The viewing balcony above the floor of the museum hall was completed and the disciples of the Great One began to flow through in a never-ending stream. To Underwood, it was a sickening, revolting sight. As he watched the faces of those who came and worshipped at the shrine, he saw them transformed, as if they had seen some great vision. They came with burdens of care lining their faces—all ages, young and old—and they left with shining eyes and uplifted faces. There were even sick and crippled who came and left crutches, eyeglasses and trusses.
Twice a day, William B. Hennessey stood upon the balcony and uttered a prayer to the Great One, and the stream of fanatic worshipers stopped and bowed down.
One of Underwood's biologists, Craven, was so fascinated by the exhibition of mass hysteria that he asked for permission to make a study of it.
Underwood forced the spectacle out of his mind. He knew he couldn't endure staying there at the museum if he allowed his mind to dwell upon the decadence of mankind.
The mass of protoplasm in the nutrient bath was becoming more and more a typical mammalian embryo, anthropomorphic in most respects, but with differences that Illia and Underwood could not assign to the natural development of the creature, or to the unusual circumstances of its revival, because there was no standard with which to compare it.
Then, one day near the end of the fourth month, Underwood received an urgent call from Phyfe.
"Come over at once!" he said. "We've found the answer in the repository. We know who the Great One is."
"Who?"
"I want you to see for yourself."
Underwood swore as Phyfe cut off. He turned his observations over to the operator on duty and left the building. The lexicography and philography sections of the institute were in an old sprawling block across the city by the spaceport; the semantics section was also housed there. The repository had been taken there for continued examination.