n spite of everything; in spite of his score of ultra-vicious
secret weapons and the last desperate efforts of his weakened armies,
most of whose men were under twenty or over forty.

The treachery even in his own army, among his own generals and admirals.
The turn of Luna, that had been the end.

His people would rise again. But not, now after Armageddon, in his
lifetime. Not under him, nor another like him. The last of the
dictators.

Hated by a solar system, and hating it.

It would have been intolerable, save that he was alone. He had foreseen
that--the need for solitude. Alone, he was still Number One. The
presence of others would have forced recognition of his miserably
changed status. Alone, his pride was undamaged. His ego was intact.

* * * * *

The long days, and the _marigees'_ screams, the slithering swish of the
surf, the ghost-quiet movements of the _baroons_ in the trees and the
raucousness of their shrill voices. Drums.

Those sounds, and those alone. But perhaps silence would have been
worse.

For the times of silence were louder. Times he would pace the beach at
night and overhead would be the roar of jets and rockets, the ships that
had roared over New Albuquerque, his capitol, in those last days before
he had fled. The crump of bombs and the screams and the blood, and the
flat voices of his folding generals.

Those were the days when the waves of hatred from the conquered peoples
beat upon his country as the waves of a stormy sea beat upon crumbling
cliffs. Leagues back of the battered lines, you could _feel_ that hate
and vengeance as a tangible thing, a thing that thickened the air, that
made breathing difficult and talking futile.

And the spacecraft, the jets, the rockets, the damnable rockets, more
every day and every night, and ten coming for every one shot down.
Rocket ships raining hell from the sky, havoc and chaos and the end of
hope.

And then he knew that he had been hearing another sound, hearing it
often and long at a time. It was a voice that shouted invective and
ranted hatred and glorified the steel might of his planet and the
destiny of a man and a people.

It was his own voice, and it beat back the waves from the white shore,
it stopped their wet encroachment upon this, his domain. It screamed
back at the _baroons_ and they were silent. And at times he laughed, and
the _marigees_ laughed. Sometimes, the queerly shaped Venusian trees
ta