There were dead people everywhere on the atoll now, Jory supposed, though the one before her was the sole example she had actually seen. So far she had heard no report of casualties. Probably none had been compiled as yet; but such was the pocked, scorched, and blasted appearance of the atoll's surface, as far as she could see, that she assumed the numbers must be high.

The attack was still going on, but she couldn't let that stop her. Running to where she thought she might find spare parts, hoping to restore or replace her damaged equipment, she saw how antispacecraft weapons swiveled and spat fire and distortion from their blunt, solid-looking muzzles. Well underground the breathing, sweating gunners, their heads sheathed in opt-electronic helmets as if they played at being robots, manned the active defenses. One skilled human could, when necessary, meld with the optelectronic controller of a whole battery of guns. Meanwhile live humans - medics or members of repair crews Jory supposed - were visible here and there, trotting or walking or sometimes crawling across the surface.

The antispacecraft guns hammered away, unleashing their self-guiding lozenges of plasma, the shock waves of their passage coming almost in one continuous roar. But now even the guns were drowned out by the louder explosions of more missiles incoming.

Jory had almost reached the storage area that was her goal when something, a jolt of force, took her clean off her feet in midstride, sent her protected body rolling, until it was stopped by slamming into a revetment. A surge of heat built swiftly inside her armor, then was damped away by her suit's last inner defense, a fraction of a second before her skin began to burn. The landscape shook and seemed to spin around her armored head. Sometimes the full violence of even nuclear charges could be damped almost to nothing - but "almost" was, ultimately, not going to be quite good enough.

Several holostage flagpoles, and at least one traditionally crafted of real and solid wood, were spotted at various locations around the base. But for some reason no one had thought to raise a flag today - maybe someone on general intercom screamed this sudden discovery in Jory's hearing - and one officer communicated with the commander to ask whether this should be done.

She had her sound and pictures back, at least on some of the equipment, at least for now. Colonel Shanga was startled, and his face on Jory's little monitor looked momentarily dismayed. Then he snapped: "Hell yes! Get to it."

She had her own job to do. Her body was functioning; nothing seemed to be broken or bleeding. But somehow she could not tear herself away from watching the business about the flag.

And then there was some uncertainty as to which flag the officer, armored fingers poised over the controls at his console, would choose to raise.

People all across the settled Galaxy were given to argument about whether there was, or could be, a single Solarian symbol, one that all Earth-descended humans on all their planets might be willing to recognize as deserving of their loyalty. Just get something up there, dammit, Jory prayed, slowly dragging herself back to her feet. Ordinarily she had no feeling on the subject, but this was different. We need something.

What went flickering up the flagpole (the nearest to Jory was a virtual pole - in fact a holographic projection - that could be sliced again and again by blast and shrapnel, and never fall) moments later was the closest approximation: A round sun of red, with blue planet-dots arrayed in a double loop around it, making on a white background the horizontal figure eight of the mathematician's infinity symbol.

The flag and all its symbols appeared in three dimensions, and in several locations around the sphere of peculiar matter making up the atoll. The image was set at a brisk fluttering, as of real cloth in a spanking breeze.

The Templar banner was much different from that of Earth-born humanity that flew above it on the same pole. The former displayed the image of an ancient knight in handmade armor, and the red cross of the original Templars had been adopted as part of the design. Here, the emblem stood crushing a berserker that crouched on crablike legs.

Some anonymous voice, no doubt one of the fanatical Templar Raiders, was shouting, off-key, what Jory assumed must be an ancient battle chant:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored...

Jory Yokosuka could recognize that as a Templar song.

Moments later, the singing was swallowed up, with every other sound, in the renewed roar of the attack.

Jory, having done the best she could in the way of gathering replacement parts, headed back for her battle station, running from one shelter to another, bounding along in the servo-powered armor at a faster pace than she could have managed sprinting across a real beach while stripped for swimming.

