Each bomblet was about the size of a man's thumb, a tiny segment of a cylinder, more or less the same as the tens of thousands of others released from the same cluster. They armed on impact and detonated a half second later, generally when they had bounced a meter or two back into the air. They spreada sleet of tiny shrapnel which stripped trees and killed all unprotected animals in the target area. After an attack, hundreds of bomblets which had failed to go off the first time lay in the grass, ready to shatter the leg of anyone walking carelessly.

Inside the shelter, the flashes lighted the mussed bedrolls with savage brilliance. The crackling detonations merged into a single prolonged roar. One large fragment sailed through both plastic end-sheets with a buzz that vibrated on the back of ben Mehdi's neck rather than in his ears.

"They'll be making another couple passes, of course," the Lieutenant said as he reached for the zipper at the throat of Powers' tunic. The vicious crack of the automatic cannon a kilometer away was an irritation now that the bomblets were only occasional thumps delayed by a freak of chemistry. "It won't be safe for anyone to leave their shelters for, well, plenty of time," ben Mehdi went on. He brushed aside the hand Powersraised to block his. He began to unzip her. "You know," he said, "you're a very attractive woman, Iris."

The little blond whipped her left fist around at Hussein's face. The blade of her spring knife was no longer than a finger, but that would have taken it to the Lieutenant's brain if he had not been expecting the attack.

Ben Mehdi caught Powers' wrist with his right hand while his left still clamped her other arm to her body. She tried to twist the knife to cut the sinews across the back of the officer's hand, but her weapon was a spike with no real edge. Hussein ben Mehdi increased the pressure of his grip until his thumb stood out in a pool of white skin on the woman's wrist. Then he gave a quick snap as if casting with a fly rod. The knife skittered out of her numb fingers.