"It wasn't the crash, it wasn't Doomsday, Lee was afraid of. It was something else. He said he feared all Earth's people weren't going to get away. He said there were men who didn't _want_ everyone to get away, men who wanted to see a lot of people trapped here when Doomsday comes!" * * * * * Wales was electrified out of his headachy grogginess by her statement. He grasped her wrist. "Martha, Lee said that? Who did he say they were--those who wanted to trap millions into staying here?" Again she shook her head. "He didn't say who they were. He said he wasn't sure, it was only a suspicion. But it worried him. He went to New York once to see John Fairlie about--the regional Evacuation Marshal." Wales thought hard. "Yes. Fairlie told me _he_ suspected some deliberate, secret effort going on to induce millions of people to stay on Earth till it was too late. Either Fairlie got that idea from Lee, or Lee got it from him--" He broke off, then asked, "Did Lee ever talk about the Brotherhood of Atonement?" Martha nodded. "Oh, yes, quite often. We've been afraid of them, ever since everyone else left Castletown." Again, Wales was astonished. "What do you know about that Brotherhood, Martha?" She seemed surprised by his excitement. "Why, Jay, they're fanatics, a superstitious movement that started long before evacuation was carried out here. People whose minds became unhinged by the coming of Doomsday. They preached, down in the Diamond, I heard them, terrible ravings that Doomsday was sent us for our sins, that only sacrifice and atonement of lives and treasures would save the world. Then, when evacuation went on, here, all the Brotherhood hid in the country so they wouldn't have to go." "And they're here now?" he exclaimed. Martha shuddered. "Not _here_. It's the one thing I've feared most these last weeks, that they'd burn Castletown." "Burn Castletown? Good God--why?" Martha looked at him. "Jay, they're burning the empty cities, one by one. A sacrifice. An atonement. I'm afraid Sharon was burned two nights ago--the glow in the sky seemed to come from there. And I've seen other fire-glows in the south--" Wales, with a sudden cold feeling, remembered the blackened desolation of Brighton Falls. Then it had been no accident? Then it had been deliberate, a purposeful thing, a sacrifice-- He suddenly saw Earth as it was. A nearly-empty planet reeling toward crazy anarchy. In New York, where there was still law and order and you could see the rocket-fleets of the Marslift coming and going methodically in the sky, it had still seemed like a civilized world. But out here in the black, blind evacuated regions was deepening chaos, with law gone and all the most atavistic passions of humanity let loose. With the ignorant and mad who refused to leave battling for the possession of deserted cities, or setting the torch to unpeopled towns in superstitious sacrifice....