“I doubt it,” said Falkenhorst. “Why?”

  “Hall”—Yamagata turned to Davenant, an odd look on his face—“you have your general unit handy?” He was speaking the new, semantically rigorous language now. “Want to check the wiring in this room?”

  Magnetic tracing of circuits revealed what he had suspected: microphones and recorders behind the plastic facing of the walls.

  Lyell’s mouth drew tight. “That’s a violation of—”

  “Different mores, Chief!” Falkenhorst’s gibe held a note of strain.

  “We can make an official complaint,” suggested Yuan.

  “Set up a resonator and burn the damn things out!” cried Davenant. “Or keep a magnetic field to wipe the tapes, at least.”

  “Hell,” grunted Kruse, “leave ’em alone, but give ’em something really interesting to record!”

  “No—no!” Lyell shook his head. “None of that. Not yet, not till we know more of the situation. I’m afraid we’ve already given away much we can ill afford, but I’ll have to think about it. Meanwhile, keep to English for ordinary purposes, switch to Basic when necessary, but watch your tongues every minute.”

  Davenant looked around the room. He had known the inanimate savagery of planets, but this was the first time he had ever encountered hostility from men. The walls seemed to move together and close in on him.

  Ganymede spun twice around Jupiter, a period of slightly more than two weeks, while Lyell’s men were only starting their task, learning the bare elements of Jovian society. Most of their work was with the Angels, studying maps and references in the library, conferring and asking questions. But they could hardly help acquiring unofficial information.

  Garson, who seemed to have taken a fancy to Davenant, conducted him through the city. The factories and maintenance centers were fairly standard for a colony, though archaic in design and using an undue amount of human labor. That was performed by Sergeants under Angel supervisors. Watching a long assembly line of gray-clad, unspeaking men, Davenant felt a coldness in his stomach. He had never seen human beings so used.

  “Why haven’t you installed robot machinery?” he asked. “This could all be fully automatic.”

  Garson shrugged. “Large investment o’ material an’ labor in robots,” he said, “easier, t’ use men trained from birth.”

  So! The commoners were part of the machinery. They didn’t count for more than the lathes and furnaces they manned. Davenant had that fact driven home to him when he walked through the human robots’ part of town—endless, monotonous cells, almost devoid of individuality, no privacy anywhere, always the conditioning by broadcast sermons and minute regulations of conduct. The faces which looked at him meekly were masks; humanness had been rubbed out.

  Not many women were in sight, and those he saw were muffled in shapeless gray gowns and veils. They had their own assignments in such lighter work as food-making and product inspection. And they were breeders. Garson justified their status with Biblical quotations.

  There was little family life. Children were taken young to the creches for conditioning. On the basis of psych tests, some were picked for Angel and some for Cinc, to be raised in those services and never told who their parents were.

  The Angels were the priesthood, and spent their lives under a monastic rule which made the Abbey seem mild—though they were not celibate. They were also the intellectual and artistic class, the engineers, poets, scientists, and philosophers of sorts. They compiled the data Davenant was now studying, and served as administrative advisors.

  In spite of the humility which was drilled into them, they seemed more human, more individual, than any other class on Ganymede. Fat jolly Jackson, small sardonic Hobart, earnest tongue-tied Garson—Davenant could get along with them.

  As a group, the Angels were a power in the community, and had had their clashes with the Cincs. The Cincs, who were the rulers, had the upper hand, for Cincs of first and second grade were ex officio Archangels.

  But sometimes the corps resisted them successfully. Garson told with relish the story of a few years ago, when Cinc-one had tried to seize property owned by the Angels.

  They had refused to obey him, and had held out until a junta of his own subordinates had replaced him with a more reasonable man.

  Davenant met the chief Cinc when the Engineers were invited to the Cinc area. Halleck conducted them, together with a troop of Hounds.

  Lyell tried to draw Halleck out a little. “I take it these guards of yours are for show?”

  “No.” Halleck looked surprised. “Protection.”

  “From whom? The Sergeants?”

