emy could do the same,
wiping out his own country, Aleme.

These panels had been constructed by international agreement, so that
every country could know that it would be suicide to use atom bombs in
war. Suicide for all. Afterwards there would be nothing but isolated
bands of wandering savages, without the rudiments of civilization. A few
generations after such a holocaust these wandering bands would lose all
ability to learn. The art of reading would be forgotten. The past would
be forgotten or distorted into legends of a God Race. If that happened,
so much the better. When he reappeared again in the world he would be
accepted as a God.

With his superior knowledge, and with modern weapons to back his
authority, he could be in reality the world Leader he HAD to be to
fulfill his insatiable ambitions.

The war was stalemated. Soon the tide would turn and the enemy would
gain the advantage. His hold on Aleme would weaken. If he survived the
defeat he knew must come, he would be tried as a war criminal according
to the war code set up ten centuries before, and executed.

A few minutes of exertion pushing buttons, a hasty trip to the
tri-matter slab, and over into the time machine that was set to return
him to normal time rate after three centuries, and he would be in a
position to rule the world.

He contemplated the terrific cost. A billion and a half people would be
killed in the space of a few hours. Two hundred million of them would be
his own state-slaves, his subjects.

His heart would feel the burden of that awful responsibility. No
ordinary man was capable of deciding the good of the world for all
future time with strict impartiality and willingness to sacrifice one
whole generation so that world peace might come. No ordinary man had a
great enough soul to carry the burden of the great responsibility. The
ordinary man quaked with pangs of conscience at the murder of a single
person. He, Hute, had many times had to decide on mass executions for
the good of the whole.

He had tried, as other great leaders before him, to bring about
permanent world peace by the forging of one world government, supreme,
and controlled by one man,--unified under one dominant will.

Too few people could see that such was the only path to peace. On any
other course there would always be would-be leaders who would try to set
themselves up in authority.

On any other course world planning would be stalemated by the eternal
bic