All it took, she thought, was a little practice, and a lot of fear.

Here lay another casualty. She staggered, almost falling, to a stop.

The servo motors in her own suit lent her a power lifter's strength as she grappled the mass of a wounded man in armor, and dragged him into a shelter.

Then she had to get back to her own job.

When she got back to her station, there was Nash's face, on the intercom channel.

"What in hell's going on at your end?" he demanded. "Are you all right?" It sounded as if he would consider it the ultimate disloyalty if she got herself killed.

Some of her equipment had been hit, early in the raid, she explained in a breathless voice, and she had needed to obtain a spare part.

Nash's flat little image on the small screen showed one of his arms now splinted in some kind of cast or bandage. But he was still on his feet, barking orders and abuse.

"Shut up," she commented, and turned him off. She knew what job she had to do, so now for God's sake let her do it.

With all her gear up and running again, it struck her as amazing, the number of people who, like herself, were out of their shelters, not actively crewing weapons but simply running this way and that, for no good reason at all that she could see.

Of course it was impossible to take her helmet off, even momentarily, without risking a collapse from anoxia, because of the depleted air - not to mention deafness. One would have to slip into a pressurized chamber somewhere to make such a change.

In the last hours before the attack, another rumor had swept across the atoll, this one to the effect that there would be a goodlife man or woman riding with the raiders. Jory had considered that a perfect example of the type of wild speculation that some people's minds broke out with, like a rash, in time of stress.

Whamno! Whamma! Whammo ! Space itself seemed to ring like a giant gong, mocking the strength of the defensive fields laboring to muffle the explosions.

Inhuman giants were at war here, one with another, and there were moments when it seemed mere humans could do no more than huddle down and pray.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the attack was over. The attacking machines, except for the minority brought down on the atoll or vaporized in space, had retreated in the direction of their launching carriers. A ringing silence reigned. The surface of the atoll underfoot was still. People on the surface and in their shelters raised their heads and stared at one another like newborn children.

As abruptly as they had appeared, the raiders were gone, flickering away through a diminished opposition of defensive fields. Then an order to cease-fire, leaving a sudden, startling, aching silence in the unearthly sky. The perpetual, illusory overcast that hovered over Fifty Fifty was now empty of everything but clouds of particles, and the poisonous afterglow of blasts. The bright orbital rings of the defensive satellites - now notably fewer than before - relaxed their protective grip upon the miniature world and slowed once more to a mere blurring speed.

Jay Nash, in what was for him a stroke of good luck ("Good planning invites good fortune") had personally obtained a good recording, sound and sight, smells and vibrations, of the main repair facility going up in a cloud of flame and dust.

That stream of information was so good that it looked like something faked with computer graphics. But every bit of data in the picture was purely authentic.

When they took him away to the base hospital to have the dressing on his arm redone, he shouted and chortled his elation that he had been wounded in combat, that he had survived, that his raw recording was going to be beautiful.

The real flag had been riddled with holes; the real flagpole, of real wood, was badly splintered now. But splintered or not the pole was still standing, holding up the flag.

It crossed the mind of someone, monitoring pollution levels, that the atmosphere of Fifty Fifty was going to need more than a fresh supply of oxygen to set it right again. A complete rebuilding would be in order when the fight was over. The birds and other breathing life were dying off.

Colonel Shanga's command post had survived the storm with only minimal damage, and the surviving journalists tended to congregate there - probably because the bar had not yet reopened.

Reports of damage and casualties, claims of enemies destroyed, were coming in from every quarter of the miniature world. Human casualties in fact were light, thanks to an early warning and heavy preparation. Early analysis of combat recordings confirmed the number of attacking berserkers at well over a hundred; it would take a while to make sure how many had been shot down.

The garrison commander, coming on line to make a general announcement, was grimly satisfied - for the moment - with the way the people of the garrison had performed. Neither he nor anyone under his command doubted that the enemy would be back, probably soon, and in even greater force. Emergency repairs were started, reserve resources redeployed upon the surface. Thanks to the early warning, casualties had been light.

