It was over a mile to the Dictatorial palace, and Novik ran all the way. He was reeling with exhaustion when he got there, and he had to lean against a pillar and wrestle with nausea for a time before he was able to produce his wallet and show the card in it to the tall Guardsman at the gate. The Guardsman raised his eyebrows; the disheveled and panting young man before him didn't look much like a Popo agent. Beyond the gates, though, Novik encountered officials who knew him, and in a remarkably short time he was led before the Dictator. Since Chaber's demise, the leader had appointed no successor to the post, taking care of the most important police matters himself. Now he was still flushed from his speech to the people and delighted by the first reports of the people's reaction. Novik faced the Dictator, holding himself erect with an effort. He said thickly, "Agent Novik reporting, sir, in the case of Dr. Joseph Euge...." "What's the matter with you?" The Dictator stared at him from under knitting brows. "Are you drunk?" "He is a traitor," said Novik. "He has withheld information ... vital to defense...." "Eh? You mean Euge? What information?" "His experiments ... the mice. Been doing them for months." "For months? Then why haven't you reported it before?" "Another traitor," mumbled Novik. He swayed unsteadily on his feet, caught himself with a peculiar jerk; his eyes were somnolent. Before them the Dictator blurred in a bright painful glitter of metal. Two Dictators, shining and terrible here at the end of the world. "The virus ... not a weapon. Not to be used, because ... it's death. It's ... fear...." The Dictator recoiled, recognizing the red-rimmed vacant eyes, the twitching face of the young man. He opened his mouth to say too much, and held his breath; then he stiffened and ordered harshly: "Take him! Take him away!" 4 During the speech to the people, the first rockets had already risen from their scattered launching sites and were soaring at ten, fifteen, twenty miles per second over continents and oceans. The enemy was not unprepared; his immensely complex and expensive systems of warning and defense, radar-eyed, electric-nerved and robot-brained, were fully on. But that defense setup, which laced a whole nation and concentrated bristlingly over the great cities, was designed primarily to detect, deflect and destroy projectiles with atomic warheads, which must approach within a few miles of their targets to do damage. The bombardment rockets of the Diktatura burst quietly high in the stratosphere, before very many of them were met and annihilated by the interceptor barrage. Their cargoes dispersed earthward in a rain of little protective plastic globes, which, as they fell through the warm restless levels of the troposphere, darkened and shriveled in a fantastically swift chemical decay, and spewed their liquid contents in a fine spray into the air.