aggression and
desist from it. You have not done so. You have persisted in your
blood-thirsty folly, despite this nation's efforts to reach an agreement
for armistice. Therefore I am forced to command you, in the Name of
Almighty God, to surrender immediately or be destroyed. I shall allow
you one day in which to give evidence of submission. If such evidence is
not forthcoming, I shall implement this directive by a total
attack....'"

Mitch Laskell switched off the short wave set and muttered an oath. He
squeezed his way up through the narrow conning tower and sat on the
small deck, leaning back against the rocket-launcher and dangling his
feet in the calm ocean. The night was windless and warm, with the summer
stars eyeing the earth benignly. But despite the warmth, he felt clammy;
his hands were shaking a little as he lit a cigarette.

The newscast--it came as no surprise. The world had known for weeks that
the Manlin Bill would be passed, and that Garson would be given absolute
powers to lead the nation through the war. And his ultimatum to the
enemy was no surprise. Garson had long favored an all-out radiological
attack, employing every nuclear weapon the country could muster.
Heretofore both sides had limited themselves to non-rigged atomic
explosives, and had refrained from using bacterial weapons. Garson
wanted to take off the boxing-gloves in favor of steel gauntlets. And
now it would happen--the all-out attack, the masterpiece of homicidal
engineering, the final word in destruction.

* * * * *

Mitch, reclining in loneliness against the rocket-launcher, blew a
thoughtful cloud of cigarette smoke toward the bright yellow eye of
Arcturus, almost directly overhead, and wondered why the Constellation
Booetes suddenly looked like a big club ready to fall on the earth, when
it had always reminded him of a fly-swatter about to slap the Corona
Borealis. He searched himself for horror, but found only a gloomy
uneasiness. It was funny, he thought; five years ago men would have been
outraged at the notion of an American absolutism, with one man ruling by
decree. But now that it had happened, it was not to hard to accept. He
wondered at it.

And he soon decided that almost any fact could be accepted calmly after
it had already happened. Men would be just as calm after their cities
had been reduced to rubble. The human capacity for calmness was almost
unlimited, _ex post facto_, because