Sixth Column

CHAPTER THREE

The exterior alarms brought Ardmore to the portal long before Thomas whistled the tune that activated the door. Ardmore watched the door by televisor from the guard room, his thumb resting on a control, ready to burn out of existence any unexpected visitor. When he saw Thomas enter his thumb relaxed, but at the sight of his companion it tightened again. A PanAsian! He almost blasted them in sheer reflex before he checked himself. It was possible, barely possible, that Thomas had brought a prisoner to question..

"Major! Major Ardmore! It's Thomas."

"Stand where you are. Both of you."

"It's all right, Major. He's an American. I vouch for him."

"Maybe." The voice that reached Thomas over the announcing phone was still grimly suspicious. "Just the same -- peel off all of your clothes, both of you." They did so, Thomas biting his lip in humiliation, Mitsui trembling in agitation. He did not understand it and he felt trapped. "Now turn around slowly and let me look you over," the voice commanded.

Having satisfied himself that they were unarmed, Ardmore told them to stand still and wait, then called Graham on the intercommunication circuit. "Graham!"

"Yes, sir."

"Report to me at once in the guard room."

"But, Major, I can't. Dinner will be --"

"Never mind dinner! Move!"

"Yes, sir!"

Ardmore pointed out the situation to him in the screen. "You go down there and handcuff both of them from behind. Secure the Asiatic first. Make him back up to you, and watch yourself. If he tries to jump you, I may have to wing you, too."

"I don't like this, Major," Graham protested. "Thomas is all right. He wouldn't be up to any hanky-panky."

"Sure, man, 1 know he's all right, too. But he may be drugged and under control. This set-up could be a Trojan Horse gag. Now get down and do as you are told. "

While Graham was gingerly carrying out his unwelcome assignment and making himself, in fact, eligible for a

Congressional Medal which he would never receive, for his artist's imagination perceived too clearly the potential danger and forced him to call up courage for the task -- Ardmore phoned Brooks.

"Doctor, can you drop what you are doing?"

"Why, perhaps I can. Yes, I may say so. What is it you wish?"

"Then come to my office. Thomas is back. I want to know whether or not he is under the influence of drugs."

"But I am not a medical man --"

"I know that, but you are the nearest thing we've got to one."

"Very well, sir."

Dr. Brooks examined Thomas' pupils, tried his knee jerks, and checked his pulse and respiration. "I should say that he was perfectly normal, though exhausted and laboring under excitement. Naturally, this is not a positive diagnosis. If I had more time --"

"It will do for now. Thomas, I trust you won't hold it against me if we leave you locked up until we have examined your Asiatic pal."

"Certainly not, Major," Thomas told him with a wry grin, "since you're going to, anyhow."

Frank Mitsui's flesh quivered and sweat dripped from his face when Brooks stuck the hypodermic into him, but he did not draw away. Presently he relaxed under the influence of the drug that releases inhibitions, and strips from the speech centers the protection of cortical censorship. His face became peaceful.

But it was not peaceful a few minutes later when they began to question him, nor was there peace in any of their faces. This was truth, too raw and too brutal for any man to stand. Deep lines carved themselves from nose to jaw in Ardmore's face as he listened to the little man's pitiful story. No matter what line they started him on, he always came back to the scene of his dead children, his broken household. Finally Ardmore put a stop to it.

"Give him the antidote, doe. I can't stand any more of this. I've found out all I need to know."

Ardmore shook hands with him solemnly after he had returned to full awareness. "We are glad to have you with us, Mr. Mitsui. And we'll put you to some work that will give you a chance to get some of your own back. Right now I want Dr. Brooks to give you a soporific that will let you get about sixteen hours' sleep; then we can think about swearing you in and what kind of work you can be most useful doing."

"I don't need any sleep, Mister ... Major."

