alley cats that Novik had procured. The cats roamed hungrily about, mewed and clawed at the glass and had difficulty understanding that there was no way of getting at the mice. And the mice, likewise deceived, ran and squeaked in terror—and quickly succumbed to the convulsions and lethargy of encephalitis.

But when he provided opaque shelters, where the mice could conceal themselves part of the time, most of them remained immune.

The cats, Euge determined, were wholly immune; massive injections of the virus did no more than infuriate them. Sleeping fitfully in the small hours, he had nightmares in which the carnivora inherited an Earth from which men and rodents had vanished.

That was only one of his nightmares. He was as phlegmatic as a man need be in his line of work, but now his peace of mind had gone glimmering, and he was at odds with his world. From the time when mature reflection had replaced the last sparks of youthful rebellion in him, he had been a faithful and coddled servant of the Diktatura, but now he was increasingly certain that his failure to make known his new data was treason. A fatalistic streak tried to comfort him, whispering that even if he spoke it would make no difference.

Of only one thing was he sure: he wanted to know....

The Dictator took some time in the preparation of the experiment. A city of twenty thousand people had to be isolated temporarily from the rest of the country, and unobtrusively surrounded with troops, guns and bombers, in case things went disastrously wrong.

The isolation was accomplished, by means of a complete embargo on land and air transportation out of the test area, only an hour before a few small planes droned over the city, trailing an impalpable and invisible mist of virus-laden solution. The published and broadcast reason for the emergency measures was truthfully plausible—a threatened outbreak of disease, understood to be sleeping sickness. The difference in symptoms between ordinary encephalitis lethargica and that produced by RM4 was so slight that few if any of the doctors who were shipped into the city recognized anything peculiar in the cases they treated, apart from the high—100%—fatality. It was not necessary that they know any better, since they were only a part of the ardently pursued campaign to allay public suspicion and anxiety and prevent an undesirable panic.

The soothing propaganda and example of the authorities, and the diligence of the Popo agents who 

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