But the government
of Mekin would not care.

Mekin was a phenomenon so improbable that only those who were students
of past civilizations could really believe it. There were innumerable
references to such regimes in the histories of ancient Earth. There was,
for example, Napoleon, said people informed about such matters. With a
fraction of a fraction of one per cent of the French people actively
cooperating, he overawed the rest and then took over a nation which was
not even his own. Then he took over other nations where less than a
fraction of a fraction of one per cent concurred. Then he took soldiers
from those second-order conquests to make third-order conquests, and
then soldiers from the third to make fourth.

There was Mussolini, said the learned men. He had organized a group of
rowdies and gangsters, and began by levying protection-money on
gambling-houses and even less reputable resorts, and with the money
increased his following. He had murdered those who opposed him and
presently he collected protection money from even the great business
corporations of his country, financing more political gangsterism until
he ruled his nation for himself and his confederates.

And there was Hitler, said the historically-minded. In the beginning his
followers never dared show themselves in the uniforms they adopted,
because their fellow-countrymen hated everything they stood for. But
before the end came they worshipped him. They murdered millions at his
command, but they died because of him, too.

There was Lenin, and there was Stalin. Specialists in history could talk
very learnedly about the developments on Mekin which paralleled the
cabals headed by Lenin, and later, Stalin. Theirs was a much more
durable organization than those of Napoleon and Mussolini and Hitler.

The ruling clique on Mekin had begun in this manner.

Mekin had once had a cause to which all its officials paid lip-service
and some possibly believed in. Because of this cause it was the
organization and not the individual who was apotheosized. Therefore,
there could be fierce battles among members of the ruling class. There
could be conspiracies. The last three dictators of Mekin had been
murdered in palace revolutions, and the current dictator was more
elaborately protected from his confreres than any mere hereditary tyrant
ever needed to be. But Mekin remained a strong and dynamic world,
engaged in the endless subjugation of other worlds for a purp