Not, as Ortschugin had said, that it made any real difference to the freighter.

"The Front has collapsed, then," said Thorn, fingering his beard as he watched the screen. "I hope that doesn't mean we'll be overrun here."

"Ortschugin!" the Captain demanded. "See if you can get those cretins now that thebombing's stopped. I want to raise ship and get the hell out of here! Full holds be damned, I'm not paid to be shot at!"

"I'll try again, Excellency," Ortschugin replied. He carefully turned off his sending unit after he had spoken. "Don't get your bowels in an uproar, bitch," he muttered before he made another perfunctory call to Central on the land line. No one answered, of course.

The lower curve of the freighter's hull rested a meter and a half deep in the ground. Normally theKatynForest would have docked at a proper spaceport like the one at Praha. Copper would be carried from the smelter to the port on ground-effect trucks which hissed down the line of broadcast power pylons. Increased pressure on the Front thirty kilometers to the east had brought a modification. A starship would be landed directly at the mine and refinery complex to eliminate the slow process of transferring the cargo and to free scarce transport to carry materials to the Front.

From what the crew had seen when theKatyn Forest popped out of hyperspace on her landing run, the Federal side of the Front needed more help than it was likely to get.

Everyone else in the Smiricky compound had to depend on government news. The Federal and Republican governments had in common with each other-and with most human governments over the millennia and light years-the fact that they lied as a matter of course when reality did not suit their purposes. A navigational template had been computer-generated on the screens of theKatynForest from data a week old. It showed disquieting contrasts from the present scene. North and south of Smiricky #4, the Front-limned on the darkness by shell bursts-had bulged inward through the net of Federal strongpoints. If the bulges became penetrations, as they were almost certain to do, it would be kitty bar the door to Praha itself.