younger was dressed in the white uniform of a doctor.

"He can see now," the older man said. His was a voice Buckmaster disliked.

"It looks as if he's going to recover," the doctor said. "That's never happened before. Do you want me to leave him here with the dying ones?"

"No. Wheel him into your office. And leave us alone there. My name is James Wagner. You have, of course, heard of me. I am the Director of Security."

Buckmaster still rested in his hospital bed. They had screwed up the back until he sat almost straight. In his mouth there was a slight tang and knew the sense of taste returned. When he was able to feel again he would be entirely well. Yes, he'd heard of Wagner before. He nodded.

"And I know who you are," Wagner said. "You are one of the Underground that is trying to overthrow the General. That is correct, is it not?"

Almost with surprise Buckmaster felt Wagner's words register in his mind. His implanted memories were still strange to him. But he recalled them quickly.

Twenty years before, in 1979, the great Atomic War had ended. In the beginning the two giants faced each other across the separating oceans. No one was certain who sent the first bomb across in its controlled rocket; each side blamed the other.

The methods of each were terrible in their efficiency. The great manufacturing cities were the first to go. After them went the vital transportation centers.

Striving mightily for an early advantage each country forced landing armies on the enemy's shores. The armies invaded with their hundreds of thousands of men--and the bombings continued.

The colossus of the western hemisphere had set up autonomous launching stations, so that if and when their major cities had all been bombed, their ruling bodies decimated and scattered--even if there were no longer any vestiges of a central authority--the launchings would continue.

The autonomous units had been a stroke of master planning, so ingenious that it was logical the giant of Eurasia had devised a similar plan. 

By the time the bombs had all been used, or their stations rendered incapable of functioning, the major cities were blackened, gutted, inoperative masses of destruction. Soon the invading armies no longer 

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