Once more able to move freely around the surface of the atoll, Jory soon found herself exchanging smiles with Jay Nash, who was in fine spirits, proudly brandishing his bandaged arm.

A couple of little robots bearing the company logo, ignoring the devastation all around, were busy maintaining the equipment Nash had been using personally.

"Any enemy landers reported?" Jory asked him.

"Not yet. But they'll be back. That little skirmish was just to soften us up." He beamed at her happily.

Damage had been inflicted, but there appeared to have been no softening at all. People and machines, thousands of armored figures, the great majority intact, had come pouring out of shelters. All the digging in had really paid off. A stern voice in Jory's helmet reminded everybody to keep their armor on; the oxygen had been drained from the atmosphere, and the enemy had dumped in poisons, or deadly microorganisms. Somewhere, distantly, some kind of an alarm was ringing. Closer at hand, some wounded human's cries for help drifted through the attenuated air.

A quick look at the recordings showed that Jay Nash and his crew had been hard at work. Every member of his crew, including his newest employee, had performed creditably. The capture of live combat scenes had been amply successful. They had focused their equipment on the right places. But under the circumstances no one but themselves was paying much attention to the people from the entertainment world or to their results.

The wounded, several dozen of them in scattered locations around the atoll, were cared for quickly. The handful of dead were respectfully given temporary burial. Defenses were patched up, machines reloaded and rearmed.

No one on the ground doubted that the berserkers would be back, and most expected the second wave of the assault soon.

A new rumor was now rapidly spreading among the defenders, to the effect that a Solarian carrier force was somewhere in the area. Not everyone believed it, but morale went up a notch.

A small handbook appeared, What To Do If Captured, but many people swore they were not going to be captured.

Half an hour after the cease-fire, orders came to stand down from full alert.

Nash's yacht, the Araner, carrying most of his people and equipment, along with the more seriously wounded, was preparing to make a dash for Port Diamond while the going was good.

The early-warning system reported nothing incoming, at the moment.

Jory observed, with a lightening of her spirits, that the building housing the bar had not been totally destroyed in the berserker raid, though it suffered some picturesque damage.

Large holes in the walls and roof, but fortunately it wasn't going to rain. And now she noticed taut bubbles of plastic, sealing all the holes. Visiting such an establishment would seem rather pointless if one couldn't take one's helmet off when one got there. Fortunately, the interior could still be pressurized.

Jory heard one of the bartenders say, while waiting for the next (never doubting there would be more) berserker onslaught: "It has been said from old times that a battle is a succession of mistakes and that the party that blunders less emerges victorious."

Jory wondered, as she had on her previous visit to the nameless bar, why the place was open. But, feeling ready for a drink herself, she wasn't going to protest the fact.

The place seemed empty, or it would, Jory thought, when Jay Nash and his wild stories were gone, along with his selfconsciously macho crew of hard drinkers and swearers. Most, but not all, of that bunch were men.

Now the roaring music changed, suggesting the presence of a striptease dancer. Only in a holostage recording/doing a strip of some entertainer's idea of space armor, piece by piece, with nothing underneath? That reminded Jory, with a faint shock, of her own actual situation. Well, she'd get back to her quarters, and some privacy, in a few minutes.

As usual, the performance alternated hardbodied young men and women, or at least their computer-generated images, in that role. Some kind of entertainment. Different varieties, at the push of a button. There hadn't been any live musicians on Fifty Fifty for a long, long time.

Jory thought of demanding a male dancer next, but she was too tired. To hell with it.

People were arguing, a couple of tables away. Someone had a theory that no one had ever got around to telling the robot manager of the bar that it had to be shut down. No, the door had really been locked, half an hour ago. Well then, someone had slyly deprogrammed the robot to forget any closure command within an hour after it was issued.