"Just the same, you are going to get some. And so is Thomas, as soon as he has reported. In fact --" He broke off and studied the apparently impassive face. "In fact, I want you to take a sleeping pill every night. Those are orders. You'll draw them from me and take them in my presence every night before you go to bed." There are certain bonus advantages to military absolutism. Ardmore could not tolerate the idea of the little yellow man lying awake and staring at the ceiling.

Brooks and Graham would quite plainly have liked to stay and hear Thomas' report, but Ardmore refused to notice the evident fact and dismissed them. He wished first to evaluate the data himself.

"Well, Lieutenant, I'm damn glad you're back."

"I'm glad to be back. Did you say 'lieutenant'? I assume that my rank reverts."

"Why should it? As a matter of fact, I am trying to figure out a plausible reason for commissioning Graham and Scheer. It would simplify things around here to eliminate social differences. But that is a side issue. Let's hear what you've done. I suppose you've come back with all our problems solved and tied up with string?"

"Not likely." Thomas grinned and relaxed.

"I didn't expect it. But seriously, between ourselves, I've got to pull something out of the hat, and it's got to be good. The scientific staff is beginning to crowd me, particularly Colonel Calhoun. There's no damn sense in their making miracles in the laboratory unless I can dope out some way to apply those miracles in strategy and tactics."

"Have they really gone so far?"

"You'd be surprised. They've taken that so-called 'Ledbetter effect' and shaken it the way a terrier shakes a rat. They can do anything with it but peel the potatoes and put out the cat."

"Really?"

"Really. "

"What sort of things can they do?"

"Well --" Ardmore took a deep breath. "Honestly, I don't know where to begin. Wilkie has tried to keep me posted with simplified explanations, but, between ourselves, I didn't understand more than every other word. One way of putting it is to say that they've discovered atomic control -- oh, I don't mean atom-splitting, or artificial radioactivity. Look -- we speak of space, and time, and matter, don't we?"

"Yes. There's Einstein's space-time concept, of course. "

"Of course. Space-time is standard stuff in high school these days. But these men really mean it. They really mean that space and time and mass and energy and radiation and gravity are all simply different ways of thinking about the same thing. And if you once catch on to how just one of them works, you have the key to all of them. According to Wilkie, physicists up to now, even after the A-bomb was developed, were just fooling around the edges of the subject; they had the beginnings of a unified field theory, but they didn't really believe it themselves; they usually acted as if these were all as different as the names for them.

"Apparently Ledbetter hit on the real meaning of radiation, and that has given Calhoun and Wilkie the key to everything else in physics. Is that clear?" he added with a grin.

"Not very," Thomas admitted. "Can you give me some idea of what they can do with it?"

"Well, to begin with, the original Ledbetter effect, the thing that killed most of the personnel here, Wilkie calls an accidental side issue. Brooks says that the basic radiation affected the colloidal dispersal of living tissue; those that were killed were coagulated by it. It might just as well have been set to release surface tension -- in fact, they did that the other day, exploded a half of beefsteak like so much dynamite."

"Huh?"

"Don't ask me how; I'm just repeating the explanation given me. But the point is, they seem to have found out what makes matter tick. They can explode it -- sometimes -- and use it for a source of power. They can transmute it into any element they want. They seem to be confident that they know what to do to find out how gravity works, so that they will be able to handle gravity the way we now handle electricity. "

"I thought gravity was not considered a force in the modern concepts."

"So it isn't but, then, 'force' isn't force, either, in unified field theory. Hell's bells, you've got me bogged down in

language difficulties. Wilkie says that mathematics is the only available language for these ideas."

"Well, I guess I'll just have to get along without understanding it. But, frankly, I don't see how they managed to come so far so fast. That changes just about everything we thought we knew. Honestly, how is it that it took a hundred fifty years to go from Newton to Edison, yet these boys can knock out results like that in a few weeks?"

"I don't know myself. The same point occurred to me, and I asked Calhoun about it. He informed me in that schoolmaster way of his that it was because those pioneers did not have the tensor calculus, vector analysis, and matrix algebra."

"Well, I wouldn't know," observed Thomas. "They don't teach that stuff in law school."

