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at once, the surge of homesickness as I sat in an alien room on an alien world and
looked right down on the familiar streets of my own neighborhood.
It was when I was trying to find hi my fumbling way what kind of screen the New
York scene was projected on that I ran into my fatal error.
New York without warning went suddenly blank in a blinding dazzle of blue-
white light. The brilliance centered in the tower right-hand quarter of the screen
and seemed to spread
from a minor sun which had come into unexpected being about two feet from my
face.
The light was so strong I couldn't look at it, sa curiously compelling that I
couldn't took away. I sat there paralyzed for a moment, feeling jagged lightning
flashes of pain zigzag through my head, helpless to turn my eyes away.
Then the sun blinked out and I slapped both hands to my eyes and squeezed my
forehead to keep it from splitting in two. Bright orange after-images swam like
amoebas inside my lids. When the pain subsided a little I began to be able to hear
again and I realized that somebody had been asking me the same question over
and over, with increasingly angry intonations.
"What are you doing here?" a man was demanding. "Give me the code word
before I "
I blinked tearfully at the screen. Through streaming eyes I saw a somewhat
unshaven face between the flaps of the priestly, headdress, small squinting eyes
boring into mine and, chest-high between us, gripped in a hairy fist, a glass
cylinder about the size of a pint milk bottle, glowing and fading rather angrily like
a large irritated firefly.
I started to say, "Don't shoot!" and something told me my voice would quaver
when I did it, for I was scared and I didn't even feel called upon to hide it, in that
first moment. However impossible it may seem that a man at the other end of a
video hookup could shoot and kill me through the relay system, I'd just had
convincing proof that he could certainly do me grave harm. Maybe that thing
would kill, at that.
I wiped my eyes on a corner of the blue towel and put on as haughty a look as I
could manage with the tears still streaming from my stinging lids. I didn't know
what I was going to say but I knew I'd better say it fast. The priest had caught me
at something I had no business to meddle with, and he'd probably feel perfectly
justified in using the fullest power of his milk bottle to punish me unless I spoke
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first and fast.
It was time for Allan Quartermain or possibly John Carter to take over. I drew a
deep breath and told myself I was a hero. In a hero's loud decisive bullying voice I
said sharply, "Drop that, you fool!"
The priest's bristly jaw fell slightly. There is this to say about wearing nothing but
a towel: manners make the man
when his clothes are missing. If I'd been wearing a peasant's outfit or a clerk's
apron I wouldn't have got away with this.
But for all the priest knew I might be a visiting High Priest from the other side of
the world. Certainly the fact that he'd caught me monkeying with the top-secret
video band, known only to the inner circles of the priesthood, would indicate that
I might be important.
He didn't drop his pint bottle, but he lowered it a little and blinked at me in a
puzzled way.
"Let's have that code word," he said, somewhat more politely. "You've got no
business on this band."
A rapid summary of thoughts scampered through my head. I knew now why I had
been dabbling at random in the private television relay of Malesco's rulers. In a
half-aware sort of way I'd been hunting an excuse for the priesthood, so I could
let myself confide in them. Naturally Coriole would paint them dead black to me.
He wanted my help.
I could join Coriole, overthrow the Hierarch if we were lucky, risk my neck a
hundred times over and finally win the right to take Lorna back to Earth and
resume my job in peace. Or I could quietly walk back to the Temple I'd recently
left, report to the Hierarch and the chances were he'd be only Too glad to get rid
of me by sending me back where I came from, along with Lorna.
Since he'-d probably not read Burroughs or Haggard he wouldn't realize that all
High Priests are supposed to be wicked from preference and spend all their time
persecuting the hero and heroine. Primarily the Hierarch was simply a
businessman, an executive administering a very complex organization. It would
be a waste motion, really, to do anything to me but send me back, especially
since unless Coriole lied he meant to send Lorna back anyhow.
And yet there was a nagging indecision in my mind, like a mouse chewing at the
foundation of all this logical construction I'd reared. Was it a moral conditioning
I'd got from reading too many melodramas? Or did I really owe Coriole and the
people of Malesco something?
The priest with the pint bottle settled the whole question for me.
"There's a squad on the way to pick you up," he said briskly, evidently having
reached a decision while I was arguing with
myself. "Be there in ten minutes. Don't try to get away or I'll burn you to a crisp."
My first feeling was relief. That was that, then. The decision had been made for
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