"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." "Or find it washed out." "Maybe. But for now we've got to deal with Hayes. 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'" Stone thought for a moment. "Who said that, Jordan?" "Jesus Christ." "I didn't know you were a believer." "I'm not." The three summoned in Press Secretary Miller, who could no longer be fed bits and pieces of the truth. Robert Weiss, Stone's other top adviser (and firmly in General Hayes' camp) continued to demand to see the President. Bacon continued to deny the request. The message was sent to Hayes, who now made no secret of his whereabouts: ten days from the limits of Soviet Space. Unreachable by stealth, yet tantalizingly close. The pieces continued to move across the board. The middle-game, which wasn't a game at all, had begun. VII The trouble and damage caused by the rift within the Commonwealth, and the subsequent break in relations with Moscow, were in no way limited to the lesser and intermediate socialist powers that came under Soviet influence, nor did they wholly end with the eventual cessations of those hostilities. The growing instability of a dozen far-reaching theatres, had first cautiously, and then more freely, burst into expansionist violence. It was almost as if the perpetrators of these lesser conflicts had simultaneously realized that Law along the frontiers was diminished, and waited only long enough to be sure they were not caught alone in the looting and thievery. And a riot, once begun, is very difficult to bring under control. Choose a metaphor. The Marshall of an Old West mining community gunned down, and the town taken over by outlaws. The blackout of a large metropolis, with bands of looters roaming the streets. The sudden collapse of an Empire, or the death of an heirless king. By any name the resulting darkness, the anarchy of violence, remained the same. With this exception only. The Law was not wholly diminished, as two of the four Superpowers remained largely unaffected. And the chief pirateers were now nations, and there were, therefore, (supposedly) higher motives, and diplomatic niceties involved. Because respectable governments, if they want to stay in power, don't call themselves outlaws; and to their collective mind the words 'occupation' and 'theft', 'war' and 'murder', are not interchangeable. Though the difference might have been hard to explain to those on the wrong side of the gun.