"Nor me," admitted Ardmore. "I tried looking over some of their work sheets. I can do simple algebra, and I've had some calculus, though I haven't used it for years, but I couldn't make sense out of this stuff. It looked like Sanskrit; most of the signs were different, and even the old ones didn't seem to mean the same things. Look -- I thought that a times b always equaled b times a."

"Doesn't it?"

"Not when these boys get through kicking it around. But we are getting way off the subject. Bring me up to date."

"Yes, sir." Jeff Thomas talked steadily for a long time, trying very hard to paint a detailed picture of everything he had seen and heard and felt. Ardmore did not interrupt him except with questions intended to clarify points. There was a short silence when he had concluded. Finally Ardmore said:

"I think I must have had a subconscious belief that you would come back with some piece of information that would fall right into place and tell me what to do. But I don't see much hope in what you have told me. How to win back a country that is as completely paralyzed and as carefully guarded as you describe the United States to be is beyond me."

"Of course, I didn't see the whole country. About two hundred miles from here is as far as I got."

"Yes, but you got reports from the other hobos that covered the whole country, didn't you?"

"Yes. "

"And it was all about the same. I think we can safely assume that what you heard, confirmed by what you saw, gives a fairly true picture. How recent do you suppose was the dope you got by the grapevine telegraph?"

"Well -- maybe three or four days old news from the East coast -- no more than that."

"That seems reasonable. News always travels by the fastest available route. It's certainly not very encouraging. And yet --" He paused and scowled in evident puzzlement. "And yet I have a feeling that you said something that was the key to the whole matter. I can't put my finger on it. I began to get an idea while you were talking, then some other point came up and diverted my mind, and I lost it."

"Maybe it would help if I started in again at the beginning," suggested Thomas.

"No need to. I'll play the recording back piece by piece sometime tomorrow, if I don't think of it in the meantime. "

They were interrupted by peremptory knocking at the door. Ardmore called out, "Come in!" Colonel Calhoun entered.

"Major Ardmore, what's this about a PanAsiatic prisoner?"

"Not quite that, Colonel, but we do have an Asiatic here now. He's American-born."

Calhoun brushed aside the distinction. "Why wasn't I informed? I have notified you that I urgently require a man of Mongolian blood for test experimentation."

"Doctor, with the skeleton staff we have, it is difficult to comply with all the formalities of military etiquette. You were bound to learn of it in the ordinary course of events -- in fact, it seems that you were informed in some fashion."

Calhoun snorted. "Through the casual gossip of subordinates!"

"I'm sorry, Colonel, but it couldn't be helped. Just at the moment I am trying to receive Thomas' reconnaissance report."

"Very well, sir." Calhoun was icily formal. "Will you be good enough to have the Asiatic report to me at once?"

"I can't do that. He is asleep, drugged, and there is no way to produce him for you before tomorrow. Besides, while I am quite sure that he will be entirely cooperative in any useful experimentation, he is an American citizen and a civilian under our protection -- not a prisoner. We'll have to take it up with him."

Calhoun left as abruptly as he had come. "Jeff," mused Ardmore, glancing after him, "speaking strictly off the record -- oh, strictly! -- if there ever comes a time when we are no longer bound down by military necessity, I'm going to paste that old beezer right in the puss!"

"Why don't you clamp down on him?"

"I can't, and he knows it. He's invaluable, indispensable. We've absolutely got to have his brains for research, and you can't conscript brains just by handing out orders. Y'know, though, in spite of his brilliance, I sometimes think he's just a little bit cracked."

"Shouldn't be surprised. What does he want Frank Mitsui so bad for?"

"Well, that's somewhat involved. They've proved that the original Ledbetter effect depends on a characteristic of the life form involved -- you might call it a natural frequency. It seems that everybody has his own wavelength, or wavelengths. The notion seemed like so much astrology to me, but Dr. Brooks says that it is not only the straight dope; it isn't even new. He showed me a paper by a chap named Fox, at the University of London, 'way back in 1945 -- Fox showed that each individual rabbit had hemoglobin with its own individual wavelength; it absorbed that wavelength in spectroscopic analysis, that one wavelength and no other. You could tell two rabbits apart with it, or you could tell a rabbit from a dog, simply by the spectra of their hemoglobins.

