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Around the entire room, close under the sheet-iron roof, ran a wooden platform or shelf reached by a ladder and stacked high with the tin trunks, misshapen bundles, and pressed-paper suitcases containing the worldly possessions of the fifty or more workmen around the rough table below. Theoretically not even an inmate thereof may enter a Zone labor-camp during working hours.
Von Schlichten described the situation succinctly, in an ancient and unprintable military cliche. "Try landing south of the Reservation, a little west of the ruins of the labor-camp," he advised. "The bulk of Firkked's army is in that section, and I want them run out as soon as possible. We'll give you all the contragravity and fire support we can."
"About a hundred; a lot of 'saurs got shot, while we were leading them out from the stables." "Well, I can see geeks streaming away from the labor-camp, out the south end, going in the direction of the river. Use what cavalry you have on them, and what contragravity you can spare. I'll drop a few flares to show their position and direction."
The latter explained both his presence in a white labor-camp and his unconventional posture by asserting that he was the "mosquito man," and shortly thereafter went away from there without leaving either card or address. By all my library training in detective work the next move obviously was to find what color of cigarette ashes the Turk smoked.
From the labor-camp, a surprising volume of fire was being directed against the attack which had already started from the retaken equipment-park. Hovering above the fighting, aloof from it, he saw six long troop-carriers land and disgorge Kragan Rifles who had been released by the liquidation of resistance at the native-troops barracks.
There had been light ground-action along the southern end of the perimeter King Firkked's regulars, reinforced by Zirk tribesmen and levies of townspeople, all of whom seemed to have firearms, were filtering in through the ruins of the labor-camp and the wreckage of the equipment-park and there was renewed sniping from the mountainside.
On the TV-screen, the Residency area was ablaze with light, and so were the ship-docks, the airport and spaceport, the shops, and the maintenance-yard. On the terrain-board, the latter was now marked as completely in Company hands. The ruins of the native-troops barracks were still burning, and there was a twinkle of orange-red here and there among the ruins of the labor-camp.
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