Norman Spinrad

preme Commander that every last Helder must involve himself in a truly heroic act that will inspire superhuman fanaticism on the part of these scientists by making the price of failure the total extinction of sapience on this planet and the prize to be won by success the creation of a purebred master race capable and worthy of inheriting the entire universe for all time.

"Within the next three months every Helder will be processed through the Classification Camps. There, we will all be sterilized, rendered permanently incapable of suc-cumbing to any foul temptation to reproduce our damaged genes by conventional sexual means. Either Heldon will produce a posterity of purebred SS clones, or no posterity at all! Racial transcendence or racial death!"

The backs of the High Commanders visibly stiffened.

Feric was confident that the Helder people had been fired to a similar fanatic resolution all up and down the land, for although the SS scientists still remained the key to the situation, he had given every last Helder a means by which to contribute his own heroic dedication to the sacred cause. The glory of final triumph would be personally shared by all!

"As a personal demonstration of my own total loyalty to the sacred cause of the Swastika and the production of an SS master race, I myself will be the first to undergo sterilization, followed by my High Commanders, the entire SS, and then the Helder people. Hail Heldon! Hail Final Victory! Hail the Master Race!"

The last words had hardly left Feric's lips when Bogel, Remler, Waning, and Best clicked their heels with a vigor that took even Feric by surprise, snapped to attention with backbreaking force, shot out their arms like steel pistons in the Party salute, and shouted "Hail Jaggar!" with a superhuman fury, their eyes blazing with the transcendent power of the racial wilL

With the fervor of the Helder people raised to incredible heights of racial consciousness and iron determination, destiny could hardly have denied to this race of heroes the success and dominion that such self-sacrificing patriotism commanded.

The entire Helder people marched straight through the Classification Camps without so much as a murmur of protest. Indeed the only major problem in completing the sterilization of the Helder people was that the good folk 237

had some tendency to fight and bicker among themselves for early places in the Camps; this represented merely good-humored contests in patriotic dedication rather than serious acrimony, and the SS completed the task well within the three-month deadline that Feric had set.

Soon thereafter, Remler jubilantly announced that the first viable SS clone fetuses had been produced. Eight months later, these experimental milestones were successfully brought to term. Soon after that, the first functioning clone factory was completed, and nine months later Feric, guided by the beaming Remler, arrived at the Feric Jaggar Reproduction Works to personally witness the decant-ing of the first full batch of SS supermen from the cloning vats.

This edifice was a huge spotless white cube adorned only by great black swastikas on each of its faces. With the SS honor guard standing at rigid attention, Render led Feric through the main entrance of the building and through a long and somewhat confusing series of halls, chambers, and corridors, all of which were tiled in gleaming white. The shining white walls reflected the trim black leather uniforms and scarlet swastika capes of the tall blond SS technicians who seemed to fill every nook and cranny of the Reproduction Works with bustle, energy, and determination, scientific acolytes in the temple of racial purity.

"There's no denying that this place is really humming, Remler!" Feric exclaimed, as Remler opened a white door and ushered him into one of the great cloning vat chambers. This was a large oblong room with white walls and tiny white tiles on the floor, each adorned with a miniature black swastika. It was almost completely given over to row after row of gleaming white porcelain vats, two hundred of them in all. At the head of each vat was a white porcelain console housing pumps, instruments, and other medical apparatus; in each vat a seven-foot blond giant floated in yellowish nutrient fluid, eyes closed in blissful sleep.

A television camera had been set up for the occasion near the front row of vats; before these twenty ellipsoid porcelain wombs, twenty tall, blond SS scientists in black-dress uniforms with scarlet swastika capes and high black boots stood at perfect attention.

As Feric entered the chamber, fhese prime specimens snapped out a massed Party salute and shouted "Hail Jag-238

gar!" with utmost vigor and dash. Feric returned the salute smartly, then strode to the microphone that had been set up facing the cloning vats.