"This Dr. Fox tried to do the same thing with humans, but it didn't work -- no distinguishable difference in wavelengths. But Calhoun and Wilkie have rigged a spectroscope for the spectrum Ledbetter was playing with, and it shows clearly separate wavelengths for each sample of human blood. Conversely, if they set up a tuned Ledbetter projector and start running down or up the scale, when they come to your individual, unique frequency, your red blood cells start absorbing energy, the hemoglobins protein breaks down and -- Spung! -- you're dead. I'm standing right beside you and I'm not even hurt; they haven't come to my frequency. Now Brooks has an idea that these frequencies come by groups according to races. He thinks they can tune it to discriminate by races, to knock over all the Asiatics in a group and not touch the white men, and vice versa."

Thomas shivered. "Whew! That would be a weapon. "

"Yes, it would. It's just on paper so far, but they want to test it on Mitsui. As I gather what they intended to do, they don't intend to kill him, but it's bound to be dangerous as all hell to Mitsui."

"Frank won't mind chancing it," Thomas commented.

"No, I don't suppose he would." It seemed to Ardmore that it would probably be a favor to Mitsui to give him a clean, painless death in the laboratory. "Now about another matter. It seems to me we ought to be able to work up a sort of permanent secret service, using your hobo pals and their sources of information. Let's talk about it."

Ardmore gained a few days' respite in which to consider further the problem of military use of the weapons at his disposal while the research staff tested their theories concerning the interrelation between racial types and the improved Ledbetter effect. The respite did him no good. He had a powerful weapon, yes; in fact, many powerful weapons, for it seemed that the new principles they had tapped had fully as protean possibilities as electricity. It seemed extremely likely that if the United States defense forces had had, one year earlier, the tools now available in the Citadel, the United States would never have fallen.

But six men cannot whip an empire -- not by brute force. The emperor could, if necessary, expend six million men to defeat six. The hordes of the empire could come at them barehanded and win, move over them as an avalanche moves, until they were buried under a mountain of dead flesh. Ardmore had to have an army to fight with his wonderful new weapons.

The question was: how to recruit and train such an army?

Certain it was that the PanAsians would not hold still while he went into the highways and byways and got his forces together. The thoroughness with which they had organized police surveillance of the entire population made it evident that they were acutely aware of the danger of revolution and would stamp out any such activity before it could possibly reach proportions dangerous to them.

There remained one clandestine group, the hobos.

He consulted with Thomas as to the possibility of organizing them for military purposes. Thomas shook his head at the idea.

"You can't understand the hobo temperament, Chief. There is not one in a hundred who could be depended on to observe the strict self-discipline necessary for such an enterprise. Suppose you were able to arm all of them with projectors -- I don't say that is possible, but suppose you could -- you still would not have an army; you would simply have an undisciplined rabble."

"Wouldn't they fight?"

"Oh, sure, they'd fight. They'd fight as individuals, and they would do quite a bit of slaughter until some flatface caught them off guard and winged them. "

"I wonder if we can depend on them as sources of information. "

"That's another matter. Most of the road kids won't have any idea that they are being used to obtain military information. I'll handpick not over a dozen to act as reporters to me, and I won't tell them anything they don't have to know."

Any way he looked at it, simple, straightforward military use of the new weapons was not expedient. Brutal frontal attack was for the commander who had men to expend. General U. S. Grant could afford to say, "I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," because he could lose three men to the enemy's one and still win. Those tactics were not for the commander who could not afford to lose any men. For him it must be deception, misdirection -- feint and slash and run away --"and live to fight another day." The nursery rhyme finished itself in his mind. That was it. It had to be something totally unexpected, something that the PanAsians would not realize was warfare until they were overwhelmed by it.