  “Haw! The Sergeants know their place, I hope. A few publicly owned Hounds can keep them in order. But y’ see, every Cinc above novice grade is entitled to his own corps o’ guards, as many as he can support.”

  “I don’t quite understand,” Lyell said smoothly. “If the commoners aren’t dangerous, why should a Cinc need a personal army?”

  “The other Cincs’ o’ course!” clipped Halleck. “God gives victory to the righteous, but we men can’t know who that is. Many’re called but few’re chosen. So all got to have their chance.”

  Lyell did not press the matter, but he traded a glance with Falkenhorst.

  Cinc territory was a change from the poverty elsewhere in X. The floors were carpeted, the walls and ceilings colorful with murals, the individual apartments spacious and luxuriously furnished. Davenant got the impression that each housed its own harem. Several other officers passed by, exchanging salutes with Halleck, and there was a flicker of hatred in their eyes. None had less than two bodyguards in tow, and each carried a side-arm.

  A massive steel door was protected by machine-guns behind armor plating. Halleck strode up to meet the tall Hound who stood in front of the barricade.

  “God with us!”

  “Service to the Lord!”

  “I bring Cinc-one’s guests. Here’s my pass.”

  The Hound studied it carefully. “Yes, Mercy. If you’ll leave y’r men an’ y’r pistol here—”

  Halleck smiled sarcastically and submitted. Davenant did not like the swift competent hands which passed over him in search of weapons. But his resentment faded when he was let through the door. The reception hall was a blaze of color and crude magnificence.

  A servant bowed low. Female, young and comely, she was not dressed in any long drab gown. Quite the opposite. Kruse opened his mouth in an admiring grin, but snapped it shut as he remembered where he was.

  “I’ll announce you, Mercy,” the girl said. “Service to the Lord!”

  Cinc-one Weller was short and rather stout, but the eyes in his broad red face were restless and cold. He greeted the Engineers with an ambiguous salute and waved them to chairs. Davenant was uneasily aware of the motionless guards standing against the wall.

  “I trust y’r accommodations ’re good?” Weller said. “Anything y’ need?”

  “Not just yet, Mercy,” answered Lyell. “Before long, we’ll be making our initial surveys and will want workers and equipment. But that can doubtless be arranged through the Angel corps.”

  “Course, course.” Weller accepted a drink from a well-trained servant. “If y’all do need somethin’ please ask f’r it.”

  “Well, Mercy”—Lyell rubbed his chin—“there is one thing we lack, and that is information.”

  “Oh. Can’t the Angels give y’all the facts?”

  “About physical data, yes,” said Lyell. “But we need a more detailed social analysis than anything that’s been given us. An important factor in deciding how much can be done here is the capability of the people themselves. For instance, it will be necessary to construct a great deal of automatic machinery. Frankly, Mercy, I’m disappointed that there isn’t more already. Now the question is, can your particular culture stand the introduction of so much new technology?”

  Weller’s face darkened. For an instant, Davenant thought he was going to order his men to shoot the Engineers down.

  He returned to a hard surface calm and replied judicially, “I don’t see why not. S’pose y’ mean assembly line workers an’ their like. What’ll happen to ’em if their jobs ’er automatized? That’s really not your business. We can build such machines, put ’em at your disposal. What we do with ’em afterward concerns us alone.”

  “Perhaps,” said Lyell. “Though consider, Mercy, that human assembly lines simply cannot produce what will be needed at the rate it will be needed. So there will, at the very least, be an interim where your Sergeants have no place to work—except out in the field with us. And there they will, frankly, be of little use unless you recondition and educate them. At present, I have the impression that most of them don’t have the effective intelligence to use complex machines.” After a pause, he added maliciously, “Of course, Angels and Cincs could be assigned to our crews but that would also disrupt your social structure.”

  “Hm—yes—problem there,” admitted Weller grudgingly. “It calls f’r study. I’m sure a solution can be found.”

  “Another question,” drawled Yamagata. “Is Callisto inhabited or is it not?”

