“We should have known better; there were plenty of lessons in history.
The old French Republic tried to freeze events to one pattern with the Versailles Treaty. When that didn’t work they built the Maginot Line and went to sleep behind it. What did it get them? Final blackout!
“Life is a dynamic process and can’t be made static. ‘ — and they all lived happily ever after’ is fairy-tale stu — ” He was interrupted by the jangling of a bell and the red flashing of the emergency transparency.
The face of the communications watch officer snapped into view on the reflectophone screen. “Major Ardmore!”
It was gone and replaced by the features of Frank
Mitsui, contorted .with apprehension. “Major!” he burst out. “Colonel Calhoun — he’s gone crazy!” “Easy, man, easy! What’s happened?” “He gave me the slip — he’s gone up the temple. He thinks he’s the god Mota!”
666CHAPTER TWELVE
Ardmore cut frank off by switching to the communications watch officer.
“Get me the control board in the great altar — move!”
He got it, but it was not the operator on watch that Ardmore saw.
Instead it was Calhoun, bending over the console of controls. The operator was collapsed in his chair, head lolled to the right. Ardmore cut the connection at once and dived for the door.
Thomas and Brooks competed for second place, leaving the orderly a hopelessly outdistanced fourth. The three swept up the gravity chute to the temple level at maximum acceleration, and slammed out onto the temple floor. The altar lay before them, a hundred feet away.
“I assigned Frank to watch him,” Thomas was trying to say when Calhoun stuck his head over the upper rail of the altar.
“Stand fast!”
They stood. Brooks whispered, “He’s got the heavy projector trained on us. Careful, Major!”
“I know it,” Ardmore acknowledged, letting the words slip out of one side of his mouth. He cleared his throat. “Colonel Calhoun!”
“I am the great Lord Mota. Careful how you speak to me!”
“Yes, certainly, Lord Mota. But tell thy servant something — isn’t Colonel Calhoun one of your attributes?”
Calhoun considered this. “Sometimes,” he finally answered, “sometimes I think that he is. Yes, he is.”
“Then I wish to speak to Colonel Calhoun.” Ardmore eased forward a few steps.
“Stand still!” Calhoun crouched rigid over the projector. “My lightnings are set for white men — take care!”
“Watch it, Chief,” whispered Thomas, “he can blast the whole damn place with that thing.”
“Don’t I know it!” Ardmore answered voicelessly, and started to resume the verbal tight-rope walk. But something had diverted Calhoun’s attention. They saw him turn his head, then hastily swing the heavy projector around and depress its controls with both hands. He raised his head almost immediately, seemed to make some readjustment of the projector, and depressed the controls again. Almost simultaneously some heavy body struck him; he fell from sight behind the rail.
On the floor of the altar platform they found Calhoun struggling. But his arms were held, his legs pinioned by the limbs of a short stocky brown man — Frank Mitsui. Frank’s eyes were lifeless china, his muscles rigid.
It took four men to force Calhoun into an improvised straitjacket and to carry him down to sick bay. “As I figure it,” said Thomas, watching the work party remove their psychotic burden, “Dr. Calhoun had the projector set to kill white men. The first blast didn’t harm Frank, and he had to stop to reset the controls. That saved us.”
“Yes — but not Frank.”
“Well — you know his story. That second blast must have hit him while he was actually in the air — full power. Did you feel his arms?
Coagulated instantaneously — like a hard-boiled egg.”
But they had no time to dwell on the end of little Mitsui’s tragic life; more minutes had passed. Ardmore and company hurried back to his office, where he found Kendig, his Chief of Staff, calmly handling the traffic of dispatches. Ardmore demanded a quick verbal resume.
“One change, Major — they tried to A-bomb the temple in Nashville. A near miss, but it wrecked the city district south of it. Have you set the zero hour? Several dioceses have inquired.”