It would have to be something like the "fifth columns" that destroyed the European democracies from within in the tragic days that led to the final blackout of European civilization. But this would not be a fifth column of traitors, bent on paralyzing a free country; but the antithesis of that, a sixth column of patriots whose privilege it would be to destroy the morale of invaders, make them afraid, unsure of themselves.

And misdirection was the key to it, the art of fooling!

Ardmore felt a little better when he had reached that conclusion. It was something he could understand, a job suited to an advertising man. He had been trying to crack it as a military problem, but he was not a field marshal and it had been silly of him to try to make a noise like one. His mind did not work that way. This was primarily a job in publicity, a matter of mob psychology. A former boss of his, under whom he had learned the racket, used to tell him, "I can sell dead cats to the board of health with a proper budget and a free hand."

Well, he had a free hand, all right, and the budget was no problem. Of course, he could not use the newspapers and the old channels of advertising, but there would be a way. The problem now was to figure out the weak points of the PanAsians and decide how Calhoun's little gadgets could be used to play on those weak points until the PanAsians were sick of the whole deal and anxious to go home.

He did not have a plan as yet. When a man is at a loss for a course of action, he usually calls for a conference. Ardmore did.

He sketched out to them the situation up to date, including all that Thomas had learned and all that had come in by television through the conquerors' "educational" broadcasts. Then he discussed the powers that were made available to them by the research staff, and the various obvious ways in which they could be applied as military weapons, emphasizing the personnel necessary to use each type of weapon effectively. Having done so, he asked for suggestions.

"Do I understand, Major," Calhoun began, "that after rather pointedly telling us that you would make all military decisions you are now asking us to make up your mind for you?"

"Not at all, Colonel. I have still the responsibility for any decision, but this is a new sort of military situation. A suggestion from any source may prove valuable. I don't flatter myself that I have a monopoly on common sense, nor on originality. I would like for every one of us to tackle this problem and let the others criticize it. "

"Do you yourself have any plan to offer us?"

"I am reserving my opinions until the rest of you have spoken."

"Very well, sir" -- Dr. Calhoun straightened himself up -- "since you have asked for it, I will tell you what I think should be done in this situation -- what, in fact, is the only thing that can be done.

"You are aware of the tremendous power of the forces I have made available." Ardmore noticed Wilkie's mouth tighten at this allocation of credit, but neither of them interrupted. "In your resume, you underestimated them, if anything. We have a dozen fast scout cars housed here in the Citadel. By refitting them with power units of the Calhoun type they can be made faster than anything the enemy can put into the air. We will mount on them the heaviest projectors and attack. With overwhelmingly superior weapons it is only a matter of time until we will have the PanAsiatic empire beaten to its knees!"

Ardmore wondered how any man could be so blind. He did not himself wish to argue against Calhoun; he said, "Thank you, Colonel. I'll ask you to submit that plan written up in more detail. In the meantime does anyone wish to amplify or criticize the colonel's suggestion?" He waited hopefully, then added, "Come now, no plan is perfect. You must have some details to add, at least."

Graham took the, plunge. "How often do you expect to come down to eat?"

Calhoun cut in before Ardmore could call on him. "Well, I'm damned! I must say that I consider this no time for facetiousness."

"Wait a minute," protested Graham, "I didn't mean to be funny. I'm quite serious. That's my department. Those scout cars are not equipped to keep the air very long, and it seems to me that it will take quite a long time to reconquer the United States with a dozen scout cars, even if we located enough men to keep them in the air all the time. That means you have to come back to base to eat."

"Yes, and that means the base will have to be held against attack," Scheer put in suddenly.

"The base can be defended with other projectors." Calhoun's tone was scornful. "Major, I really must ask that the discussion be confined to sensible issues."

Ardmore rubbed his chin and said nothing.

