Thomas looked pleased. "It sounds swell, Major. It sounds like fun -- and it sounds as if it would work."

"I think it will and it will turn their agents to our advantage. After the war is over we'll round them up and shoot 'em -- the actual spies, I mean, not the soft heads. But that's a sideshow; let's talk about the candidates that pass. I want recruits and I want them fast. I want several hundred right away. Out of that several hundred I want to get at least sixty satisfactory candidates for 'priesthood'; I want to train them simultaneously and send them all out into the field at once. You've thoroughly sold me on the dangers of waiting, Jeff; I want to penetrate every major PanAsian center at the same time. You've convinced me that this is our only chance to pull off this masquerade."

Thomas whistled. "You don't want much, do you, loss?"

"It can be done. Here is the new doctrine for recruiting. Turn on your recorder."

"It's on."

"Good. Send in only such candidates as have lost immediate members of their families as a result of the PanAsian invasion, or have other superficial, prima facie evidences that they are likely to be loyal under stress. Eliminate obviously unstable persons but leave any other psychological elimination to the staff at the Citadel. Send in candidates from the following categories only: for the 'priesthood' -- salesmen, advertising men, publicity men, newspapermen, preachers, politicians, psychologists, carnival pitch men or talkers, personnel managers, psychiatrists, trial lawyers, theatrical managers; for work not in contact with the public nor the enemy -- skilled metal workers of all sorts, electronics technicians, jewelers, watchmakers, skilled precision workers in any engineering art, cooks, stenographers, laboratory technicians, physicists, seamstresses. Any of the latter group may be female."

"No female priests?"

"What do you think?"

"I'm against it. These babies rate women as zero or even minus. I don't think a female 'priest' could possibly operate in contact with them."

"I feel the same way. Now, can Alec take over the recruiting under this doctrine?"

"Hmm ... boss, I hate, to throw him on his own just yet."

"He wouldn't make a slip and give us away, would he?"

"No, but he might not get much in the way of results, either."

"Well, you'll just have to push him in, sink or swim. From here on we force the moves, Jeff. Turn the temple over to Alec and report here. You and Scheer will leave for Salt Lake City at once, publicly. Buy another car and use the driver you have now. Alec can recruit another driver. I want Scheer back here in forty-eight hours and I want your first recruits headed this way a couple of days thereafter. Two weeks from now I'll send someone out to relieve you, either Graham or Brooks --"

"Huh? Neither one of them has the temperament for it."

"They can pinch hit after you've broken the ground. We'll relieve the one I send as soon as possible with the proper type. You'll come back here and start a school for 'priests' -- or, rather, continue it and improve it. I'm starting it now, with the people at hand. That's your job; I don't expect to send you into the field again, except possibly as a trouble shooter."

Thomas sighed. "I sure talked myself into a job, didn't I?"

"You did indeed. Get moving."

"Just a minute. Why Salt Lake City?"

"Because I think it's a good spot for recruiting. Those Mormons are shrewd, practical people and I don't think you'll find a traitor among them. If you work at it, I think you can convince their Elders that the great god Mota is a good thing to have around and no menace to their own faith. We haven't made half enough use of the legitimate churches; they should be the backbone of the movement. Take the Mormons -- they run to lay missionaries; if you work it right you can recruit a number of them with such experience, courageous, used to organizing in hostile territory, good talkers, smart. Get it?"

"I get you. Well, I'll sure try."

"You can do it. As soon as possible we'll send someone to relieve Alec and let him try his hand alone in Cheyenne. It's not a big place; if he flops it won't matter too much. But I'm betting he can take Cheyenne. Now you go take Salt Lake City."

Denver, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco. Kansas City, Chicago, Little Rock. New Orleans, Detroit, Jersey City. Riverside, Five Points, Butler, Hackettstown, Natick, Long Beach, Yuma, Fresno, Amarillo, Grants, Parktown, Bremerton, Coronado, Worcester, Wickenberg, Santa Ana, Vicksburg, LaSalle, Morganfield, Blaisville, Barstow, Wallkyll, Boise, Yakima, St. Augustine, Walla Walla, Abilene, Chattahoochee, Leeds, Laramie, Globe, South Norwalk, Corpus Christi.

"Peace be unto you! Peace, it's wonderful! Come, all you sick and heavy laden! Come! Bring your troubles to .the temple of the Lord Mota. Enter the sanctuary where the Masters dare not follow. Hold up your heads as white men, for 'The Disciple is Coming!'

"Your baby daughter is dying from typhoid? Bring her in! Bring her in! Let the golden rays of Tamar make her well again. Your job is gone and you face the labor camps? Come in! Come in! Sleep on the benches and eat at the table that is never bare. There will be work aplenty for you to do; you can be a pilgrim and carry the word to others. You need only profit by instruction.

"Who pays for it all? Why, Lord love you, man, gold is the gift of Mota! Hurry! 'The Disciple is coming!' "

They poured in. At first they came through curiosity, because this new and startling and cockeyed religion was a welcome diversion from painful and monotonous facts of their slavelike existences. Ardmore's instinctive belief in flamboyant advertising justified itself in results; a more conventional, a more dignified cult would never have received the "house" that this one did.

Having come to be entertained, they came back for other reasons. Free food, and no questions asked who minded singing a few innocuous hymns when they could stay for supper? Why, those priests could afford to buy luxuries that Americans rarely saw on their own tables, butter, oranges, good lean meat, paying for them at the Imperial storehouses with hard gold coin that brought smiles to the faces of the Asiatic bursars.

Besides that, the local priest was always good for a touch if a man was really hard up for the necessary. Why be fussy about creeds? Here was a church that did not ask a man to subscribe to its creeds; you could come and enjoy all the benefits and never be asked to give up your old-time religion -- or even be asked if you had a religion. Sure, the priests and their acolytes appeared to take their god-with-six-attributes pretty seriously, but what of it? That was their business. Haven't we always believed in religious freedom? Besides, you had to admit they did good work.

Take Tamar, Lady of Mercy, now -- maybe there was something to it. If you've seen a child choking to death with diphtheria, and seen it put to sleep by the server of Shaam, then washed in the golden rays of Tamar, and then seen it walk out an hour later, perfectly sound and whole, you begin to wonder. With half the doctors dead, with the army and a lot of the rest sent to concentration camps, anyone who could cure disease had to be taken seriously. What if it did look like superstitious mumbo jumbo? Aren't we a practical people? It's results that count.

But cutting more deeply than the material advantages, were the psychological benefits. The temple of Mota was a place -- where a man could hold up his head and not be afraid, something he could not do even in his own home. "Haven't you heard? Why, they say that no flatface has ever set foot in one of their temples, even to inspect. They can't even get in by disguising themselves as white men; something knocks them out cold, right at the door. Personally, I think those apes are scared to death of Mota. I don't know what it is they've got, but you can breathe easy in the temple. Come along with me -- you'll see!"