  “Why, no,” said Halleck, when Weller failed to reply. “What made you think it was? We haven’t expanded that much yet.”

  “There were references in books and conversation implying a small colony there,” said Yamagata. “But nobody I asked would give me a straight answer.”

  Weller spoke almost genially, as if glad to leave an awkward subject. “Oh, I see. Small group o’ settlers there from Earth, some twenty-five years ago. Came out t’ escape troubles durin’ the Humanist affair. They couldn’t make a go of it alone, so they came here, and joined with us. All but forgotten now.”

  He thinks fast on his feet, observed Davenant. But he wouldn’t be the chief in this nest of devils unless he did.

  “If I may say so, Mercy,” put in Lyell, “your culture is an odd blend of the communal and the highly individualistic. Sergeants are trained to absolute obedience, but most of your new works are carried out by individual Cincs, who patronize some gifted Angel or some new construction project or the like.”

  Davenant nodded to himself. He had noticed as much, and decided the motivation was a compounded desire for power and prestige.

  Lyell went on. “So far that system has worked well enough, because almost everything you could name had to be done anyway—mines started, outlying settlements founded, machinery built. But it will take the coordinated effort of all your people to transform these moons. Do you think the members of the Cinc class can be trusted to work co-operatively?”

  “I’ll see they do.” Weller forced a laugh. “Y’ go a long way to criticize us.”

  “Only as far as I must, Mercy. It’s not my business to judge the way you have chosen to order your affairs to date. But insofar as that affects my job, I have a duty to make suggestions.”

  “We don’t have t’ employ the Order,” Weller said coldly. “We can do the job ourselves, y’ know.”

  “As you wish, Mercy.”

  Lyell was poker faced, but it was clear enough that he had the whip hand. The Jovians were not capable of the enterprise. They lacked the special skills and resources it called for. And as long as they were locked underground, dependent on a complex of machines and chemicals for the most elementary necessities of life, they could never amount to anything in Solar trade or politics.

  The conversation at supper turned to the inner planets. Davenant noticed that Weller never lost a chance to needle Halleck—small personal remarks and slights which brought the Cinc-four’s rage close to boiling over. It was not a comfortable party.

  Back in their own suite, the Engineers dropped into Basic for the benefit of the recorders.

  “I can’t say I’m overly fond of our hosts,” declared Yuan. “Mechanized common people, fear and hate and ambition the prime motives of the rulers. I wonder if we ought to do their job for them.”

  “You know our rule about local politics,” said Lyell.

  “Seems you were doing your share of politicking tonight, Chief,” Yamagata said slyly.

  “I’ve the authority to make suggestions,” answered Lyell. “If they go unheeded, I can give a negative report which will make the Abbey drop the job. But that’s all.”

  “There’s something inhuman about the setup,” declared Kruse. “People aren’t robots. The Sergeant class simply can’t be treated that way indefinitely. They’ll either mutiny or degenerate to uselessness.”

  “I think—” Falkenhorst hesitated. “Yes, you’re right, Torvald. But there must be some safety valve, some outlet for them. I’d like to know what it is.”

  That was discovered two Earth days later. Davenant was going through some maps in the library, checking resources of fissionables with Garson’s help, when the Angel yawned and stretched and said:

  “Might’s well quit now. Holy time comin’ up, an’ there’ll be no work f’r forty-eight hours.”

  “A special service, do you mean?” asked Davenant, feeling the vague discomfort which mention of religious intimacies always gave him.

  “Yes. Feast o’ the Three Prophets. We have holy times once in a while, sev’rl times an Earth year.” Garson hesitated.

  “Why don’t y’ come, Hall? You look like y’ could use some fun.”

  Some people have their own ideas of fun! thought Davenant. But the prospect had a certain morbid interest. Doubtless it would be boring as a drill-mech. Nevertheless—

  “Wouldn’t people mind?” he asked. “I’m not a member of your Church, after all.”

  “Oh, no trouble. Stan’ back to the rear at first. Later on y’ can join in all y’ want.” Garson smiled shyly. “We might even convert you.”

  “Well—all right!” Davenant noted the time and place and went off to his supper.

  The others of his band refused somewhat profanely to come near the service. They preferred Kruse’s idea of wiping the recorders with a magnetic field and locking themselves in with some bottles.

  Lyell approved, “If you want to go, Hall, it’s not a bad notion. The more we can learn about these people, the better.”

  Davenant changed to a clean dress uniform and went down a series of ramps and corridors. As he neared the great assembly room, the crowd around him grew thick—commoners streaming in from all parts of the city, men and women and children mingled together. They were silent, but there was a curious eagerness on their faces.

  The hall was a gigantic natural cavern which had been enlarged until it could accommodate the entire population of X. It was painted and tapestried into an explosion of color, huge streaks and jags of green, purple, gold, blood-red swirling on the walls. There were no benches, so everyone stood, but the floor was softly textured.

  At the farther end, rising out of semidarkness, was a sort of stage with an altar. All the Angels in X seemed gathered there, rank on rank of them like robed statues. The only Cinc in sight was Weller, who sat on the stage between his guards.

  Davenant found a place against a wall. The gray-clad Sergeants who crowded around hardly seemed to notice the stranger. Their eyes were fixed with a curious greed on the stage, and they breathed heavily. Music was coming from somewhere, archaic syncopated stuff which caught at the pulse with a primitive force. Davenant wondered at the feeling of lightness and elation that seemed to be rising within him.

  “O brethren—” It was all the Angels, a huge male chorus ringing like distant thunder between the ends of the cave. “Praise ye the Lord, in Whom all are one. Thank ye the Lord for the gift of life and for His manifold mercies.”

  Effective, thought Davenant. I wonder why? I’ve heard better in Luna City. But as the chorus rose and swelled, he felt an odd lump in his throat. The man beside him was weeping.

  Organ tones pealed like the voice of Heaven.

  The sermon began, from the lips of an elderly Angel who only yesterday had been discussing gas-diffusion processes with Davenant. It started quietly enough, solemn as the music, with the Angel reciting the virtues of humility and hard work. Davenant found it rather reasonable.

  Then the tempo picked up.

  “An’ yet who’re we, mis’rable wallowers in sin, that we should walk this world? We who’re slothful, an’ greedy, an’ lustful, we who’s so blackened that only the blood o’ the Lamb can ever wash us clean? I say t’ y’ all, the Devil is waitin’! On the Black Planet which is called Hell he waits f’r us, he’s ready t’ lick us down his hot gullet, down into the lake of eternal fire—you, an’ you, an’ you! Few are they who’ll find mercy in the sight o’ the Lord, an’ great is the wailin’ in Hell—”

  People stamped their feet. Giant, dwarf, multiple-armed, tentacle-armed, the pure human majority, they jerked, and moaned, and swayed with the rhythm of the words. Music rose around them, a sinister harrying of notes gone wild, and the Angel roared abomination down on them.

  “Amen! Amen! The Lord have mercy on me a sinner!”

  Davenant’s knees felt weak, his heart thick in his breast. He was doomed and done for, outcast, alone, every shame of his life was rising to mock him and he gasped with the pain of it. Everyone was groveling on the floor now, creeping toward the altar, wailing their miserable little sins to the world. And he, he alone was damned!

  “Hallelujah!”

  It took a minute before Davenant realized that the shout had been his own. That brought him up short. A word screamed in his brain, and he doubled up against the wall and grabbed for its support. Supersonics!

  Or subsonics? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t remember in the confusion that bawled around him. But he knew that inaudible sound waves in the right frequencies do strange things to the human nervous system. The take off of a rocket gives a man a moment of irrational dread. There are combinations of wave lengths which stimulate the thalamus, exalt the emotional response, while suppressing the action of the critical, reasoning forebrain.

  It had been a standard part of psychotherapy for a long time. It was being used here on a giant scale!