t of things, and he sweated through the cold
January weather.

* * * * *

It had been two weeks since the world heard the first details of
Formosa, and the details were so grim now that you couldn't use them
at all. Just a blanket story.

That night, the map of the world behind his desk, Bill Howard leaned
toward his audience.

He told them the human side of the story of Formosa.

He spoke of the people there, the pawns in a game of international
suicide, real people, not just statistics.

He described a family, and he made them the family next door. Mother,
father, children, watching one another die, not prettily but with all
the torture that the laboratories of the world could dream and put
together. A family that watched each other go insane, knowing what was
happening. A family that watched each other die, writhing and
unknowing in insanity.

He took his pointer and he showed the growing perimeter of the
quarantine. He traced the location of the center of the disaster.

Then he leaned again toward his audience. "Listen, now," he said, "for
the world cannot sustain this torture."

He took a deep breath and he put the full force of his being into his
words.

"Witches of the world, unite," he said, "to make it clean, clean,
clean, Witch clean--NOW!"

The final word was out before the network censor reached the cut-off
switch.

* * * * *

The President and his cabinet put the country on a double alert.
Russia had cleaned up Formosa, they knew, and would hit the United
States with disease and ultimatums next.

The people of the world took the story with an unexpected calm. Like
Hiroshima, it was too unexpected, too big, too unimaginable. There was
a hooker somewhere, and they went about their business annoyed, angry,
worried, but quiet.

The papers editorialized on the question of who cleaned up
Formosa--who had the answers?--and left the subject of what the
possession of such a clean-up force could mean to the world, to the
statesmen. They turned as quickly as possible to other matters, for
nobody was sure what to think, and nobody told them what to think.

Bill Howard was off the air, of course. It didn't bother him. He had
a real problem now.

We've bought a little time, he thought. A little time to grow in.

We've bought a little time from the fanatics and their statesmen, from
the eggheads and their politicians, from the military