It -- the disembodied pressure of the invisible screen -- was more than the PanAsian could stand. He fell back a pace, jerked his sidearm clear and fired point-blank. The vortex ring struck harmlessly against the screen, was absorbed by it.
"Lord Mota is impatient," remarked Ardmore in a mild tone. "Lead his servant, before the Lord Mota sucks the soul from your body." He shifted to another effect, never before used in dealing with the PanAsians.
The principle involved was very simple; a cylindrical tractor-pressor stasis was projected, forming in effect a tube. Ardmore let it rest over the man's face, then applied a tractor beam down the tube. The unfortunate PanAsian gasped for air where there was no air and pawed at his face. When his nose began to bleed, Ardmore let up on him. "Where are my children?" he inquired again as softly as before.
The police officer, probably in sheer reflex, tried to run. Ardmore nailed him with a pressor beam against the door and again applied momentarily the suction tube, this time to the fellow's midriff. "Where are they?"
"In the park," the man gasped, and regurgitated violently.
They turned with leisured dignity, and headed back down the steps, sweeping those who had pressed too close casually out of the way with the pressor beam.
The park surrounded the erstwhile State capitol building. They found the congregation herded into a hastily erected bull pen which was surrounded by ranks of Asiatic soldiers. On a platform nearby, technicians were installing television pick-up. It was easy to infer that another public "lesson" was to be given the serfs. Ardmore saw no evidence of the rather bulky apparatus used to produce the epileptogenetic ray; either it had not been brought up, or some other method of execution was to be used -- perhaps the soldiers present were an enormous firing squad.
Momentarily he was tempted to use the staff to knock out all the soldiers present they were standing at ease with arms stacked, and it was conceivably possible that he might be able to do so before they could harm, not
Ardmore, but the helpless members of the congregation. But he decided against it; he had been right when he gave his orders to his priests -- this was a game of bluff; he could not combat all of the soldiers that the PanAsian authorities could bring to bear, yet he must get this crowd safely inside the temple.
The massed people in the bull pen recognized Ward, and perhaps the high priest as well, at least by reputation. He could see sudden hope wipe despair from their faces -- they surged expectantly. But he passed on by them with the briefest of blessing, Ward in his train, and hope gave way to doubt and bewilderment as they saw him stride up to the PanAsian commander and offer him the same blessing.
"Peace!" cried Ardmore. "I come to help you."
The PanAsian barked an order in his own tongue. Two PanAsians ran up to Ardmore and attempted to seize him. They slithered off the screen, tried again, and then stood looking to their superior officer for instructions, like a dog bewildered by an impossible command.
Ardmore ignored them and continued his progress until he stood immediately in front of the commander. "I am told that my people have sinned," he announced. "The Lord Mota will deal with them."
Without waiting for an answer, he turned his back on the perplexed official and shouted, "In the name of Shaam, Lord of Peace!" and turned on the green ray from his staff.
He played it over the imprisoned congregation. Down they went, as if the ray were a strong gale striking a stand of wheat. In seconds' time, every man, woman and child lay limp on the ground, to all appearance dead. Ardmore turned back to the PanAsian officer and bowed low. "The servant asks this penance be accepted."
To say that the Oriental was disconcerted is to expose the inadequacy of language. He knew how to deal with opposition, but this whole-hearted cooperation left him without a plan; it was not in the rules.
Ardmore left him no time to think of a plan. "The Lord Mota is not content," he informed him, "and directs that I give you and your men presents, presents of gold!"
With that he switched on a dazzling white light and played it over the stacked arms of the soldiers to his right. Ward followed his motions, giving his attention to the left flank. The stacked small arms glowed and scintillated under the ray. Wherever it touched, the metal shone with a new luster, rich and ruddy. Gold! Raw gold!
The PanAsian common soldier was paid no better than common soldiers usually are. Their lines shifted uneasily, like race horses at the barrier. A sergeant stepped up to the weapons, examined one and held it up. He called out something in his own tongue, his voice showing high excitement.
The soldiers broke ranks.
They shouted and swarmed and danced. They fought each other for possession of the useless, precious weapons. They paid no attention to their officers; nor were their officers free of the gold fever.
Ardmore looked at Ward and nodded. "Let 'em have it!" he commanded, and turned his knockout ray on the PanAsian commander.
The Asiatic toppled over without learning what had hit him, for his agonized attention was on his demoralized command. Ward had gone to work on the staff officers.
Ardmore gave the American prisoners the counteracting effect while Ward disintegrated a large gate in the bull pen. There developed the most unexpected difficult part of the task -- to persuade three hundred-odd, dazed and disorganized people to listen and to move all in one direction. But two loud voices and a fixed determination accomplished it. It was necessary to clear a path through the struggling, wealth-mad Orientals with the aid of the tractor and pressor beams. This gave Ardmore an idea; he used the beams an his own followers much as a goose girl touches up a flock of geese with her switch.
They made the nine blocks to the temple in ten minutes, moving at a dogtrot that left many gasping and protesting. But they made it, made it without interruption by major force, although both Ward and Ardmore found it necessary to knock out an occasional PanAsian en route.
Ardmore wiped sweat from his face when he finally stumbled in the temple door, sweat that was not due entirely to precipitate progress. "Ward," he asked with a sigh, "have you got a drink in the place?"
Thomas was calling him again before he had had time to finish a cigarette. "Chief," he said, "we are beginning to get some reports in. I thought you would like to know."
"Go ahead."
"It looks successful -- so far. Maybe twenty percent of the priests have reported so far through their bishops that they are back with their congregations."
"Any casualties?"
"Yes. We lost the entire congregation in Charleston, South Carolina. They were dead before the priest got there. He tore into the PanAsians with his staff at full power and killed maybe two or three times as many of the apes as they had killed of us before he beat his way to his temple and reported."
Ardmore shook his head at this. "Too bad. I'm sorry about his congregation, but I'm sorrier that he cut loose and killed a bunch of PanAsians. It tips my hand before I'm ready."
"But, Chief, you can't blame him -- his wife was in that crowd!"
"I'm not blaming him. Anyhow, it's done -- the gloves had to come off sooner or later; this just means that we will have to work a little faster. Any other trouble?"
"Not much. Several places they fought a sort of rear-guard action getting back to the temples and lost some people." Ardmore saw a messenger in the screen hand a sheaf of_ flimsies to Thomas. Thomas glanced at them and continued. "A bunch more reports, Chief. Want to hear 'em?"
"No. Give me a consolidated report when they are all in. Or when most of them are in, not later than an hour from now. I'm cutting off."
The consolidated report showed that over ninety-seven percent of the members of the cult of Mota had been safely gathered into the temples. Ardmore called a staff meeting and outlined his immediate plans. The meeting was, in effect, face to face, as Ardmore's place at the conference table was taken by the pick-up and the screen of the receiver. "We've had our hands forced," he told them. "As you know, we had not expected to start action of our own volition for another two weeks, perhaps three. But we have no choice now. As I see it, we have to act and act so fast that we will always have the jump on them."