"Never mind. Turn it up." "You're the account exec." * * * * * Now Sowles began telling in hushed whispers how it would be under the Reds. The huge mural became a panorama of rapine. Commie soldiers sacked Euramerican cities and hamlets. Girls were dragged off for the pleasure of drunken battalions. Barbarian guffaws rang out as homes and stores were pillaged and put to the torch. "Ourch!" gritted Ev. "All this hate...." "Have another snort and turn up the gain." The crowd began to low like a cow in labor. Sowles swung into the climax: A series of questions shouted to the audience.... "Would you work night and day to crush this menace to your homes, your family, your country, your _God?_" "_YES!_" The hills rang with the full-throated bellow. "Would you fight, and if need be, die, to save our civilization and slay the Commie monsters in their lairs?" "_YES!_" Cam thought he could even hear answering shouts from outside the Bowl. "Turn up the gain again." "Will you place in the hands of your servants, the Christian Soldiers, all powers necessary to crush the barbarian tide?" This last was fairly screamed. Sowles was draped across the podium, arms outstretched to the audience. "YES! YES! YES!" thundered the reverberating response. Fife, drum, and cornet struck up "Onward" very softly. "_Will you follow me to the_ ends of the earth--to the very gates of Red Hell itself--destroying every obstacle in our path--until the Anti-Christ has been annihilated root and branch, and we have come into our Kingdom? _Will you follow ME??!_" Pandemonium. The crowd surged into the aisles, falling in with the Choral Guard, singing, shouting, weeping. "He hit high C," said Ev. "Full gain," said Cam. Ev gulped more skull-buster and stroked the "amplifier" in the region of the pancreas. Sowles' arms were uplifted, and one of Cam's clever little effects haloed his flying locks. "KILL THE REDS!" he shrilled. "Kill ... REDS ... KILL ... REDS ..." chanted the crowd, in time to the drum. The bright feral light of the super-mongoose's eyes seemed to lance at Sowles, like an infra-red flash. Then there was a puff where the would-be messiah had stood--a crackle, and a smell of scorched air; but no more Sowles. "He's gone!" said Curt. "You're damn right, and thank God for it," said Cam, ministering to Ev who had slumped unconscious from his chair. * * * * * The mob broke up uncertainly, with the disappearance of the focus for its concerted bloodlust. The police asked many questions but none of the right ones. Finally, Cam, Ev, and Curt escaped to the waiting limo and started the long slow crawl downhill. "Now--give," said Ev. "Feedback. That's why I had you unleash Mighty Mouse. All that hate in hundreds of millions of people _had_ to boomerang back through your _Gestalt_ in some psi-fashion ... although I did not anticipate the pyrotechnics--or should I say pyrokinetics?"