Randall Brooks, who had been listening thoughtfully, pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and began to sketch. "I think Scheer has something, Dr. Calhoun. If you will look here for a moment here, at this point, is your base. The PanAsians can encircle the base with ships at a distance greater than the range of the base projectors.

The greater speed of your scout cars will be unimportant, for the enemy can well afford to use as many ships as necessary to insure our craft not getting past the blockade. It's sure that the scout cars will have the projectors with which to fight, but they can't fight a hundred ships at once, and the enemies' weapons are powerful, too -- we mustn't forget that."

"You're right they're powerful!" added Wilkie. "We can't afford to have a known base. With their bombardment rockets they could stand back a thousand miles and blow this whole mountain out of the ground, if they knew we were under it."

Calhoun stood up. "I'm not going to remain here and listen to misgivings of pusillanimous fools. My plan assumed that men would execute it." He walked stiffly out of the room.

Ardmore ignored his departure and went hurriedly on, "The objections made to Colonel Calhoun's scheme seem to me to apply to every plan for open, direct combat at this time. I have considered several and rejected them for approximately those reasons, at least for reasons of logistics -- that is to say, the problem of military supply. However, I may not have thought of some perfectly feasible solution. Does anyone have a direct warfare method to suggest, a method which will not risk personnel?"

No one answered. "Very well, bring it up later if you think of one. It seems to me that we must necessarily work by misdirection. If we can't fight the enemy directly at this time, we must fool 'em until we can."

"I see," agreed Dr. Brooks, "the bull wears himself out on the cape and never sees the sword."

"Exactly. Exactly. I only wish it were as easy as that. Now do any of you have any ideas as to how we can use what we've got without letting them know who we are, where we are, or how many we are? And now I'm going to take time out for a cigarette while you think about it."

Presently, he added, "You might bear in mind that we have two real advantages: the enemy apparently has not the slightest idea that we even exist, and our weapons are strange to them, even mysterious. Wilkie, didn't you compare the Ledbetter effect to magic?"

"I should hope to shout, Chief! It's safe to say that, aside from the instruments in our laboratories, there just isn't any way in existence to detect the forces we are working with now. You don't even know they're there. It's like trying to hear radio with your bare ears."

"That's what I mean. Mysterious. Like the Indians when they first met up with the white man's fire arms, they died and they didn't know why. Think about it. I'll shut up and let you."

Graham produced the first suggestion. "Major?"

"Yes?"

"Why couldn't we kidnap 'em?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, your idea is to throw a scare into 'em, isn't it? How about a surprise raiding party, using the Ledbetter effect. We could go in one of the scout cars at night and pick out some really big shot, maybe the prince royal himself. We knock out everybody we come in contact with the projectors, and we walk right in and snatch him."

"Any opinions about that, gentlemen?" Ardmore said, reserving his own.

"It seems to have something to it," commented Brooks. "I would suggest that the projectors be set to render unconscious for a number of hours rather than to kill. It seems to me that the psychological effect would be heightened if they simply awoke and found their big man gone. One has no recollection of what has happened under such circumstances, as Wilkie and Mitsui can testify."

"Why stop at the prince royal?" Wilkie wanted to know. "We could set up four raiding parties, two to a car, and make maybe twelve raids in a single night. That way we could knock over enough of their number-one men to really cause some disorganization."

"That seems like a good idea," Ardmore agreed. "We may not be able to pull off these raids more than once. If we could do enough damage right at the top in one blow, we might both demoralize them and set off a general uprising. What's the matter, Mitsui?"

He had noticed the Oriental looking unhappy as the plan was developed. Mitsui spoke reluctantly, "It will not work, I am afraid."

"You mean we can't kidnap them that way? Do you know something we don't about their guard methods?"

"No, no. With a force that reaches through walls and knocks a man down before he knows you are there I believe you can capture them, all right: But the results will not be as you foresee them."

"Why not?"

"Because you will gain no advantage. They will not assume that you are holding their chief men as prisoners; they will assume that each one has committed suicide. The results will be horrible."

