He grabbed her by the arm. "Hey, baby, they don't sound dangerous," he said. "They're just singing a kind of hymn as though nothing happened. The only rise we got out of them was the way they scattered when we started to crash."
"Come on, come on," she cried. "I know about these people. They'll be after us when the hymn stops."
"Okay, but you're talking foolish," he said. They started walking down the mountain. "Hell, those people won't do us any harm. They're too busy singing." He pulled out a pack of cigarets and lit one.
"You're space-crazy," she said. "Didn't you ever hear of the massacre of scientists at Harvard, or what they did to the chorus girls in 'Sex Happy'?"
Tugging at his arm to get him to hurry, she told him about the Mohcans. The sect appeared toward the end of the war. Historically they were a blend of Christian, Mohammedan, Communist, and Hindu. Their prophet and leader, until his martyrdom, was Smith Akandi, an English-Hindu half-caste who was reared in Moscow. Their creed was anti-science and anti-pleasure. Thousands of them were executed during the war, but hundreds of thousands were converted.
"Half way I am for them," the girl said. "Just look at me." She tore a bit of her gown contemptuously. "I've given a good time to soldiers, sailors, and spacemen, and a fat lot of happiness it's given me. Jan darling, would you like to settle down with me in a little radioactive suburb and beget a three-headed monster?"
Jan laughed. "Baby, in all the worlds I have never begotten even a two-headed monster. At least, not to my knowledge. But why are they so bitter at science?"
"Why not, stupid? You saw what science did to Chicago."
"Oh, that?" Jan said. "You're taking too limited a view. Chicago is only a speck on a speck out there among the suns and the planets."