"Gods," said Noble Arthrite Stuffy in more of a groan than a word. He daubed at his forehead, found it was still bandaged. He clenched his hand. "Oh, I really think that ruined it," said Noble Arthrite Stuffy. "I have never seen a population rise to such a fever pitch!" "Look at the backfeed monitors," said Heller. They all did. The crowds in the streets were thinning.

THE PEOPLE WERE GOING HOME!

"I don't understand," said Stuffy. "I think what you don't understand," said Bis, "is the business of a combat engineer. As a favor, Jet, tell us." "You really want to know?" The general and admiral and Captain Roke nodded eagerly. They did not understand why the crowds were dispersing. Heller sighed. Then he said, "I set it up with High-tee. And she certainly carried through. The credit is hers. All I did was take advantage of a cautionary theorem in Advanced Symbolic Logic: The apparency of an answer can be mistaken for the answer. A parallel is that the apparency of a result can be mistaken for the result. This once, it seems to have worked. The bulk of the people of the Confederacy will now think of Earth as dead. Those who don't won't be able to find anybody else all that interested. "If you noticed, Hightee even let them sing too long. They got tired of it. They have also worked their spleen out quite thoroughly. I trust we have replaced mass hysteria with mass agreement, and mass agreement is the true substance of reality. Frankly, it's only combat engineer elementary mathematics." "Wait," said Stuffy. "Completely aside from the fact that we have not handled Earth at all and now must, what you did seems like molding mass opinion. This seems very close to 'public relations.' Are you sure this isn't like Madison's PR?" Bis let out a snort. "Noble Stuffy," he said, "Fleet combat engineers have been defeating and stampeding mobs of enemy people since before Madison's race learned to wear fur pants. Just yesterday, Jet defeated fifty thousand Apparatus troops in this very city, using a population-control weapon, all by himself. How'd you think we retook the place with no real casualties or destruction?" Stuffy gawped. "I didn't know that." "NOT for publication," said Heller. He looked again at the backfeed monitors. The people were indeed going home. And even as he looked, a couple monitors went blank as Homeview camera crews in far cities began to pack up. "We've chilled the mobs. Now let's get to work on the sixth proclamation and decide just how we are going to dispose of the real Earth. Unfortunately, it is NOT an electronic illusion and His Majesty has given us our orders."

It was very quiet in the hall now. The backfeed monitors were going off, one by one. The main channel program now concerned weather for the coming day. At the table it threatened to be stormy. The six sat there, a small group in this vast expanse. Heller was no longer sitting on the dais. He had taken a place at the table to be closer to them. The Fleet admiral scrubbed his jowls. He was surveying his own console as he fed displays to it, displays which concerned the military potentials of the planet Blito-P3. "Looking at these factors, the satellites they have and so on, I think we're left no option but to blow it up: they could develop space travel." "Technically, they might," said Heller, "though they would have to overcome gross faults in their sciences. Socially, they won't. Only two things motivate their thinking: one is commerce, the other is war. Their power elite could not see any commercial advantage in space travel, and the moment such research does not lead to internal superiority in war they curtail it. "But actually, there is another factor which defeats them at every turn and that'is an oddity in leadership. Even a casual study of their history shows that they only worship and obey leaders who kill: Caesar, Napoleon, Bismarck, Hitler, Eisenhower are just a few names. They revere scientists the same way: the biggest known names basically made it possible to build the biggest weapons. Einstein, for instance. It's a pretty primitive attitude. "They actually revile and degrade and kill decent men who try to help them. It's as much as your life is worth to try to do anything for them that will benefit all. "I doubt they could attain space travel before such ills as bad leadership, socialism, inflation and other things ate them up internally. They are actually totally incapable of doing something nationally just because it is the sensible thing to do or because it's fun. It always has to have a twist, such as who can make a million from it or who will it do in. They're pretty mixed up. As for achieving real space travel, I don't think you have a thing to worry about." But he had not made his point. The admiral said, "Blast! No wonder the Emperor wants them disposed of!" "When Jet was down there," said Captain Roke, "I got interested in the place and looked it up more thoroughly-though I will admit that Hisst was sitting on the key surveys. I worked out the routes to other systems that are targeted and I couldn't find one that had to go through Blito: it's a yellow-dwarf but it is off the direct traffic tracks. I was appalled by its social structure, really, and although I laughed at Jet at first when he said Prince Caucalsia might have taken some of the Voltar civilization to it, I think Jet must be right. It's a clutter of primitive and modern, but the think they use in utilizing the modern is primitive. They'll blow up culturally before they ever get to a stage of real space travel. So if it were disposed of, it really would have no key effect on anything else we were doing." "Well, then," said the general, "I don't see why the Fleet can't just transport several Army biological warfare units to the upper atmosphere and we lay in a barrage of germs and defoliants and just bullet-ball the place: no landing." "There are always survivors," said Heller. "And it would leave it on the Invasion Timetable." "Jet is right," said the admiral. "I'd hate to put marines in there 115 years from now if bacterial warfare were used. Bugs mutate. No telling what diseases we'd be bringing back to Voltar: we'd have real contamination. But what I don't like about any of this is the disturbance to our operating schedules: we're committed to another invasion-Colipin-next month. And if you start deranging schedules, you wind up falling behind. We, frankly, would have to use several home-based fleets for any attack on Blito-P3, and they're needed for normal defense, especially with the recent unsettled conditions. I imagine quite a few Apparatus units escaped and will be into piracy without having heard of the amnesty. You can't double patrols with less ships." "We're short, too," said the general. "Having to assist the Domestic Police will absorb available Army reserves." "Well, let's see where we stand," said Heller. "The Emperor does not want to hear of Blito-P3 again and we've got to dispose of it to get it off the Invasion Timetable. If we land on it to attack, we risk further contamination of Voltar." "My Gods, this is a dilemma," said the admiral. "It certainly is," said the general. Heller's heart was beating very fast but he kept his face quite calm. Would he get away with it? He picked up the sixth proclamation. "Well, gentlemen," he said with a sad shake of his head, "the only way I can see out of this is simply to proclaim that Blito-P3, Earth, doesn't exist." There was a stunned shock. They thought it over. Heller waited with bated breath. The general looked at him. The admiral looked at him. Captain Roke looked at him. Bis looked at him. Noble Arthrite Stuffy looked at him. Their eyes were round. Hastily Heller wrote the possible text: