For the first few hours it was both orderly and successful, according to report. But the announcement of Germany's catastrophe had carried to hidden ears beyond its boundaries, and the word had passed like lightning around the world, telling all nations that the moment of deliverance had come. Four hours afterward, and American station went on the air; and the listeners in the space ship tensed as they heard the English words.
"Three or four thousand air-borne refugees are reported landing on the Florida coast. The local revolutionary authorities have taken steps for their reception.... A dispatch from France states that a refugee column of about twenty thousand Germans was overwhelmed and wiped out, despite defense by armored vehicles, in the vicinity of Lyons.... Similarly we hear from Italy...."
The transmission was weak and the voice faded out, but it went on, counting up with unholy glee the victories and the massacres. All over Earth, people were digging up the guns that had laid buried for a hundred years, and when those were lacking, seizing scythes and axes, sticks and stones, and going out to meet the fleeing Germans. The German military retaliated by unloading its whole arsenal of atomic and other weapons against the rebelling peoples. But the world was mad with blood and liberty. What if for every German ten of their ex-slaves died? Soon there would be no more Germans....
Other radio stations began to be heard, babbling in strange tongues that had not been spoken over the air for a century, but all reciting the same burden of hate and holocaust, glorying in the tales of carnage that they called to each other across the Earth.
Marshaled by leaders who rose to power on the wings of a shout, or with no leaders at all, the hordes poured even across the borders of the Reich, into the doomed area. Such German radio stations as were still operating showed by their frantic and contradictory efforts to direct the evacuation the hopeless panic and confusion that had fallen on the Herrenvolk in its last hour. Perhaps they had once been a people of blood and iron, but if so they were that no longer after a century of security and peaceful prosperity behind their impregnable bulwarks; and the refugees, fleeing those defenses now, were like fat tame rabbits escaping a burning hutch and falling victim, terrified and uncomprehending, to the claws and fangs and primeval savagery of the wild. Germany had sowed the wind for a hundred years, and the storm that had arisen would not soon abate....
From time to time during the vigil in the space ship, Kane turned thin-lipped from the broadcasts to attempt contact with a secret transmitter in the New York area. Finally, thirty hours after the dust had started on its way, he got through and talked with an underground leader he knew.
"It's out of our hands," the man on Earth reported tersely. "At first we made some headway in organizing the revolt. We're still trying to influence the mobs in the direction of elementary caution, but it's thankless work and even dangerous. The people are following demagogues sprung from nowhere, following whatever voice promises the most killing. I think they're even fighting each other in some places...."
"Anarchy," said Kane numbly. "A new Dark Age—"
"What else did you expect?" demanded Vzryvov scornfully. "Surely not that people enslaved so long would promptly proceed to set up orderly self-government as soon as they were free? The Dark Ages have been everywhere, except in Germany, for the last century; you don't imagine that because Germany falls, the rest of the world will become civilized again?"
"No.... But I must have hoped it; I think we all did. Guess you're the only realist I know, Igor." Kane straightened his shoulders. "We might as well land. Maybe there's still a chance to bring something decent out of this mess when the smoke clears. Anyway, I'd rather get into the thick of it than sit out here listening any longer. We shouldn't have anything more to fear from the Germans."