When next Winchester sat at a desk in the great Central Station, it was in another capacity. He was robed in the green of the AFPA leaders, and resplendent in gold lace. His numerical designation had shrunk to the smallest of all — Number One.
He had all power and was answerable only to Prince Lohan himself. It was a mighty and terrifying responsibility. It weighed on him, for the task he had set for himself, and outlined frankly to Lohan, called for the execution of thousands of men, the imprisonment at hard labor of tens of thousands more.
Far worse than that, he planned to inoculate the brainiest and ablest men of the System with the dreaded Lotusol habit. What if in the end he failed?
It was a sobering thought, but Winchester stiffened himself to the task. He must not fail! He must follow through on his desperate gamble with all the callous ruthlessness of the Mongoloids. If the salvation of the world — and his own and Cynthia's salvation — required a baptism of blood and tears, it would be done. And by his own hand!
His office was in the innermost part of the citadel and impenetrably guarded. Five concentric rings of secret doors and high-ranking police officials hemmed him in. His contacts were few and selected. Next in rank was Number Two, the custodian of the central files, where all that was to be known about every living man in the System was recorded.
Number Three was inspector-general, and supervised the work of Numbers Four to Fifteen, the twelve regional sub-chiefs. Number Two, Number Three and the prince were all who had voluntary access to Number One — Allan Winchester.
He proceeded cautiously with his program. There were many weeks needed for preparation for the numerous prisoners Winchester's huge dragnet would bring in. He sent an army of workmen to an immense and vacant crater, had it domed and filled with factories. This was to be his main disciplinary barracks.
The Lotusol works in the Botanical Gardens were quadrupled in size and put at once into capacity production. The American would need many gallons of the drug for the work in hand. Helmeted men under adequate protection invaded the Crater of Dreams, to provide more slabs and sand clearings for the accommodation of the horde of addicts that were soon to come.
Winchester reported the progress on these projects to Lohan as they were done, but there were many details he did not see fit to dwell upon. One of these had to do with the armament provided for the disciplinary barracks. Another was his transfer of ten thousand men to the Botanical Section, to act as special gardeners.
Pending the completion of the construction work, Winchester studied transcripts of the secret files. It was tedious and confining work, but the efficient police had done a superlative job in neatly summarizing each man's character in a short paragraph. Keying every individual with a code number made review of millions of cases possible.
Sorting machines did much of the work. Winchester soon knew just what men he wanted to put in each category, whether they had ever been in the hands of the police, whether they lived on Earth, on the Moon, or any one of the otherwise autonomous planets.
For although many of the planets and satellites were private grants to high-ranking princes, the long hand of the AFPA reached out to all.
In time Winchester's lists were completed and the zero hour came. The American steeled himself and called his fifteen sub-chiefs to him. He handed each of them voluminous sheafs of instructions.
"It is our intention," he told them, "to obliterate at one stroke all possibility of revolt, now or hereafter. Two days ago, you will remember, I ordered all political prisoners transferred to the new disciplinary barracks, leaving only thieves and robbers in the old prisons.
"Tomorrow you will sweep the entire System, according to the lists just furnished you. They include every working man and minor foreman disloyal to his Sacred Highness, the Great Khan. They include the known agitators. So far as we know, they include every man of subversive tendencies living who is below the grade of superintendent or scientist.
"The disgruntled elements will be dealt with by the special Poison Squad under the direction of Number Three in person. Carry on! Dismissed."
As the last of the green-garbed AFPA chieftains filed out, Winchester drew a sharp breath. He found his heart pounding, for he had included in his lists the names of many men known to him to be rebels, but who had hitherto escaped the suspicion of the AFPA.
If his daring plan failed, it meant the doom for all time of civilization as he had known it. Not one man of good-will and energy had been left outside the purge — except those who enjoyed upper ratings. They were about to be exposed to a still more uncertain fate.
Winchester paced the floor anxiously, glancing at his chronometer from time to time. At last the bank of jewel-like monitor lights twinkled. The flood of reports was beginning to come in. His reign of terror had been launched!
He put on his audiohelmet and tuned in at random with his selective switch. There was a flickering of light and a mumble of disorganized sound.
The picture came in clearer.
Winchester viewed a street scene in Cosmopolis, through a scanner concealed under the window ledge of a building. Workers were streaming out from one of the great plastic plants and walking toward their barracks. Operatives of the AFPA were thick among the crowd.
Winchester saw two of them cruise up alongside a man and pin his arms. There was a whisper in his ear, and the man nodded. One of the operatives dropped astern and went after other prey. The other led the man around the next corner where a prison van was parked. The round-up was in progress.
The American flicked the switch. There was more blinking, and then he was looking into a room from the vantage point of its molding. This was the office of the Curator-in-Chief of the Botanical Gardens, Winchester's former superior. The door opened and three helmeted men walked in.
The old chief stood up in surprise. But as the leading operative suddenly snapped the neck of a small vial he carried in his hand, the scientist inhaled a deep breath. On the instant he sank back into his chair, with the expression of idiotic vacuity characteristic of the Lotus-eaters.
The invading operative had just opened an ampule of the compelling Lotusol!
The men moved swiftly then. One produced a shiny helmet and snapped it on the old man's head. Another brought forth a welding torch. At a stroke he welded the chin strap tight. Then the two hustled the botanist from the room.
Winchester turned to the next adjacent scanner. It was on the front of the building. Through it he could see them put the old scientist into a sealed van, where the atmosphere was pure vapor of Lotus. The wagon rolled away.
Winchester changed his tuning wave. Now he was on a special band, which emanated from telepathic transmitters incorporated in the helmets of the denizens of the Crater of Dreams. The new helmets Winchester had made were not like the ones formerly used.
Instead of being on a single private wave, accessible only to a favorite individual Mongoloid, these helmets had a common denominator. The Master receiver Winchester wore could tune in on any of them at his discretion. Besides that, each sender had its automatic receiver, which kept a continuous record of all the thoughts that came in over it.
The American had natural reluctance to tune in on a man's private thoughts. But it was imperative that he know just how the drug hit a man of genuine intellectual capacity.
He soon found out. The subject was his former superior — the Curator-in-Chief at the Botanical Gardens.
At the moment the drug struck his nostrils, the curator must have been engaged in a brown study about the Venusian drip-fern. This was a plant of rather extraordinary medicinal qualities, inasmuch as its essential oil contained three of the vital hormones found within the human body.
Winchester gasped at the first revelation that came to him. His ex-chief, now that the workings of his mind were no longer inhibited by practical prohibitions, was speculating on the possibility of crossing the fern with the Titanian fungus!
It was no less than revolutionary.