The Dictator weighed the reports that piled up on his desk. The plague's existence and origin were no longer secrets to anyone whose knowledge or lack of it mattered. The Diktatura's most potent rival had already closed its borders and begun a formidable mobilization. The time for a public announcement had arrived; the enemy would fear to believe it, but the revelation of the invincible weapon would do wonders for home morale. * * * * * Novik walked the streets in a daze, torn by recurring doubts. He had left the laboratory and flown to the capital without Dr. Euge's knowledge, but now the image of the gray scientist, his approval of Novik, his trust in Novik, rose up to torment him. He could not even guess at Euge's motives, but he felt morally certain they were against the nation's interests. And the nation, he knew as everyone knew today, was on the threshold of war. Of Victory. That was the word that had been given them for years with their food and drink, held shining before them upon the straight and narrow way.... The air was filled with Victory. It blared and glared from the public television screens on the street corners, in brazen anthems, in a familiar voice that swelled in triumphant oratory, battered its phrases into Novik's numb consciousness. "Announcement to the people ... the day, the hour are at hand ... Victory! Against the corrupt and vicious barbarians, the slimy foes of progress, the enslavers of humanity ... Victory!" From all the corners, from the big screens, glittered the Dictator, above the crowds that gathered and shoved each other and hurrahed his words. Novik stared with smarting eyes; his head buzzed and he could not assemble his thoughts. He turned away and plodded on, and on the next corner met again the voice and gestures of the leader, his compelling gaze from the glowing screen. "History demands that we prevail. If any fresh proof of that fact were needed--as all of you know that it is not--it would be provided by the new scientific discovery which at the same time reaffirms the fundamental, objective truth of our way of life and thought, and provides us with the ultimate weapon for enforcing our way on the backward regions of the world.... "Only evil men, warped minds oppose us. The virus attacks such minds and completes the ruin which their own perversion has begun. Those who are clean and upright in thought and deed, loyal to their fatherland and the great idea of the Diktatura, have nothing to fear from it; they are immune. Therefore we can use it as a weapon without apprehension or compunction, for we shall only be wiping out the vermin of the Earth...." Novik started to run. Heart thudding, breath rasping in his throat, he shouldered through the ecstatically listening crowds. In their ears he screamed: "It's not so! We mustn't use it!" They stared after him, some shouted "Stop him!" but no one wanted to miss the Dictator's epoch making speech.