And we're hoping you
get the cure so we can win. With that, maybe we'll whip them."
It was a crazy war, with each side killing more of its own men than of
the enemy. The runners were increasing, and Jake's army was learning to
shoot the poor devils mercifully and go on. They knew, at least, that
there was no current danger of infection. In the Lobby towns, more were
dying of panic in their efforts to escape the runners.
Desert towns had joined the villages, reluctantly but inevitably, to
give the rebels nearly three-quarters of the total population. But the
Lobby forces and the few cities held most of the real fighting equipment
and they were ready to wait until Earth could send out unmanned rockets,
loaded with atomics, which could cut through space at ten times normal
speed.
There were vague lines of battle, but time was the vital factor. The
Lobbies waited to steal a cure for the plague and the villages waited
until they could announce it and demand surrender as its price.
It looked as if both sides were doomed to disappointment, however. He
and Chris had put in every spare minute between moving and the minimum
of sleep in searching for something that would check the disease. It
couldn't grow in an Earth-normal body, but it didn't die, either. And
there wasn't enough normal food available to permit the switch-over for
more than a handful of people.
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