We stood like statues for several minutes. We could hear sounds of running feet and of challenges. The Officer of the Day ran past us into the Palace, buckling his corselet over his night clothes as he ran. I almost blasted him out of existence before he answered my challenge. Then the relief watch section swung past at double time with the relief warden at its head.

Gradually the excitement died away; the lights remained on but someone thought to shut off the alarm. Zeb ventured a whisper. 'What in Sheol happened? Did you muff it?'

'Yes and no.' I told him about the restless Sister.

Hmmph! Well, son, this ought to teach you not to fool around with women when you are on duty.'

'Confound it, 1 wasn't fooling with her. She just popped out of her cell.'

'I didn't mean tonight,' he said bleakly.

I shut up.

About half an hour later, long before the end of the watch, the relief section tramped back. Their warden halted them, our two reliefs fell out and we fell in the empty places. We marched back to the guardroom, stopping twice more on the way to drop reliefs and pick up men from our own section.

We were halted in the inner parade facing the guardroom door and left at attention. There we stood for fifty mortal minutes while the officer of the Day strolled around and looked us over. Once a man in the rear rank shifted his weight. It would have gone unnoticed at dress parade, even in the presence of the Prophet, but tonight the Officer of the Day bawled him out at once and Captain van Eyck noted down his name.

Master Peter looked just as angry as his superior undoubtedly was. He passed out several more gigs, even stopped in front of me and told the guardroom orderly to put me down for 'boots not properly shined'-which was a libel, unless I had scuffed them in my efforts. I dared not look down to see but stared him in the eye and said nothing, while he stared back coldly.

But his manner recalled to me Zeb's lecture about intrigue. Van Eyck's manner was perfectly that of a subordinate officer let down and shamed by his own men; how should I feel if I were in fact new-born innocent?

Angry, I decided-angry and self-righteous. Interested and stimulated by the excitement at first, then angry at being kept standing at attention like a plebe. They were trying to soften us up by the strained wait; how would I have felt about it, say two months ago? Smugly sure of my own virtue, it would have offended me and humiliated me-to be kept standing like a pariah waiting to whine for the privilege of a ration card-to be placed on the report like a cadet with soup on his jacket.

By the time the Commander of the Guard arrived almost an hour later I was white-lipped with anger. The process was synthetic but the emotion was real. I had never really liked our Commander anyway. He was a short, supercilious little man with a cold eye and a way of looking through his junior officers instead of at them. Now he stood in front of us with his priest's robes thrown back over his shoulders and his thumbs caught in his sword belt.

He glared at us. 'Heaven help me, Angels of the Lord indeed,' he said softly into the dead silence-then barked, 'Well?'

No one answered.

'Speak up!' he shouted. 'Some one of you knows about this. Answer me! Or would you all rather face the Question?'

A murmur ran down our ranks-but no one spoke.

He ran his eyes over us again. His eye caught mine and I stared back truculently. 'Lyle!'

'Yes, reverend sir?'

'What do you know of this?'

'I know that I would like to sit down, reverend sir!'

He scowled at me, then his eye got a gleam of cold amusement. 'Better to stand before me, my son, than to sit before the Inquisitor.' But he passed on and heckled the man next to me.

He badgered us endlessly, but Zeb and I seemed to receive neither more nor less attention than the others. At last he seemed to give up and directed the Officer of the Day to dismiss us. I was not fooled; it was a certainty that every word spoken had been recorded, every expression cinemographed, and that analysts were plotting the data against each of our past behavior patterns before we reached our quarters.

But Zeb is a wonder. He was gossiping about the night's events, speculating innocently about what could have caused the hurrah, even before we reached our room. I tried to answer in what I had decided was my own 'proper' reaction and groused about the way we had been treated. 'We're officers and gentlemen,' I complained. 'If he thinks we are guilty of something, he should prefer formal charges.'

I went to bed still griping, then lay awake and worried. I tried to tell myself that Judith must have reached a safe place, or else the brass would not be in the dark about it. But I dropped off to sleep still fretting.

I felt someone touch me and I woke instantly. Then I relaxed when I realized that my hand was being gripped in the recognition grip of the lodge. 'Quiet,' a voice I did not recognize whispered in my ear. 'I must give you certain treatment to protect you.' I felt the bite of a hypodermic in my arm; in a few seconds I was relaxed and dreamy. The voice whispered, 'You saw nothing unusual on watch tonight. Until the alarm was sounded your watch was quite without incident -' I don't know how long the voice droned on.

I was awakened a second time by someone shaking me roughly. I burrowed into my pillow and said, 'Go 'way! I'm going to skip breakfast.'

Somebody struck me between my shoulder blades; I turned and sat up, blinking. There were four armed men in the room, blasters drawn and pointed at me. 'Come along!' ordered the one nearest to me.

They were wearing the uniform of Angels but without unit insignia. Each head was covered by a black mask that exposed only the eyes-and by these masks I knew them: proctors of the Grand Inquisitor. I hadn't really believed it could happen to me. Not to me not to Johnnie Lyle who had always behaved himself, been a credit to his parish and a pride to his mother. No! The Inquisition was a boogieman, but a boogieman for sinners-not for John Lyle.

But I knew with sick horror when I saw those masks that I was already a dead man, that my time had come and here at last was the nightmare that 1 could not wake up from.

But I was not dead yet. From somewhere I got the courage to pretend anger. 'What are you doing here?'

'Come along,' the faceless voice repeated.

'Show me your order. You can't just drag an officer out of his bed any time you feel -'

The leader gestured with his pistol; two of them grabbed my arms and hustled me toward the door, while the fourth fell in behind. But I am fairly strong; I made it hard for them while protesting, 'You've got to let me get dressed at least. You've no right to haul me away half naked, no matter what the emergency is. I've a right to appear in the uniform of my rank.

Surprisingly the appeal worked. The leader stopped. 'Okay. But snap into it!'

I stalled as much as I dared while going through the motions of hurrying-jamming a zipper on my boot, fumbling clumsily with all my dressing. How could I leave some sort of a message for Zeb? Any sort of a sign that would show the brethren what had happened to me?

At last I got a notion, not a good one but the best I could manage. I dragged clothing out of my wardrobe, some that I would need, some that I did not, and with the bunch a sweater. In the course of picking out what I must wear I managed to arrange the sleeves of the sweater in the position taken by a lodge brother in giving the Grand Hailing Sign of Distress. Then 1 picked up loose clothing and started to put some of it back in the wardrobe; the leader immediately shoved his blaster in my ribs and said, 'Never mind that. You're dressed.'