"Then came the attack on America, and for that they used the dust in combination with another ace in the hole--their own atomic bombs. The first one was dropped right here, on New York. It flattened five or six square miles and killed about half a million people. The defenses that we'd devised against the dust--inadequate as they must have been, because there isn't any real defense--were neutralized by the bomb. America fought for just one month, and after that there wasn't any United States--just a disorganized mob of survivors, dazed by the cities' destruction and the sterilization of big stretches of countryside. "Germany proclaimed the New Order over the face of the whole Earth--humanity to submit to the leadership of the German Volk, its highest evolutionary type. Everywhere the nations surrendered without a fight. "Since the Conquest there's been only one serious, organized rebellion in this country; that was in the year two thousand, fifty-one years ago. The Germans put it down with bombs and poison; a lot of innocent people were killed, and for a long time after that it was impossible to organize any resistance. Since our movement got started twenty years ago, we've been damn careful not to goad the Germans into making a wholesale slaughter. Now--" His face twisted in pain. "They've decided to anyway?" asked Manning with studied calm. "As a matter of policy, not revenge. You see, for a while after the Conquest they had a lot of use for slave labor, so the subject peoples were valuable to them; but now that they have plenty of atomic power, running nearly automatic factories and mechanized farms to supply all their needs and luxuries, the rest of the Earth's population looks to them like so much excess baggage. All they have use for is land, _Lebensraum_ for their own growing people. They've calculated that the whole Earth could be covered by Germans by 2500 A.D. As far as they're concerned the rest of us can rot or starve--and we do; but we don't die out! So--they murdered Russia fifty years ago--that was what touched off the rising here--and we're next!" Manning said unbelievingly, "What do you mean--'murdered'?" "The technical term is 'genocide.' They did it with guns and gas and, when necessary, the atomic dust. It's quite a job to wipe out a whole nation, and the Germans bungled Russia pretty badly and met a lot of stiffer resistance than they expected, and a lot of people--such as Igor's parents--got away to other countries. But since then they've made improvements in the method.