“Yes,” Molotov answered, on the whole sincerely. “The triumph of progressive mankind is inevitable.”

Then Queek startled him by saying, “Comrade General Secretary, it is possible that what you tell me is truth.”

The Lizard startled his interpreter, too; the Pole turned toward him with surprise on his face, plainly wondering whether he’d really heard what he thought he had. With a gesture that looked impatient, the Lizard ambassador continued, “It is possible-in fact, it is likely-that, if it is truth, you will regret its being truth.”

Careful, Molotov thought. He is telling me something new and important here. Aloud, he said, “Please explain what you mean.”

“It shall be done,” Queek said, a phrase Molotov understood before the interpreter translated It. “At present, you Tosevites are a nuisance and a menace to the Race only here on Tosev 3. Yet your technology is advancing rapidly-witness the Americans’ Lewis and Clark. If it should appear to us that you may become a risk to the Race throughout the Empire, what is our logical course under those circumstances?”

Vyacheslav Molotov started to lick his lips. He stopped, of course, but his beginning the gesture told how shaken he was. Now he hoped he hadn’t heard what he thought he had. Countering one question with another, he asked, “What do you believe your logical course would be?”

Queek spelled it out: “One option under serious consideration is the complete destruction of all independent Tosevite not-empires.”

“You know this would result in the immediate destruction of your own colonies here on Earth,” Molotov said. “If you attack us, we shall assuredly take vengeance-not only the peace-loving peasants and workers of the Soviet Union, but also the United States and the Reich. You need have no doubts about the Reich.” For once, he was able to use the Germans’ ferocity to his advantage.

Or so he thought, till Queek replied, “I understand this, yes, but sometimes a mangled limb must be amputated to preserve the body of which it is only one part.”

“This bluff will not intimidate us,” Molotov said. But the Lizards, as he knew only too well, were not nearly so likely to bluff as were their human opposite numbers.

Again, their ambassador echoed his unhappy thoughts, saying, “If you think of this as a bluff, you will be making a serious mistake. It is a warning. You and your Tosevite counterparts-who are also receiving it-had better take it as such.”

“I shall be the one who decides how to take it,” Molotov replied. He concealed his fear. For him, that was easy. Making it go away was something else again.

3

Up until now, the only time since the Japanese overran her village just before the little scaly devils came that Liu Han had lived in a liberated city was during her visit with her daughter to the United States. Now… Now, in exultation, she turned to Liu Mei and said, “Peking remains free!”

“I never thought we would be able to drive out the scaly devils’ garrison.” Liu Mei’s eyes glowed, though the rest of her long face remained almost expressionless. The scaly devils had taken her from Liu Han just after she was born, and for more than a year set about raising her as if she were one of theirs. They had not smiled-they could not smile-back at her when she began to smile as a baby. Without response, her ability to smile had withered on the stalk. That was one reason, and not the least of reasons, Liu Han hated the little scaly devils.

“Shanghai is still free, too,” Liu Han went on. “So is Kaifeng.”

“They are still free of the little devils, yes, but they aren’t in the hands of the People’s Liberation Army, the way Peking is,” Liu Mei said. Her revolutionary fervor burned hotter than her mother’s. “We share them with Kuomintang reactionaries, the way we share Harbin and Mukden up in Manchuria with pro-Japanese reactionaries. But Peking is ours.”

“Next to the little scaly devils, the fighters from the Kuomintang aren’t reactionaries. They’re fellow travelers,” Liu Han answered. “Next to the scaly devils, even the jackals who want to turn Manchuria back into Manchukuo and make it a Japanese puppet again are fellow travelers. If we don’t have a common front together against the little devils, we are bound to lose this struggle.”

“The logic of the dialectic will destroy them in their turn,” Liu Mei said confidently.

Liu Han was confident that would happen, too, but not so confident about when. Had she replied just then, Liu Mei wouldn’t have been able to hear her; killercraft piloted by scaly devils screamed low above their rooming house in the western part of Peking’s Chinese City. Cannons roared. Bombs burst close by with harsh roars-crump! crump! Window frames rattled. The floor beneath Liu Han’s feet quivered, as if at an earthquake.

Down on the ground, machine guns rattled and barked as the men-and a few women-of the People’s Liberation Army tried to bring down the scaly devils’ airplanes. By the way the jet engines of the killercraft faded in the distance, Liu Han knew the machine guns had failed again.

Her mouth twisted in vexation. “We need more antiaircraft weapons,” she said. “We need better antiaircraft weapons, too.”

“We only got a few guided antiaircraft rockets from the American, and we’ve used most of those,” Liu Mei answered. “With the fighting the way it is, how can they send us any more?”

“I would take them from anyone, even the Japanese,” Liu Han said. “We need them. Without them, the little scaly devils can pound us and pound us from the sky, and we can’t hit back. I wish we had more mortars, too, and more mines we could use against their tanks.” While you’re at it, why not wish for the moon? she thought-not a Chinese phrase, but one she’d picked up in Los Angeles.

Before Liu Mei could answer, a new cry pierced the shouts and screams that mingled with the gunfire outside. The cry was raw and urgent and came from the throats of both men and women: “Fire!”

Liu Han rushed to the window of the room she shared with her daughter. Sure enough, a column of black smoke rose from a building only a block or so away. Flames leapt up, red and angry. Turning to Liu Mei, she said, “We’d better go downstairs. That’s a big fire, and it will spread fast. We don’t want to get stuck in here.”

Liu Mei didn’t waste time answering. She just hurried for the door. Liu Han followed. They went down the dark, rickety stairs together. Other people in the rooming house, some of them also prominent Communists, were scurrying to the ground floor, too.

When Liu Han got down there, she ran out into the hutung- the cramped alleyway-onto which the rooming house opened. Peking was a city of hutungs; between its broad thoroughfares, alleys ran every which way, packed with shops and eateries and shacks and rooming houses and taverns and everything else under the sun. Hutungs were commonly packed with people, too; in a country as crowded as China, Liu Han hadn’t particularly noticed that till she went to the USA-before then, she’d taken it for granted. Now, every so often, she didn’t.

This hutung, at the moment, was so packed, people had a hard time running. The wind-as usual, from out of the northwest, from the Mongolian desert-blew smoke through the alley in a choking cloud. Eyes streaming, Liu Han reached out for Liu Mei’s hand. By what was literally blind luck, she seized it. If she hadn’t, they would have been swept apart, two different ships adrift on the Hwang Ho River. As things were, they drifted together.

“No one will be able to get through to fight the fire.” Liu Mei had to scream to make herself heard in the din, though her mother’s ear was only a couple of feet from her mouth.

“I know,” Liu Han said. “It will burn till it stops, that’s all.” Peking had seen a lot of fires since the uprising against the little scaly devils began. A lot of them had ended that way, too. Fire trucks were all very well for blazes on the larger streets, but hadn’t a prayer of pushing their way into the hutungs, and bucket brigades weren’t much good against the massive fires combat caused. Even a bucket brigade would have had a hard time breasting this tide of fleeing humanity.