If a high state of alert still obtained, then the bar should have been officially closed. Now that Jory noticed it, a great many of the customers seemed to have been wounded. People were drinking, chewing, and inhaling various substances, some in exotic combinations.

The newest fad, popular among the celebrities of Port Diamond and Earth, and taken up eagerly by their followers, was the subtle effect attained by simply sipping ordinary wine.

"This is what wine was originally like."

The taster frowned judiciously. "Fermented grape juice? Nothing at all added?"

"Nothing."

Whoooop went the music. Craaash! God, you would think these people had had more than enough of noise during the last few hours - but evidently not.

People gasped, taking in fumes, and chewed and drank. In dark booths a few couples were rubbing each other's bodies with perfumed ointments, while the bulk of the customers ignored them. Discreet placards on the walls proclaimed the availability of antidote substances that promised to restore the Solarian brain from various kinds of intoxication to full alertness and coordination in a matter of seconds, if some call to duty did not allow one to enjoy the prolonged high otherwise attainable from the various psychoactive party materials.

Here and there, in corners of the large room, serious matters were under discussion: "Or put it this way... 'He who makes the next-to-the-last blunder wins.'"

The nearest bartender responded, off-the-wall.

Someone else commented, "A truly Zen reply."

Hours were yet to pass before some military police officer eventually realized that the manager robot had had its senses scrambled; it had started giving irrelevant answers to questions, and sometimes answering queries that had not been asked at all.

A few years ago there had been an adjoining small tourist hotel, but that building had been converted, months ago, to other uses. Putting up some temporary buildings was no problem, nor was anything strong or elaborate needed, in the absence of rain and snow and wind; probably the atolls experienced almost nothing like weather in the usual planetary sense.

The male dancer was long gone. And now again the device switched, in response to a request. Now it was putting up an enhancement of some twentieth-century 2-D movie.

The berserker raid, as Jory realized, listening to the talk around her, teeth-rattling and mind-numbing as it was, had been really of no more than moderate intensity. Obviously it was intended as a mere preliminary to an intended landing and occupation - the berserker plan called for cleansing the atoll of all life without shattering it into bits. In the face of determined Solarian resistance, even that modest objective proved impossible to attain. The land-based defenses, forewarned and forearmed, were still strong when it was over.

Nash, after agonizing briefly over the question, reluctantly confirmed for Jory his decision to get himself, his crew, and his documentary out. He had accomplished what he'd come for. Now the job called for getting the material he'd gathered into shape. Staying here would only endanger what they had so far achieved.

The commander of the garrison was ready to see him go. The colonel had a million other things to tend to that were more important than recordings or public relations.

Nash, prominently displaying his bandaged arm while he sipped a beer, told Jory he had been about to send for her.

"Here I am."

"Okay, girl, I want you to pack up and get ready to move out."

Jory bristled. "What? Who? Just me?"

He grinned evilly, and seemed unconscious of the fact that his opposite hand came over to stroke his bandage. At least today he was keeping his artificial eye in his head where it belonged. "No. Fact is, I'm leaving too, pulling out the whole crew. Got what we came for."

"I'd like to stay."

"No, ma'am. We've got what we came for, enough to make the documentary."

It was a good point. "All right. When?"

Nash looked at his old-fashioned wristwatch. "We're lifting off in about two hours."

"You're the boss."

"Damn right. Don't forget it." Nash grunted some additional comment to the effect that no woman was going to take that kind of risk while he moved on to safety; no, sir, not if he could help it.

Jory sighed. It was as if the hundreds of women who were here in the military, among the volunteer defenders, had escaped his notice entirely. Well, it was a job.

When she left the tavern it was with mixed feelings, including a twinge of disappointment. Now she could wish that she'd made some fuss earlier about her own trivial combat wound; if she'd ever been given a medal to wear, she'd certainly be wearing it now, just to irritate the boss.