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—"