First, ahead of the torches, marched a half-dozen men and women with drums, beating a heavy, absolutely unvarying rhythm. After them came the main mass. He thought there might be two to three hundred of them. Men, women, children. Torn and dusty clothes, unkempt hair, unshaven faces, but eyes glittering with a wild, rapt emotion, voices shouting the endless chorus of The Brotherhood of Atonement.... Halle-LU-jah! These crazed fanatics were gripped by no religious passion. The religious folk of the world had seen God's hand in the saving of Earth's peoples by man's newly-won knowledge. But these shouting marchers had gone back to dark barbarism, to pagan propitiation of a threatening fate, back beyond all civilization. Boom-boom crashed the drums, right in front of the Dutton store, as the van of the mad parade swept past, following a tightening path around the oval, making room for more and more of the torch-bearers here in the center of the old town. And presently they were all in the Diamond, a packed mass of wild faces and shaken torches, all turned toward the center where the monument stood. A man with a white face and burning eyes leaped up onto the pedestal of the monument, and the drums banged louder and a great cry went up from the Brotherhood. He began to speak, his voice shrill and high. "Jay, do you see Lee? I don't--" "No," Wales said. "He's not with them." From out there, across the waving torches, came the screeching voice. "--burn the places of sin, and the powers of night and space will see the shining signs of our Atonement, and withhold their wrath--" Martha said, "Oh, Jay, they're going to burn Castletown. Can't we stop them, somehow--" He took her by the shoulders. She had had too much, but he could have no hysteria now. "Martha, we can't stop them, they'd tear us to shreds! And what _difference_ does it make now? Don't you realize--in four months this town and all towns will be destroyed anyway!" Their prisoner, back in the darkness, suddenly raised his voice. Wales leaped back, pressed his pistol against the pudgy man's body. "You call out and you get it now!" Wales warned savagely. Pudgy looked up at him, and said hoarsely, "Are you crazy? Those maniacs aren't friends of mine! They're going to burn this whole town like they burned others--we got to get out of here!" The frantic fear in the man's voice was utterly sincere. And to Wales, crouching beside the captive, came a shattering enlightenment. He said, "Then you and your pals aren't working for the Brotherhood? Then it wasn't the Brotherhood that took Lee Kendrick, after all?" "They're maniacs!" said Pudgy, again. "For Christ's sake, Wales, are you going to let them burn us alive?" Wales stooped, grabbed the man by the throat. "It's not the Brotherhood who took Kendrick, then. All right--who was it? Who wants to see millions of people trapped on Earth? Who sent you after me? _Who?_"