I wondered whether Sanson had bought the attendants, if he had come alone, whether the fear of him forbade an ambush in case Amaranth’s plot should fail. He had evidently gone down in the elevator, for it was not in the cage, but it came up to me when I pressed the button, and I descended, stopping at the first door I saw, which must, I knew, give access to the Temple.
The corridor into which I stepped was as empty as the palace hall above. The airscouts who should have been on duty here were gone. I did not realize that I had formed no plans and felt no fear until I found my way unopposed. Before me was a door, leading into one of the numerous small rooms through which one entered the Temple, and at my side was a little window, through which the cries of the mob beneath were borne to me fitfully on the gusty air.
I stopped and looked out. The sky was thick with battleplanes. No longer at their stations about the city, they cruised hither and thither, approaching one another and retiring in a manner seemingly confused and aimless. Sometimes a group would gather as if conferring, forming a polygon of light with changing sides as they maneuvered; and presently a single impulse seemed to animate them all, for, like a flock of wheeling birds, they swung around and sailed off together, till they were only pin-points of light in the southwest.
Beneath me the courts were packed with a vast multitude that had assembled for the morrow’s ceremonies. Looking down on them, I saw that they were held back by two lines of the guards, armed with Ray rods, drawn up before the Temple.
They jostled and swayed and howled fearlessly, as if they knew the imminence of change; yet their cries were not all against the Christians and the morons, nor yet against Lembken, nor all for Sanson. I tried to fancy that among them were groups of our few thousand, gathered out of the forests to play their rôle at dawn.
Yet for the moment Sanson had triumphed. I thought upon how little hung the fate of the world. A palace women’s intrigue, the jealousy of a girl, a cup of wine, and Lembken’s schemes were broken.
Then it came to me that the conical, glow-painted Ray guns on the encircling wall were trained no longer outward but inward, dominating the Temple courts and all the multitude within them. And in a flash of comprehension I saw the scheme of Sanson. If the people rejected him on the morrow he meant to kill all those within the walls, all human beings inside the circle of the fortress, confident that thereby he would destroy all his enemies. He meant to level the Temple and the palace above, the Council Hall, the Airscouts’ Fortress, involving everything in one colossal ruin which he would bestride—the unchallenged master of the Federation.
This done, the Russian fleet would be attacked and destroyed, and with it the last obstacle to world dominion.
I saw this with one flash of intuition. Perhaps I lingered in all for forty seconds beside the window. It was hardly longer, for the thought of Esther drove me through the doorway in front of me. I found myself within the dark, enormous area of the Temple.
I was in a circular gallery surrounded by a brass railing, which ran high up around the interior. The only light was the faint reflection from a single solar bulb that shone across the gulf. Beneath it I could discern the shining, golden surface of the Ant.