Down the hill, immense zigzagging ramps descend pompously over rows of tiger-striped arches to the strand of ramifying railway lines that feed the port from the south. "It’s like standing in the drain of a fucking pinball machine," says B. Shaftoe, looking up at the way they have just come, thinking about what might come rolling down out of the Casbah. They head south along those railway lines and come into a zone of ore dumps and coal heaps and smokestacks, clearly recognizable to Great Lakes Eagle Scout Shaftoe, but here operated through some kind of cross-cultured gear train about a million meshings deep. They pull up in front of the Société Algérienne d’Éclairage et de Force , a double-smokestacked behemoth with the biggest coal-pile of all. They’re in the middle of nowhere, but it’s obvious that they are expected. Here—as everywhere else that Detachment 2702 goes—a strange Rank Inflation Effect is taking place. The coffin is carried into the SAEF by two lieutenants, a captain, and a major, overseen by a colonel! There is not a single enlisted man in sight, and Bobby Shaftoe, a mere sergeant, worries about what sort of work they’ll find for him . There is also a Paperwork Negation Effect going on here; whenever Shaftoe expects to be stalled by the usual half an hour’s worth of red tape, an anxious officer runs up and waves his hands furiously and he is allowed to proceed.