eagerness to help in the coming war with Tarrano.
Georg--without actually saying so--made them believe that the only hope
of everlasting life was the recovery from Tarrano of the Brende model.
The model was in the City of Ice; it must be captured.

As a matter of fact, to us of the government, the Brende model was not
indispensable. The greatest factor was that the threat of Tarrano's
universal conquest must be forever removed. Like a rocket-bomb, this man
of genius had risen from obscurity--had all but conquered the three
greatest worlds of the universe.

I think that the height of Tarrano's power was reached that day on the
eve of the Water Festival when he made his triumphant entry into the
Great City. Venus was his at that moment; all of Venus. Mars was his;
the Hairless Men--savages who had fallen readily to his wiles, had
conquered the civilized, ruling Little People. And the Earth, over-run
by his spies, deluged by his propaganda which, insidiously as rust will
eat away a metal, was eating into the loyalty of our Earth-public--our
own great Earth was in a dangerous position. The Earth Council realized
it. The Almighty only could know how many of our officials, our men in
trusted positions, were at heart loyal to Tarrano!

The thing was obvious. The assassination of our three rulers--leaders of
the white, yellow and black races--with which Tarrano's campaign in the
open had begun--those assassinations could never have taken place had
not our military organization been diseased.

Facts like these were constantly coming to us now, here in the Great
City. A brief time of physical inactivity. Yet underneath the calm, we
realized there was a struggle going on everywhere; a struggle of
sentiment, of propaganda, of public opinion.

Warfare, with modern weapons by which a man single-handed might destroy
a city--is no longer a matter of men. The citizen--unarmed--united in
sentiment and desire with a million of his kind--becomes the real ruler.
You cannot--because you have a weapon--destroy a million of your
brothers.

We realized this. And in the ultimate decision--the popular fancy
almost--of our publics--lay our real success or downfall.

Tarrano in the popular mind had a tremendous hold. Dispatches from Earth
made it plain that upon every street level the people were discussing
him. From the Great City daily we sent bulletins of our progress toward
checking--destroying--the menace of him. But bulletins also wer