His room was littered with newspapers which he had long since perused. The mess-boy brought stacks in every now and then until bed and furniture seemed to be constructed badly of newsprint.

His own personal tragedy was such that he hardly cared for the details. Instead of being the first man to fly to the Moon he was again just a simple lieutenant with nothing more than his deserved reputation for angelic wickedness. It came very hard to him, poor chap.

But it came very hard to the world as well. For events had transpired which made any former event including World War II a petty incident.

The world had been conquered without firing any other shots than those needed to propel Russian forces to the Moon. The head of the Russian state had promptly issued manifestoes in no uncertain terms demanding that all armies and navies be scrapped everywhere and Russian troops admitted as garrisons to every world capital. Russia had plans.

One by one countries had begun to fly the hammer and sickle without ever seeing a single Red army star.

For it was obvious to everyone. Even statesmen. All Russia had to do was launch atom bombs from the Moon at any offender to destroy him wholly.

The mystery of how Russia had solved the atom bomb and had so adroitly manufactured all the plutonium it could ever need was solved when a Russian scientist stated for the press that he had needed but one year and the Smythe report. Everybody began to quiet down, for at first there had been talk of traitors and selling the secret.

But now that it was at last obvious that there never had been any secret and that self-navigating missiles could be very easily launched from the Moon at any Earth target and that, such was the gravity difference, it would be nearly impossible to bomb-saturate the Moon from Earth, even the die-hards could see they were whipped.

A demand on Washington had come from Russia for the entire U.S. atom stockpile and Congress was debating right now, without much enthusiasm, a law to give it up.

It had been very striking the way the morale of the world had collapsed, seeing up there in the sky those giant letters, U.S.S.R. Communists in every land had begun to crawl out from under dubious cover and prepare welcomes for Russian troops (and the Russians had been bidding the foreign communists to crawl right back again).

To understate the matter, there was some little 

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