Anna, get Mom in here. We want to get her to
tell that gang that from now on, at noon and for a couple of hours
after sunset, when the work's done, there will be free public
pump-concerts, over the village plaza."
* * * * *
Ayesha and her warrant-officer helper and a Marine lieutenant
went out hastily. Everybody else faced the screen to watch. In
fifteen minutes, an airjeep was coming in on the village. As it
circled low, a new sound, the steady _thugg-thugg, thugg-thugg_
of the pump, began.
The yelling and twittering and the blaring of the peace-horn died out
almost at once. As the jeep circled down to housetop level, the two
contending faction-clumps broke apart; their component individuals
moved into the center of the plaza and squatted, staring up, letting
the delicious waves of sound caress them.
"Do we have to send a detail in a jeep to do that twice a day?"
Gofredo asked. "We keep a snooper over the village; fit it with
a loud-speaker and a timer; it can give them their _thugg-thugg_,
on schedule, automatically.
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