It was purely a psychological point, with room for difference of opinion. But the white men could not believe that the PanAsians would dare to retaliate if it were made unmistakably plain to them that their sacred leaders were not dead, but at the mercy of captors. Besides, it was a plan that offered immediate action, which they were spoiling for. Ardmore finally agreed to its adoption for want of something better, although he had a feeling of misgiving which he suppressed.

For the next few days all effort was bent toward preparing the scout cars for the projected task. Scheer performed Herculean mechanical jobs, working eighteen and twenty hours a day, with the others working joyfully under his supervision. Calhoun even came off his high horse and agreed to take part in the raid, although he did not help with the "menial" work. Thomas went out on a quick scouting trip and made certain of the location of twelve well-scattered PanAsian seats of government.

In the buoyancy of spirit which resulted from a plan of campaign, any plan of campaign, Ardmore failed to remember his own decision that what was required was a sixth column, an underground, or at least, unsuspected organization which would demoralize the enemy from within. This present plan was not such a one, but an essentially military plan. He began to think of himself as, if not Napoleon, at least as a modern Swamp Rat, or Sandino, striking through the night at the professional soldiers and fading away.

But Mitsui was right.

The television receiver was used regularly, with full recording, to pick up anything that the overlords had to broadcast to their slaves. It had become something of a custom to meet in the common room at eight in the evening to listen to the regular broadcast in which new orders were announced to the population. Ardmore encouraged it; the "hate session" it inspired was, he believed, good for morale.

Two nights before the projected raid they were gathered as usual. The ugly, broad face of the usual propaganda artist was quickly replaced by another and older PanAsian whom he introduced as the "heavenly custodian of peace and order." The older man came quickly to the point. The American servants of a provincial government had committed the hideous sin of rebelling against their wise rulers and had captured the sacred person of the governor and held him prisoner in his own palace. The soldiers of the heavenly emperor had brushed aside the insane profaners in the course of which the governor had most regrettably gone to his ancestors.

A period of mourning was announced, commencing at once, which would be inaugurated by permitting the people of the province to expiate the sins of their cousins. The television scene cut from the room from which he spoke.

It came to rest on great masses of humanity, men, women, children, huddled, jammed, behind barbed wire. The pick-up came down close enough to permit the personnel of the Citadel to see the blind misery on the faces of the crowd, the wept-out children, the mothers carrying babies, the helpless fathers.

They did not have to watch those faces long. The pick-up panned over the packed mob, acre on acre of helpless human animals, then returned to a steady close-up of one section.

They used the epileptigenic ray on them. Now they no longer resembled anything human. It was, instead, as if tens of thousands of monstrous chickens had had their necks wrung all at once and had been thrown into the same pen to jerk out their death spasms. Bodies bounded into the air in bone-breaking, spine-smashing fits. Mothers threw their infants from them, or crushed them in uncontrollable, viselike squeeze.

The scene cut back to the placid face of the Asiatic dignitary. He announced with what seemed to be regret in his voice that penance for sins was not sufficient, it was necessary also to be educational, in this case to the extent of one in every thousand.

Ardmore did a quick calculation in his head. A hundred fifty thousand people! It was unbelievable.

But it was soon believed. The pick-up cut again, this time to a residential street in an American city. It followed a squad of PanAsian soldiers into the living room of a family. They were gathered about a television receiver, plainly stunned by what they had just seen. The mother was huddling a young girl child to her shoulder, trying to quiet her hysteria. They seemed stupefied, rather than frightened, when the soldiers burst into their home. The father produced his card without argument; the squad leader compared it with a list, and the soldiers attended to him.

They had evidently been instructed to use a method of killing that was not pretty.

Ardmore shut off the receiver. "The raid is off," he announced. "Go to bed, all of you. And each of you take a sleeping pill tonight. That's an order!"

They left at once. No one said anything. After they were gone, Ardmore turned the receiver back on and watched it through to the end. Then he sat alone for a long time, trying to get his thoughts back into coherence. Those who order sleeping drafts won't take them.