"DeCastries?" Cletus asked Mondar.
"He's here," said Mondar. "He and Pater Ten are just finishing their talk with some of my fellow Exotics." As he spoke he was leading the two of them toward the small bar in one corner of the room. "Punch for whatever you'd like to drink. I've got to see some people right now - but I'd like to talk to you later, Cletus. Is that all right? I'll look you up just as soon as I'm free."
"By all means," said Cletus. He turned toward the bar as Mondar went off. Arvid was already picking up the glass of beer for which he had punched.
"Sir?" asked Arvid. "Can I get you... "
"Nothing right now, thanks," said Cletus. He was glancing around again and his eye lit upon Eachan Khan, standing alone with a glass in his hand next to a wide window screen. "Stay around here, will you, Arvid? So I can find you easily when I want you?"
"Yes, sir," said Arvid.
Cletus went toward Eachan Khan. The older man glanced around with a stony face, as though to discourage conversation, as he came up. Then, seeing who it was, Eachan's face relaxed - insofar as it could ever be said to be relaxed.
"Evening," Eachan said. "I understand you've met your commanding officer."
"News travels fast," said Cletus.
"We're a military post, after all," said Eachan. His gaze went past Cletus for a moment, and then returned. "Also, I hear you suggested something about a new infiltration of Neulander guerrillas through fitter's Pass?"
"That's right," said Cletus. "You don't think it's likely?"
"Very likely - now you've pointed it out," said Eachan. "By the way - I got hold of those three volumes on tactics you've already published. The Exotic library here had copies. I've only had time to glance through them, so far" - his eyes suddenly locked with Cletus' - "but it looks like sound stuff. Very sound... I'm still not sure I follow your tactics of mistake, though. As deCastries said, combat's no fencing match."
"No," said Cletus, "but the principle's applicable, all the same. For example, suppose a simple tactical trap you lay for an enemy consists of enticing his forces to strike at what seems to be a weak section of your line. But when they do, your line pulls back and draws them into a pocket, where you surround them and pinch them off with hidden, superior forces of your own."
"Nothing new about that," said Eachan.
"No," Cletus said, "but apply the tactics of mistake to essentially the same situation. Only this time, in a succession of contacts with the enemy, you entice him into picking up a series of what seem to be small, easy victories. Meanwhile, however, you're getting him to engage a larger amount of his available forces with each contact. Then, when he finally commits the greatest part of his strength for what he conceives as one more easy win - you convert that contact into a trap and he discovers that you've gradually drawn him into a field position where he's outflanked and completely at your mercy."
"Tricky," Eachan frowned. "Too tricky, perhaps... "
"Not necessarily," said Cletus. "Imperial China and Russia both used a crude version of this, drawing invaders deeper into their territories, until the invader suddenly realized he was too far from his supply and support bases and completely surrounded by the native enemy... Napoleon and the retreat from Moscow."
"Still - " Eachan broke off suddenly. His gaze had gone past Cletus; and Cletus, turning, saw that Dow deCastries was now in the room. The tall, dark and elegant Secretary to the Outworlds for the Coalition was now standing in conversation with Melissa, by the opposite wall.
Glancing from the two figures back to Eachan, Cletus saw that the older man's face had become as cold and still as the first sheet of ice on the surface of a deep pond on a windless winter day.
"You've known deCastries awhile now?" Cletus asked. "You and Melissa?"
"The women all like him." Eachan's voice was grim. His gaze was still on Melissa and Dow.
"Yes," said Cletus. "By the way - " He broke off, and waited. With reluctance, Eachan removed his gaze from the pair across the room and looked back at him.
"I was going to say," said Cletus, "that General Traynor came up with something strange when I was talking to him. He said he didn't have any jump troops here in Bakhalla. That surprised me. I did some reading up on you Dorsais before I came out here, and I thought a jump course was part of the training you gave your mercenaries?"
"We do," replied Eachan, dryly. "But General Traynor's like a lot of your Alliance and Coalition commanders. He doesn't think our training's good enough to qualify the men for jump-troop work - or a lot of other combat field duties."
"Hmm," said Cletus. "Jealousy? Or do you suppose they look on you mercenaries as competitors of a sort?"
"I don't say that," said Eachan, frostily. "You draw your own conclusions, of course." His eyes showed a desire once more to wander back across the room to Melissa and Dow.
"Oh, and something else I was going to ask you," said Cletus. "The assignment sheets for Bakhalla that I looked at back on Earth listed some Navy officers, on detached duty as marine engineers - something about river-and-harbors work. But I haven't seen any Navy people around."
"Commander Wefer Linet," said Eachan, promptly, "wearing civvies, down at the end of the couch across the room there. Come along. I'll introduce you."
Cletus followed Eachan at a long slant across the room, which brought them to a couch and several chairs where half a dozen men sat talking. Here, they were less than a quarter of the distance they had been before from Dow and Melissa - but still too distant to catch the conversation going on between the two.
"Commander," said Eachan, as they reached the couch, and a short, square-faced man in his middle thirties got up promptly from the end of the couch, a drink still in his hand, "I'd like you to meet Colonel Cletus Grahame, just out from Earth, to be attached to General Traynor's staff - tactical expert."
"Happy to meet you, Colonel," said Wefer Linet, shaking Cletus' hand with a hard, friendly grip. "Dream something up for us to do besides dredging river mouths and canals and my men'll love you."
"I'll do that," said Cletus, smiling. "It's a promise."
"Good!" said Wefer energetically.
"You've got those large, underwater bulldozers, haven't you?" asked Cletus. "I read about them in the Alliance Forces Journal, seven months back, I think."
"The Mark V, yes," Linet's face lit up. "Six of them here. Care for a ride in one someday? They're beautiful pieces of machinery. Bat Traynor wanted to take them out of the water and use them knocking down jungles for him. Do it better than anything you Army people have, of course. But they're not designed for land work. I couldn't tell the general no, myself, but I insisted on direct orders from Earth and kept my fingers crossed. Luckily, they turned him down back there."
"I'll take you up on that ride," said Cletus. Eachan was once more watching Melissa and Dow with a stony concentration. Cletus glanced about the room and discovered Mondar, standing talking to a pair of women who looked like the wives of diplomatic personnel.
As if Cletus' gaze had an actual physical touch to it, the Exotic turned toward him just then, smiled and nodded. Cletus nodded back and turned once more to Wefer, who had launched into an explanation of how his Mark V's worked, at depths down to a thousand feet or in the teeth of thirty-knot currents and tides.
"It looks as if I may be tied up for the next few days, out of the city," Cletus said. "But after that, if for some reason I shouldn't leave town... "
"Give me a ring, anytime," Wefer said. "We're working on the main harbor here at Bakhalla right now. I can have you off the docks and down inside my command unit in ten minutes, if you'll just phone me half an hour or so ahead of time to make arrangements... Hello, Outbond. The Colonel here's going to take a ride with me one of these days in a Mark V."