Phyfe asked to be relieved of his duties as head of the expedition still in the field in order that he might devote his entire time to a study of Stroid records and manuscripts now in existence. Terry Bernard gave up field work to assist him in order to be near the site of restoration. With them was Dreyer, who attacked with feverish effort the translation of the language that had defied him so long.

Underwood was concerned with the resurrection itself. He sensed that the very secret of life was involved in the work he was doing. The instruction book left by the Stroid was in the nature of an operating manual, however, rather than a theoretical text, and now that the experiment was actually under way, Underwood abandoned everything in an attempt to study fully the processes that were taking place.

So occupied were they with their own studies that the scientists scarcely noticed the public reaction to the creature they were attempting to restore.

The first outward sign had been that wild cry of welcome the day the protoplasm was brought to Earth.

The next was the Sunday sermon preached by one of the multitude of obscure religious leaders in a poorly attended meeting in a luxurious church in that same city.

William B. Hennessey had been a publicity man in his early years before the full breakdown began to show, and he was conscious of good publicity values. But perhaps he half believed what he wrote and the mere preaching of it convinced him it was so. It is probable that there were other preachers who took the same theme that Sunday morning, but William B. Hennessey's was the one that got the news publicity.

He said, "How many of this congregation this morning are among those who have given up in the race of life, who have despaired of values and standards to cling to, who have forsaken the leadership of all who would lead you? Perhaps you are among the millions of those who have given up all hope of solving the great problems of life. If you are, I want to ask if you were among those who witnessed the miraculous arrival of the Gift out of the Ages. Were you among those who saw the Great One?"

William B. Hennessey paused. "For centuries we have looked for leadership in our own midst and not found it. They were, after all, merely human. But now, into the hands of our noble scientists, has been imparted the great task of awakening the sleeping Great One, and when they have completed their work, the Golden Age of Earth will be upon us.

"I call upon you to throw off the shackles of despair. Come out of the prison of your disillusionment. Make ready to greet the Great One on the day of his rising. Let your hearts and minds be ready to receive the message that he shall give, and to obey the words of counsel you shall surely be given, for truly from a greater world and a brighter land than ours has come the Great One to preserve us!"

Within an hour Hennessey's words were flashed around the world.

Terry was the only one of the scientists on the project who heard about it. He went over to the museum in the afternoon and found Underwood and Dreyer at the test board.

"Some crackpot preacher this morning gave out a sermon on Oscar here." He jerked a thumb toward the bath. "He says we've got the solution to all the world's ills. He's calling on the people to worship Oscar."

"You might know some fool thing like that would happen."

Dreyer emitted a single, explosive puff of cigar smoke. "A religious cult based upon this alien intelligence. We should have predicted that development. I wonder why our computations failed to indicate it."

"I think it's dangerous," said Terry. "It could turn into serious business."

"What do you mean? I don't get it," said Underwood.

"Don't you see the implications? The whole trouble with our culture is disillusionment, lack of leadership. If this thing turns out to be sentient, intelligent—even superior—why, it could become anything the people wanted to make it, president, dictator, god, or what not."

"Oh, take it easy," Underwood said. "This is just one little tin-horn preacher who probably didn't have more than a hundred in his congregation. The news broadcasts must have treated it as a humorous commentary on our experiments. Just the same, we should never have allowed the news to be broadcast. It all started with that hysterical mob the day we brought the protoplasm here."

Dreyer shook his head amid the smoke aura. "No. It began long ago when the first cave man plastered up his clay gods and found them cracked in the Sun and washed away with the rains. It began when the first cave chieftain was slain by a rival leader and his disillusioned followers looked about for a new head man. It has been going on ever since."

"It's no concern of ours," said Underwood.

Dreyer went on slowly, "As one by one the gods and chieftains fell, men cast about for new leaders who would bear the burdens of mankind and show the way to that illusive paradise that all men sought. Through the ages there have always been those who would let themselves be lifted up and called great, who would undertake to lead. Some had their eyes on faraway starry places that man could never reach and their disciples fell away, heartbroken and discouraged. Others sought their goal by mastery over foreign men and nations and bathed their followers in blood and disaster. But always their star fell and men never found the elusive goal which they could not name nor define."

"And so the Age of Disillusion," said Underwood bitterly.

"But disillusion is a healthy thing. It leads to reality."

"How can you call this healthy?" Underwood demanded. "Men believe in nothing. They have lost faith in life itself."

"Faith in life? I wonder what that means," said Dreyer, musingly. "Watch your extensions, Dr. Underwood."

Underwood flushed, recalling Illia's remark that Dreyer would tear off every other word and throw it back at him. "All right, then. There are no governments, no leaders, no religions to lean upon in times of need, because men have no confidence in such sources."

"All of which is a sign that they are approaching a stage in which they will no longer need such support. And, like a baby in his first steps, they stumble and fall. They get bruised and cry, as I detect that many of our scientists have done, else they would not have run away to Venus and other places."

Underwood blinked from the sting of Dreyer's rebuke. "That's the second time I've been accused of running away," he said.

"No offense," Dreyer said. "I am merely stating facts. That you do not believe them is not to your condemnation, only a commentary on the state of your knowledge. But our discussion is on the restoration of the alien, and your knowledge may have far-reaching effects in the disposition of this project."

"Policy is controlled by the directors, who will be guided by your recommendations—"

Dreyer shook his head. "No, I think not, unless it pleases them. Should I ever recommend destruction of the alien, I would have to work through you. And that would take much convincing, would it not?"

"Plenty," said Underwood. "Are you recommending that now?"

"Not yet. No, not yet."

