"Ungh ungh!" the log-shaped sergeant barked out, pointing a slim tentacle at the reclining I.P. men. "Ungh ungh!"
But the B.D.s were physically incapable of duplicating the soldiers' postures. Underneath all that hair, their bodies were not much more than wooden posts, stiff, erect, and not given to bending at the waist. The bristling sergeant might as well have saved his breath.
"If only the Squeakers were as friendly as these fellows," Captain Staley murmured. "But sadly, they don't have the least thing in common. Their hate for us is equaled, if not exceeded, by their fear of the B.D.s. Seems the B.D.s have some sort of racial disease that is fatal to the Squeakers if they come in contact with it. That's why you'll never see any members of these two races palling around together. Too bad the B.D.s aren't intelligent enough to cooperate with us. With their aid, we could wipe out the Squeakers in record time."
A strange occurrence was taking place in the ranks of the Barber's Delights. The exhausted sergeant had ceased his shouting, and the creatures stood about in stiff poses of inactivity. Suddenly a cloud of blue dust whooshed from the flat top of a barrel-like B.D. and the thing disappeared in a flurry of fur and smoke.
"Noon," Sergeant Hallihan said cryptically.
Others of the B.D.s were going through the same process. It was as if the ground had opened and swallowed them up. Hallihan's heckler blew out a great cloud of smoke and dwindled rapidly away to nothing. In one minute, the unconcerned group of half-animals was lessened by a third. The I.P. men sat with open mouths, craning their necks over companions' shoulders to better witness the event. Although they had seen it many times in the past weeks, the weird exhibition never failed to impress them.
"Those things never miss," one soldier said in awe. "Come noon or midnight, and boom!—away they go, right on the dot. S'crazy."