of its fuselage. Cannon shells chewed up the ground around the fleeing cavalrymen. A fragment tore his trouser leg and drew a bleeding line on the side of his calf.

He looked around as the plane streaked off after other targets. One of his troopers was down, dead. So was Wendell Summers. It looked as if one shell had got him and another his horse. Auerbach gulped. Even for war, it was ugly.

Penny Summers had reined in, staring in numb astonishment at the red smears and badly butchered meat that had been her father. “Get moving!” Auerbach shouted at her. “You want to end up just like him? We’ve got to get out of here.”

“But-he’s dead,” she said disbelievingly, as if such things couldn’t happen, as if this were peaceful 1938 rather than 1943.

“It’s a chance you take, shooting back at the Lizards,” Auerbach answered. He wanted to be gentle, but he didn’t have time. “Look, miss, we can’t hang around. That plane may be back for another pass, you know.”

Her eyes were green, but white showed all around their irises. She was, he guessed, somewhere in her middle twenties, but shock left her face so blank, she looked years younger. But if she didn’t pull herself together at least well enough to ride that horse in the next ten seconds, he was damn well going to leave her here.

She did. She was still stunned, but she booted the horse in the ribs and got rolling. Auerbach rode alongside her. When he had the time, he’d grieve for his lost men, too. Not now. Now getting away was all that mattered. If that stinking jet hadn’t chewed up the rest of the company too badly, he might even have won himself a minor victory.

Ussmak said, “If they keep pulling us out of the line, how do they expect us to maintain the advance against the Deutsche?”

Nejas let out a hissing sigh. “I am but a landcruiser commander, Ussmak, just as you are but a driver and Skoob here but a gunner. I do not make these decisions, but I am a male of the Race. I obey.”

“Yes, superior sir.” Ussmak sighed, too, but quietly. High-ranking males made decisions, lower-ranking ones obeyed them… and paid the price. Two landcruiser commanders and one gunner with whom he’d fought were dead now, and another commander and gunner arrested for being ginger addicts-all that in what everyone had assumed would be a walkover campaign, back when males went into the cold-sleep tanks while the conquest fleet still orbited Home.