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surface bombardment with independently targeted bombs or beam weapons; send high-flying probes and
submarine sensors, ground-attack aircraft, and terrain hugging cruise missiles down into planetary
atmospheres; and land its own ground forces. Among other things, it carried a lot of nuclear explosives.
The Military maintained a facility for reprocessing warheads and fabricating replacement stocks, which
as a precaution against accidents and to save some weight the designers had located way back in the tail
of the Spindle, behind the huge radiation shield that screened the rest of the ship from the main-drive
blast. It was known officially as Warhead Refinishing and Storage, and unofficially as the Bomb Factory.
Nobody worked there. Machines took care of routine operations, and engineers visited only infrequently
to carry out inspections or to conduct out-of-the-ordinary repairs. Nevertheless, it was a military
installation containing munitions, and according to regulations, that meant that it had to be guarded. The
fact that it was already virtually a fortress and protected electronically against unauthorized entry by so
much as a fly made no difference; the regulations said that installations containing munitions had to be
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guarded by guards. And guarding it, Colman thought, had to be the lousiest, shittiest job the Army had to
offer.
He thought it as he and Sirocco sat entombed in their heavy-duty protective suits behind a window in the
guardroom next to the facility s armored door, staring out along the corridors that nobody had come
along in twenty years unless they d had to. Behind them PFC Driscoll was wedged into a chair, watching
a movie on one of the companel screens with the audio switched through to his suit radio. Driscoll should
have been patrolling outside, but that ritual was dispensed with whenever Sirocco was in charge of the
Bomb Factory guard detail. A year or so previously, somebody in D Company had taken advantage of
the fact that everyone looked the same in heavy-duty suits by feeding a video recording of some dutiful,
long forgotten sentry into the closed-circuit TV system that senior officers were in the habit of spying
through from time to time, and nobody from the unit had done any patrolling since. The cameras were
used instead to afford early warning of unannounced spot checks.
You never know. The chances might be better after we reach Chiron, Sirocco said. Colman s transfer
application had been turned down by Engineering. With the population exploding like crazy, there might
be all kinds of prospects. That s what you get.
What s what I get?
For being a good soldier and a lousy citizen.
Not liking killing people makes a good soldier?
Sure. Sirocco tossed up a gauntleted hand as if the answer were obvious. Guys who don t like it but
have to do it get mad. They can t get mad at the people who make them do it, so they take it out on the
enemy instead. That s what makes them good. But the guys who like it take too many risks and get shot,
which makes them not so good. It s logical.
Army logic, Colman murmured.
I never said it had to make sense. Sirocco brought his elbows up level with his shoulders, stretched for
a few seconds, and sighed. After a short silence he cocked a curious eye in Colman s direction.
So...what s the latest with that cutie from Brigade?
Forget it.
Not interested?
Dumb.
Too bad. How come?
Astrology and cosmic forces. She wanted to know what sign I was born under. I told her
MATERNITY WARD. Colman made a sour face. Hell, why should I have to humor people all the
time?
Sirocco wrinkled his lip, showing a glimpse of his moustache. You can t fool me, Steve. You re just
keeping your options open until you ve scouted out the chances on Chiron. Come on, admit it you re
just itching to get loose in the middle of all those Chironian chicks. The tint, machine-generated
Chironians were the ten thousand individuals created through the ten years following the Kuan-yin s
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arrival, the oldest of whom would be in their late forties. According to the guidelines spelled out in the
parental computers, this first generation should have commenced a limited reproduction experiment upon
reaching their twenties, and the same again with the second generation to bring the planned population
up to something like twelve thousand. But the Chironians seemed to have had their own ideas, since the
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