The Dictator took some time in the preparation of the experiment. A city of twenty thousand people had to be isolated temporarily from the rest of the country, and unobtrusively surrounded with troops, guns and bombers, in case things went disastrously wrong. The isolation was accomplished, by means of a complete embargo on land and air transportation out of the test area, only an hour before a few small planes droned over the city, trailing an impalpable and invisible mist of virus-laden solution. The published and broadcast reason for the emergency measures was truthfully plausible--a threatened outbreak of disease, understood to be sleeping sickness. The difference in symptoms between ordinary _encephalitis lethargica_ and that produced by RM4 was so slight that few if any of the doctors who were shipped into the city recognized anything peculiar in the cases they treated, apart from the high--100%--fatality. It was not necessary that they know any better, since they were only a part of the ardently pursued campaign to allay public suspicion and anxiety and prevent an undesirable panic. The soothing propaganda and example of the authorities, and the diligence of the Popo agents who swarmed in the stricken area, were so successful that no mass plague-terror reared its head, though the death toll during the three weeks it took for the epidemic to run its course climbed to almost a thousand. Several doctors and a couple of secret policemen contracted the disease, and, of course, died. That was fair enough, but a far more untoward incident came near marring the Dictator's pleasure in his experiment. Chaber, the Popo chief, crossing the country on one of his frequent incognito tours, happened to be caught in the test city's railway station by the travel interdict. It took him more than an hour to convince the distracted officials in charge of enforcing the ban that a man in his position was above such things, so that he and his aides were still there when the virus-carrying planes did their job. The Dictator, receiving belated word, was furious. A flying squad of Honor Guardsmen intercepted Chaber's private train, ran it onto a siding and held the police chief and his staff there in something very like arrest. True, the Dictator sent a message to assure Chaber that the quarantine was a purely temporary result of someone else's mistake, and that matters would soon be cleared up.... For Chaber they never were. He died eight days later in the coma of RM4 infection. Most of his aides preceded or followed him by a day or so; and when the last radioed reports indicated that the contagion was spreading to the Guards, the Dictator gave horrified orders and the plague-infested train was set on fire by incendiary bombs. About the same time, past one o'clock in the morning, Dr. Euge was dragged out of bed and haled unceremoniously before the Dictator.