atmosphere.
A gasp of wonder went up from the soldiers as at last the Master appeared,
descending in a luminous halo and bathed in a beam of heavenly brilliance.
Sallakar didn’t know what to believe, but in his own mind he had already come to
a profound realization of immense theological significance: Rejecting the
Enlightener’s creed would mean having to fight the Carthogians; conversion to
it, however, would not. “Hallelujah!” he shouted, throwing his weapon aside and
climbing up on the rock to stand with both arms extended. “I am saved! This
sinner has seen the light! Hail to thee, Enlightener!”
Most of the Kroaxian army, it seemed, was only just behind him in reaching the
same conclusion. All along the column, figures were standing up, coming out from
cover, and throwing their weapons to the ground. The air rang with hundreds of
voices rejoicing:
“I see the light! I see the light!”
“The Enlightener cometh!”
“Praise the Enlightener!”
“We are saved! We are saved!”
“No more killing! No more war!”
“All are my brothers. I shall not kill!”
For many hours the Enlightener preached great words of love and wisdom from a
hilltop to the soldiers assembled on the slopes below. When he had finished,
they abandoned their weapons in the desert and turned back to return to Kroaxia.
The Enlightener was lifted again into the sky to be borne ahead by the angels.
He promised he would await his converts at the city of Pergassos, where they
would join him to begin together the founding of the new world.
“It’s amazing! I simply don’t believe this,” Massey said to Zambendorf over the
link from the Orion as the departing flyer climbed higher and transmitted a view
of the shambles that had been the Paduan army.
“Just the last phase left now, Gerry,” Zambendorf told him confidently. “Next
stop—Padua. We’ve rehearsed the cast, tested all the props, perfected our
technique, and everything works just fine. What could possibly go wrong?”
An hour later, a military reconnaissance aircraft flew over the deserts between
Padua and Genoa, and sent a series of views up to the Orion showing the entire
Paduan army streaming back the way it had come. Caspar Lang was given the report
shortly after receiving confirmation that a surface lander had disappeared on a
routine descent to Padua. No signal had been received from any of the ship’s
automatic fault-monitoring devices, and the crew had been highly rated for
reliability and stability; the NASO experts who investigated were unanimous in
concluding that the vessel had been hijacked.
Lang arranged with the military commander at Padua base for James Bond, the spy
employed by the Paduan king, Henry, to be airlifted ahead of the retreating army
in order to intercept it and learn what had happened. Afterward, Bond rode off
into the hills to a rendezvous with the Terrans and was flown back to Padua Base
to make his report.
The news was that the planned Paduan invasion of Genoa was off. The entire
Paduan army was out of its officers’ control and was returning home to build a
new society after encountering a messiah in the desert who had converted all of
them to a new religion of tolerance and nonviolence. The messiah had descended
from the sky accompanied by flying dragons, winged angels, heavenly voices, and
all kinds of miracle-workings.
Lang’s suspicions were immediately aroused. “Check Zambendorf out,” he
instructed his chief administrative assistant. “He’s been too quiet for too
long. I want to know where he is, and every move he’s made in the last
forty-eight hours.”
Neither Zambendorf nor practically anyone on his team were anywhere to be found.
“You were supposed to have been keeping him busy and under observation at all
times!” Lang screamed at a white-faced Osmond Periera in the Globe I executive
offices fifteen minutes after Lang received the news. “Well, he isn’t anywhere
in the ship; he’s not down at Genoa Base, and nobody’s seen him for two days.
Where is he?”
“I, er, I thought he was with Malcom Wade,” Periera replied shakily. “But
apparently Wade thought he was with me. I can’t imagine how the mix-up was
possible. Thelma seems to have garbled all our instructions somehow … but