Yandor stopped him near the head of the stairway leading up from underground, while the native who was manager and a sort of master or announcer of acts, made a brief speech.
"Nyers and nyas and you, most gracious k'nyer," he addressed the throng and the Ruler, "tonight you are to see something most unusual in trained animals. I have been connected with performances for many, many years, but never have I seen anything to equal this. I will not attempt to tell you what is coming—you must see and marvel and judge for yourselves. Next on our program is Gor Anlo and his Friends."
Hanlon came up the stairway and onto the stage, followed in single line by his eight roches. There was a titter of laughter at first sight of Hanlon in the roch-mask and the dogs in their gaudy uniforms, but this soon quieted in amazed surprise at the exhibition they were witnessing.
Across the entire stage-place the roches marched, while Hanlon took his place in the center. He did not utter aloud a single word of command as the eight roches marched about the platform and stopped in a circle facing the audience on all sides, all the dogs equidistant from the others. As one they rose on their hind legs, and their forepaws bent to their heads in a salute.
A moment they held this, then still without a spoken word of command, dropped to all fours and in rapid succession formed and marched in company front and lines of two and four, made left and right turns, marched across the stage in oblique lines, did about face and to the rear, and all the complicated maneuvers the Ruler's residence guards did on the parade ground.
Then they added some things Hanlon had never seen Estrellan guards do, but which were more or less common to Terran drill teams. They did full wheels in lines of eight and four, formed wheeling stars and circles.
Never once did Hanlon utter a word of command that anyone could hear; never once did the roches falter or break that perfectly-cadenced step; never once was one of them out of line. There was never any hesitation, never any breaking of ranks even when, about half-way through their drill they changed to quick time—almost double the cadence in which they had first drilled.
How could any of that great, stunned audience guess that the trainer was actually controlling each animal mind, that his own mind was divided and parts of it superimposed on each animal brain, so that it was impossible for them to act counter to his central—yet individual—command?
All the audience could see was the most perfect, the most incredibly flawless precision of training they had ever witnessed. Led by the Ruler they began a rhythmic chant of "Yi, yi, yi, yi," in cadence with the roch's marching tempo. The chant grew louder by the moment until it was a deafening roar.
At their first sounds Hanlon almost lost his poise—for he did not know that this was their method of giving highest applause—and that very few acts ever received it at all. He had never heard it when he had attended their performances before. To him, now, it sounded more like they were giving him earthly "boos", and he was afraid he had somehow offended them.