Colonel Giap was in a frenzy of frustrated anger. Not only was his main assault force mired in this devilish blue muck that had hardened to the consistency of concrete, trapping his main assault force in the narrow defile of the mountain pass, but now Georges Faure was demanding that he get on with the conquest of Moonbase.

"It is unacceptable," Faure was saying, his moustache bristling. "Entirely unacceptable."

Giap glowered at the secretary-general's pale image in the small screen of the laptop. The colonel was sitting atop his tractor, buttoned up in his spacesuit. A meter or so from him, where his sergeant still stood hopelessly imbedded, six Peacekeeper troops were chipping away at the hellish blue slime with makeshift implements from the tractor's tool kit. Two of the troopers were even using the butts of their rifles to bash the sludge in their attempts to release the boots of their sergeant.

"I agree," Giap said to Faure, tightly reining his anger. "It is unacceptable. But in battle the unacceptable is commonplace."

Faure sat behind his desk, trembling with rage as he stared at the faceless image of the Peacekeeper colonel in his blank-visored spacesuit. How can a handful of rebels stop a fully-armed column of Peacekeeper troops? It is unthinkable, a farce, a disaster. Everyone will be laughing at me, unable to quash a tiny group of scientists and technicians, powerless to bring them under the rule of the law, impotent.

"I tell you this, mon colonel,' Faure said, seething. "If youcannot take Moonbase, then you are to release the volunteers. Do you understand what I am saying?"

In three seconds, Giap replied harshly, "You would rather destroy Moonbase than see it repulse us."

"Exactly!" Faure snapped.

While he waited for Faure's reply to reach him, Colonel Giap turned slightly to watch the activity he had ordered. Troopers were placing metal panels scavenged from the marooned tractors' flooring from the roof of one cab to the tail of the next tractor, forming a bridge across which they could march to the front of the column of stalled vehicles. From the leading tractor they slid more panels across the treacherous blue slime, to where the dusty gray regolith lay bare—and safe.

"Exactly!" Giap heard Faure's reply.

Taking in a deep breath and then releasing it slowly, to calm himself, Giap said, "There is no need to call on the suicide volunteers as yet. I am extricating most of my troops from the pass. We will march down into the crater floor on foot."

Faure's image was a red-faced thundercloud with a quivering moustache.

Before the secretary-general could speak again, Giap went on, "We will meet our secondary force on the crater floor and march on Moonbase. Our numbers will be diminished by less than five percent."

There, he thought, let the pompous little politician chew on that for three seconds. I am the military commander here. I will counter the enemy's moves. It was I who insisted on splitting the force. Only a fool of a politician would send his entire force through a single mountain pass that could be guarded or blocked by the enemy so easily.