Combat-cars and air jeeps were
diving in to shell and rocket and machine-gun streets and buildings. He
saw six big bomber-lorries move in dignified procession to unload, one
after the other, on a row of buildings along what the Terrans called
South Tenth Street, and on the roofs of buildings a block away, red and
blue flares were burning, and he could see figures, both human and
Ullran, setting up mortars and machine-guns.
Landing on the top stage of Company House, on the island, they were
met by a Terran whom von Schlichten had seen, a few days ago, bossing
native labor at the spaceport, but who was now wearing a major's
insignia. He greeted von Schlichten with a salute which he must have
learned from some movie about the ancient French Foreign Legion. Von
Schlichten seriously returned it in kind.
"Everybody's down in the Governor-General's office, sir," he said.
"Your office, that is. King Kankad's here with us, too."
He accompanied them to the elevator, then turned to a telephone; when
von Schlichten and Paula reached the office, everybody was crowded at
the door to greet them: Themistocles M'zangwe, his arm in a sling;
Hans Meyerstein, the Johannesburg lawyer, who seemed to have even more
Bantu blood than the brigadier-general; Morton Buhrmann, the
Commercial Superintendent; Laviola, the Fiscal Secretary; a dozen or
so other officers and civil administrators.
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