"What's been going on here? Who's this man?" Then, seeing Walton, "Hey! Come over here!" "Of course, officer." Walton turned his collar down and drew near. He spotted the glare of a ubiquitous video camera and faced it squarely. "I'm Director Walton of Popeek," he said loudly, into the camera. "I just arrived here a few minutes ago. I saw the whole thing." "Tell us about it, Mr. Walton," the security man said. "It was a Herschelite." Walton gestured at the broken body crumpled against the ground. "He was delivering an inflammatory speech aimed against Popeek, with special reference to the late Director FitzMaugham and myself. I was about to summon you and end the disturbance, when the listeners became aware that the man was a Herschelite. When they understood what he was advocating, they--well, you see the result." "Thank you, sir. Terribly sorry we couldn't have prevented it. Must be very unpleasant, Mr. Walton." "The man was asking for trouble," Walton said. "Popeek represents the minds and hearts of the world. Herschel and his people seek to overthrow this order. I can't condone violence of any sort, naturally, but"--he smiled into the camera--"Popeek is a sacred responsibility to me. Its enemies I must regard as blind and misguided people." He turned and entered the building, feeling pleased with himself. That sequence would be shown globally on the next news screenings; every newsblare in the world would be reporting his words. Lee Percy would be proud of him. Without benefit either of rehearsal or phonemic engineering, Walton had delivered a rousing speech and turned a grisly incident into a major propaganda instrument. And more than that, Director FitzMaugham would have been proud of him. But beneath the glow of pride, he was trembling. Yesterday he had saved a boy by a trifling alteration of his genetic record; today he had killed a man by sending a whispered accusation rustling through a mob. _Power._ Popeek represented power, perhaps the greatest power in the world. That power would have to be channeled somehow, now that it had been unleashed. The stack of papers relating to the superspeed space drive was still on his desk when he entered the office. He had had time yesterday to read through just some of the earliest; then, the pressure of routine had dragged him off to other duties. Encouraged by FitzMaugham, the faster-than-light project had originated about a decade or so before. It stemmed from the fact that the ion-drive used for travel between planets had a top velocity, a limiting factor of about ninety thousand miles per second. At that rate, it would take some eighteen years for a scouting party to visit the closest star and report back ... not very efficient for a planet in a hurry to expand outward. A group of scientists had set to work developing a subspace warp drive, one that would cut across the manifold of normal space and allow speeds above light velocity.