Slowly, Dreyer moved away toward the massive bath that housed the alien, Demarzule, Hetrarra of Sirenia, the Great One.

Underwood watching the beetle-back of the semanticist felt deflated by the encounter. Dreyer seemed always so nerve-rackingly calm. Underwood wondered if it were possible to acquire such immunity to turmoil.

He turned back to Terry, who had stood in silent agreement with Dreyer. "How are you and Phyfe coming along?"

"It's a slow business, even with the help of the key in the repository. That was apparently pure Stroid III, but we have two other languages or dialects that are quite different and we seem to have more specimens of those than we do of Stroid III. Phyfe thinks he's on the way to cracking both Stroid I and II, though. Personally, I'd like to get back out to the asteroids, if it weren't for Demarzule. I wasn't meant to be a scholar."

"Stick with it. I'm hoping that we can have some kind of idea what the Stroid civilization was like by the time Demarzule revives."

"How is it coming?"

"Cell formation is taking place, but how organs will ever develop is more than I can see. We're just waiting and observing. Four motion picture cameras are constantly at work, some through electron microscopes. At the end of six months we'll at least have a record of what occurred, regardless of what it is."

The mass of life grew and multiplied its millions of cells. Meanwhile, another growth, less tangible but no less real, was swiftly rising and spreading through the Earth. The mind of each man it encompassed was one of its cells, and they were multiplying no less rapidly than those of the growth within the marble museum building. The leadership of men by men had proven false beyond all hope of ever restoring the dream of a mortal man who could raise his fellows to the heights of the stars. But the Great One was something else again. Utterly beyond all Earthly build and untainted with the flaws of Earthmen, he was the gift of the gods to man—he was a god who would lift man to the eternal heights of which he had dreamed.

The flame spread and leaped the oceans of Earth. It swept up all creeds and races and colors.

Delmar Underwood looked up from his desk in annoyance as a pompous, red-faced man of short, stout build was ushered in by his secretary. The man halted halfway between the door and the desk and bowed slightly.

He said, "I address the Prophet Underwood by special commission of the Disciples."

"What the devil—?" Underwood frowned and extended a hand toward a button. But he didn't ring. The visitor extended an envelope.

"And by special authorization of Director Boarder of the Institute!"

Still keeping his eyes on the man, Underwood accepted the envelope and ripped it open. In formal language and the customary red tape manner, it instructed Underwood to hear the visitor, one William B. Hennessey, and grant the request that Hennessey would make.

Underwood knew him now. His throat felt suddenly dry. "What's this all about?"

The man shrugged disparagingly. "I am only a poor Disciple of the Great One, who has been commissioned by his fellows to seek a favor at the hands of the Prophet Underwood."

As Underwood looked into the man's eyes, he felt a chill, and a wave of apprehension swept over him with staggering force.

"Sit down," he said. "What is it you want?" He wished Dreyer were here to place some semantic evaluation upon this crazy incident.

"The Disciples of the Great One would have the privilege of viewing the Master," said Hennessey as he sat down near the desk. "You scientists are instruments selected for a great task. The Great One did not come only to a select few. He came to all mankind. We request the right to visit the temple quietly and view the magnificent work you are doing as you restore our Master to life so that we may receive of his great gifts."

Underwood could picture the laboratory filled with bowing, praying, yelling, fanatic worshippers crowding around, destroying equipment and probably trying to walk off with bits of holy protoplasm. He pressed a switch and spun a dial savagely. In a moment the face of Director Boarder was on the tiny screen before him.

"This fanatic Hennessey is here. I just wanted to check on the possible liability before having him thrown out on his ear."

Boarder's face grew frantic. "Don't do that! You got my note? Do exactly as I said. Those are orders!"

"But we can't carry on an experiment with a bunch of fanatics yapping at our heels."

"I don't care how you do it. You've got to give them what they want. Either that or fold up the experiment. The latest semi-weekly poll shows they effectively control eighty million votes. You know what that means. One word to the Congressional scientific committee and all of us would be out on our ear."

"We could shut the thing up and call it off. The protoplasm would just quietly die and then what would these birds have to worship?"

"Destruction of government property can carry the death penalty," said Boarder ominously. "Besides, you're too much of the scientist to do that. You want to see the thing through just as much as the rest of us do. If I had the slightest fear that you'd destroy it, I'd yank you out of there before you knew where you were—but I haven't any such fears."

"Yes, you're right, but these—" Underwood made a grimace as if he were trying to swallow an oyster with fur on.

"I know. We've got to put up with it. The scientist who survives in this day and age is the one who adjusts to his environment." Boarder grinned sourly.

"I went out to space to escape the environment. Now I'm right back in it, only worse than ever."

"Well, look, Underwood, why can't you just build a sort of balcony with a ramp running across the lab so that these Disciples of the Great One can look down into the bath? You could feed them in at one end of the building and run them out the other. That way it wouldn't upset you. After all, it's only going to last six months."

"When the Stroid revives, they'll probably want to put him on a throne with a radiant halo about his head." Boarder laughed. "If he represents the civilization whose artifacts we've found on the asteroids, I think he'll take care of his 'Disciples' in short order. Anyway, you'll have to do as they demand. It won't last long."

Boarder cut off and Underwood turned back to the bland Hennessey, who sat as if nothing would ever disturb him.

"You see," Hennessey said, "I knew what the outcome would be. I had faith in the Great One."

"Faith! You knew that the scientific committee would back you up because you represent eighty million neurotic crackpots. What will you do when your Great One wakes up and tells you all to go to hell?"

Hennessey smiled quietly. "He won't. I have faith."