The first bird arrived a few moments before the radio began coming in clear.
"Sakura," Hartford said, this being the prompt-word to which the blabrigar was trained to reply.
"Fifty men, sir; fifty men, sir; on the way, sir; on the way, sir," the bird chanted into Hartford's ear. He let the bird rest on his shoulder; it would have to fly back to the scout who'd sent it soon, to tell him to join the rest of them at the ambush-point.
The sun was low in the sky. H-hour was near. The signals began coming closer-together. "Saw one Stinker off your left flank, Miller.... Left flank-guard reporting, sir. That Gook took off due east. Blabrigar on his shoulder.... Lieutenant Felix here. Anything on the right flank?... Nothing, sir.... Keep moving, Lieutenant." This last voice was the colonel's.
Hartford frowned. If Nasty Nef had come out in person, the game would have to be played fast and dirty.
Hartford set his bitcher low. "Abunai yo!" he said to his guerrillas, sprawled out all along the ledge like figurines on a mantlepiece. "Be cautious. Shoot your dart and get behind something. From now on, be silent. The enemy is near."
Takeko spoke: "You mean, Lee-chan, that our brothers draw near." The other Kansans smiled. Some saluted, a gesture they'd observed among the Axenites they'd been spying upon for the past few days.
The first of the scouts came galloping up the gullet of the canyon. Without a sound he signaled his watching comrades, invisible above him. He made a circle with his hand, pointing up. That meant the Regiment's veeto-platform was scouting ahead of the approaching Axenites. The first man slapped his giraffu to hasten it up the pass, past the Daibutsu. Two other scouts, the foxes urging on the hounds, came shouting into the canyon. Neither of them was Ito Jiro. As his name signified, Jiro was the youngest son of Ito-san, the knife-maker. He was the darling of the family. Where was he? Hartford worried.
The radio, no longer masked by the rocks, was filled with information. Hartford heard the veeto-pilot reporting: "They're headed up the gulch past the big idol, sir," he said. "There's a village up there. That's where they're probably headed. What do you want me to do, sir?" The platform hovered over the canyon, unwilling to work its way into the jagged, bamboo-and-pine-prickly fissure.
"Keep in touch, Sky-Eye," Nef ordered. "We're coming right up."
"Felix here, sir," the lieutenant reported. "We've got one of the Gooks prisoner. He's just a kid. Doesn't seem to know a thing."
"Hold him till we get someone who talks Stinker," Nef said.
They got Jiro, Hartford thought. Damn.

The first of the troopers, an officer in the blue safety-suit, spearheaded the column. "Nothing in sight yet," Felix's voice reported. The officer signaled "Come on" with the sweep of his arm, and the first squad of Axenites, dispersed as skirmishers, formed themselves into a file to enter the canyon. The veeto-platform above kept the foliage pressed down with its jet of air, stirring dust that both improved concealment and threatened to trigger a sneeze from one of the ambushers.
Hartford peered cautiously over the edge of the shelf. He'd set his forces far enough back in the canyon that the entire Axenite column would be encased. "Sir, this is Felix," the radio said. "Do you agree, sir, that I should place one squad in reserve till the rest get through the gully?"
"Peel off one squad and stay with it, Felix," Nef said.
Felix's voice again: "Sir, it was our Lieutenant Hartford that the Gooks got. I'd like to go in early."
"Very well, Felix. Miller, hold your squad where it is. Disperse them well, and wait my order before bringing them into the ditch. Confirm."
"Done and done, sir," Miller snapped.
The first two dozen troopers were in the canyon now, half the Axenite force. Colonel Nef had shown the good sense to don an ordinary blue safety-suit; his scarlet command-suit would have made him a splendid target. Another squad entered, their Dardick-rifles held at the ready. This would have to be quick, Hartford thought, or he'd lose his entire corps at their first volley. He raised his hand, a signal visible only to Takeko. She cupped her hands around her mouth and whistled the call of the nightingale, "Ho-o-kekyo ... kekyo!"
Before the echoed notes had died, the darts had found their targets.
The radio was a clutter of undisciplined Damn's, cries of "I've been hit!" One trooper, quicker than the rest, caught sight of a Kansan. He raised his rifle and purred out a stream of Dardick-pellets. Yoritomo, apprentice to the paper-maker, tumbled over the lip of the ledge, his blowpipe falling with him like a jack-straw. There was a babble on the radio. Nef overrode all other circuits to command: "At ease! Rake the ledges with sustained fire."
The canyon was blasted with a confetti of metal and spalled rock as the troopers hosed the shelves with bullets.
The angle made aiming impossible. But by luck and the intensity of the barrage another man, the carpenter's son, had toppled to his death.
"Sky-Eye! Get your butt down here!" Nef bellowed. "Decontamination Team! Bring the vehicle to the mouth of the canyon. We've got men septic." He tongued-on his bitcher and bellowed at the troopers. "On the double, through the ditch."
"Yuke!" Hartford shouted to the men far up the wall, in the niche that held the Daibutsu. "Go!"

The sappers at the back of the giant bronze statue bent to their levers. The tons of metal scooted slowly forward, hit the fat-smeared edge of the shelf. As quietly as a man rocking forward in prayer, the Daibutsu dropped head-down into the ravine. It struck the bottom with the sound of a great gong, and rocked, unshattered, plugging the throat of the canyon, standing as a dam. The hands of the Enlightened One were held i............