He grew aware that the captain had opened the inner door for him. As he stepped in, he grew aware how tired he was. His arm weighed a ton as he saluted the man behind the desk.

“At ease, at ease,” Robinson’s voice was genial. Despite the five stars on his shoulders, he wore no tie or coat, and his round face was smiling. Still, he looked tough and competent underneath. To run things nowadays, he’d have to be.

“Sit down, Colonel Drummond.” Robinson gestured to a chair near his and the aviator collapsed into it, shivering. His haunted eyes traversed the office. It was almost well enough outfitted to be a prewar place.

Prewar! A word like a sword, cutting across history with a brutality of murder, hazing everything in the past until it was a vague golden glow through drifting, red-shot black clouds. And—only two years. Only two years! Surely sanity was meaningless in a world of such nightmare inversions. Why, he could barely remember Barbara and the kids. Their faces were blotted out in a tide of other visages—starved faces, dead faces, human faces become beast-formed with want and pain and eating throttled hate. His grief was lost in the agony of a world, and in some ways he had become a machine himself.

“You look plenty tired,” said Robinson.

“Yeah,…yes, sir—”

“Skip the formality. I don’t go for it. We’ll be working pretty close together, can’t take time to be diplomatic.”

“Uh-huh. I came over the North Pole, you know. Haven’t slept since—Rough time. But, if I may ask, you—” Drummond hesitated.

“I? I suppose I’m president. Ex officio, pro tem, or something. Here, you need a drink.” Robinson got a bottle and glasses from a drawer. The liquor gurgled out in a pungent stream. “Prewar Scotch. Till it gives out I’m laying off this modern hooch. Gambai.”

The fiery, smoky brew jolted Drummond to wakefulness. Its glow was pleasant in his empty stomach. He heard Robinson’s voice with surrealistic sharpness:

“Yes, I’m at the head now. My predecessors made the mistake of sticking together, and of traveling a good deal in trying to pull the country back into shape. So I think the sickness got the President, and I know it got several others. Of course, there was no means of holding an election. The armed forces had almost the only organization left, so we had to run things. Berger was in charge, but he shot himself when he learned he’d breathed radiodust. Then the command fell to me. I’ve been lucky.”

“I see.” It didn’t make much difference. A few dozen more deaths weren’t much, when over half the world was gone. “Do you expect to—continue lucky?” A brutally blunt question, maybe, but words weren’t bombs.

“I do.” Robinson was firm about that. “We’ve learned by experience, learned a lot. We’ve scattered the army, broken it into small outposts at key points throughout the country. For quite a while, we stopped travel altogether except for absolute emergencies, and then with elaborate precautions. That smothered the epidemics. The microorganisms were bred to work in crowded areas, you know. They were almost immune to known medical techniques, but without hosts and carriers they died. I guess natural bacteria ate up most of them. We still take care in traveling, but we’re fairly safe now.”