“Right, right, right.” And they'd get it explained to these Russians here when they caught up with Ivan.

“Smooth,” said Robert the Fox. “Oh, so very smooth. The bulk of our force can't be briefed because the translator is elsewhere. What stupendous planning and coordination! I wish us luck. We will need it.”

Jonnie said, “But we've got the Psychlos outnumbered.”

“What?” exclaimed Robert the Fox.

“There's more than a hundred of them and only fifty or so of us.”

“That's what I mean,” said Jonnie. “We've got them outnumbered one-half to one!”

They got it and some Russians more advanced in English than the rest explained the joke to the other Russians. They all laughed. The rain had been getting them down. They felt better.

Jonnie was getting down to the flatbed where a Scot and four Russians, one of them a driver, waited, when a scurry in the plane drew his attention. It was Bittie MacLeod, all set to go with him, draped around with equipment.

This was something Jonnie did not want. The coming battle was nothing to drag the boy into. But there was a problem– the boy's pride. Jonnie thought fast. This was almost harder to solve than the tactics!

Bittie's world was filled with the romances of two thousand years ago, when knighthood was in flower, with flame-breathing dragons and pure knights and rescued fair damsels. Nothing wrong with that. He was a sweet little boy and his greatest ambition was to grow up and become a man like Dunneldeen or himself. Nothing wrong with that either. But his dreams risked bruising against the

brutal realities of this world in which they fought, a world with its own brand of dragons. He would never live to become like “Prince” Dunneldeen or “Sir” Jonnie if he were not protected. But there was his pride. And it was showing now when he saw Jonnie's pause, saw the search for an excuse to say no in Jonnie's ice-blue eyes.

Hurriedly, Jonnie grabbed a mine radio from a seat and thrust it into the boy's hands. Jonnie tapped the one in his own belt. He leaned very close to Bittie's ear and whispered, “I need a reliable contact on this plane who can tell me, after the battle is joined, if anything is going wrong. Don't use it until the first shot is fired. But if there's anything amiss after that, you tell me fast.” He put a finger to his lips.

Bittie was instantly bright, if a trifle conspiratorial. He nodded. “Oh, yes, Sir Jonnie!" and he faded back into the plane.

Jonnie hobbled down the squishy road to the flatbed. It was sitting there, lights stabbing through the sheets of rain. He checked his crew, got in, and nodded to the driver.

The flatbed, with its flying mine platform and mortar, roared, drowning out the snarling fight over in the woods.

They were off in a truck to do combat with tanks.

Brown Limper Staffor sat in his new palatial office and stared down at the offending object on the desk. He was revolted.

Things had been moving well lately. The domed government building-some said it had been the state capital building– had been partially restored and even its dome painted white. The halls had been refinished. A chamber had been provided for Council sessions– a very ideal chamber with a high dais and bench on one end and wooden seats before it. Huge, upholstered Psychlo executive desks had been carted in to furnish separate offices for Council members (they were a bit dwarfing to sit at, but if one put a man-chair on a box behind them they were all right). A hotel had been opened that provided living space for dignitaries and important visitors, and under the ministrations of a cook from Tibet it was serving very passable meals on real plates.

The tutelage he was getting while standing in the shadows of a post over at the compound at night was truly excellent. Utterly invaluable data about government. Terl hardly deserved the extreme conditions of living in a cage. The Psychlo had repented and was doing all he could to help. How misunderstood the Psychlos were!

The fruits of such learning were already showing up. It was taking a little time and it required a considerable amount of political skill. But Terl had traveled all over the universes as one of the most trusted executives of Intergalactic Mining, and the things he knew about governments and politics were far in excess of anything else available.

Take this matter of having too numerous a Council. The tribal chiefs from over the world resented having to come here and spend endless time wrangling in the chamber; they had their own tribal affairs to look after. They were also too numerous, thirty of them, to really get anything done. And it was almost with joy that they divided the world up into five continents with one representative from each. From an unwieldy throng of thirty, the Council had been reduced to a more easily handled five. And when it was explained to them that their own tribal work was far more vital than this humdrum paper shuffling at the Council, and that the most competent men were needed at home, they had gladly pushed some cousins and such into the five continental seats.

The five-man Council, of course, was a bit unwieldy, and it was in the process now of appointing a two-man Executive. With a little more work and the application of some invaluable tips

Terl had given him, sometime in the coming weeks, Brown Limper would find himself the Council representative with authority to act independently in the name of the Council, assisted only by the Council Secretary who, of course, did not need to have a vote and would be required just to sign his name. It would be so much neater.

The Scots had been a bit of trouble. They had protested Scotland being included with Europe, but it was shown that it always had been. This made their representative a German from a tribe in the Alps. Well, majority votes of the old Council had handled that, and now there were no more of those accursed Scots around challenging every sensible measure proposed by Brown Limper.

The tribes were satisfied. They had been given title to all the lands about them with absolute right to allocate them as they chose. They had each been given the exclusive ownership of the ancient cities and anything contained therein. This had made Brown Limper quite popular with the chiefs of most tribes– but not the Scots, of course. Nothing could please them. They had had the nerve to point out that this gave all property and the whole continent of America and everything in it to Brown Limper. But that was quashed by simply indicating that there were four tribes in America now– British Columbia where two people had been found, the Sierra Nevada where four people had been found, the little group of Indians to the south, and Brown Limper's. That they all now lived in Brown Limper's village had been quite beside the point!

The selection of a capital had been another victory. For some reason, some tribes thought the world capital should be in their area. Some even thought it should shift about. But when it was pointed out how much trouble and expense it was to maintain a capital and that Brown Limper Staffor, out of the goodness of his heart and with philanthropy as his only motive, would let his tribe pay all the costs, there was no further argument. The world capital had been decreed to be “Denver,” although its name one of these days would be changed to “Staffor.”

The resolution of the old Council, before it became only five, to establish a Planetary Bank, was what had started this trouble now before him.

A Scot named MacAdam had been called in, and he had advised them that the Galactic credits they had would be meaningless to Earth people at this time. Instead he proposed that he and a German now residing in Switzerland, a German who had an aw ful lot of dairy cows and home cheese factories, be granted a charter. They would issue currency to a tribe to the amount of land it had in actual productive use, and in return they would charge a small percent. It was a good idea for any tribe could only get more currency by getting more area into productive use. The currency was then backed by “The Tribal Lands of Earth.” The bank was to be called the Earth Planetary Bank and the charter given it was quite broad and sweeping.