s
combination secretary and backstop for oratory quaked as he listened.

"The timing is all wrong, but the fact is a fact. It must be a fact,
or every operative we have should be Siberianized.

"We must, of course, act. The action must be immediate. We are zeroed
in...."

"No!" Vlada heard himself speak, and his whole body was outraged at
the action. He stood white, trembling. But he had spoken, and try as
he would, the word could not be pulled back.

"No? My little dove, and what would you suggest, then, if we are not
to defend ourselves from this capitalistic aggression? That we shall
sit with our hands folded and allow them to dictate the terms of our
surrender? Speak!"

"Send them a pest-sub, and see if they can handle the bacteria we have
developed!" Vlada's throat was dry, and his voice was not his own. No
power on earth could have made him open his mouth, but he had opened
it, and he fully expected the lightning to strike him at that moment.

"Send them ... ah, of course. They can cure their own, and they have
taken a so-dramatic method of saying that they can cure their own. But
can they cure the products of our laboratories? Now that, we shall
see.

"But we shall be as subtle--more subtle, even, than were our
capitalistic friends. We shall not send our sub to them. We shall send
it to a small island, and we shall see whether they wish to taste the
death, the strangulation and crippling and suffering, the destruction
of sanity that shall be the lot of those islanders...."

* * * * *

In Peiping the distress was no less acute--but the reaction was
somewhat different.

The scientist being grilled had no hope left. He could answer
honestly, for there was nothing that could save him from that which
was in store.

"The strain was virulent. There is no known antidote--nothing could
have saved that port, nor most of Africa and most of India--and there
was no way for the world to know from whence came the death-dealing
submarine except that it be the mighty America.

"The bombs should have come in retaliation, spreading their death and
adding to the impetus of the epidemic, so that enough of the world was
wiped out to give the great People of the Dragon room into which to
expand. We calculated that a third of our own would be wiped out in
the holocaust, which would have relieved us of many problems. The tan
peoples of India and the darker peoples of Africa should have sued