The strain was getting him. It was too much responsibility for one man, too many details, too many decisions. He found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the matter at hand, hard to make even simple decisions. He became uncertain of himself and correspondingly irritable. His mood infected those in contact with him and spread throughout the organization.

Something had to be done.

Ardmore was sufficiently honest with himself to recognize, if not to diagnose, his own weakness. He called Thomas into his office, and unburdened his soul. Concluding, he asked, "What do you think I should do about it, Jeff? Has the job got too big for me? Should I try to pick out somebody else to take over?"

Thomas shook his head slowly. "I don't think you ought to do that, Chief. Nobody could work any harder than you do -- there are just twenty-four hours in a day. Besides, whoever relieved you would have the same problems without your intimate knowledge of the background and your imaginative grasp of what we are trying to accomplish."

"Well, I've got to do something. We're about to move into the second phase of this show, when we start in systematically trying to break the nerve of the PanAsians. When that reaches a crisis, we've got to have the congregation of every temple ready to act as a military unit. That means more work, not less. And I'm not ready to handle it! Good grief, man you'd think that somebody somewhere would have worked out a science of executive organization so that a big organization could be handled without driving the man at the top crazy! For the past two hundred years the damned scientists have kept hauling gadget after gadget out of their laboratories, gadgets that simply demand big organizations to use them -- but never a word about how to make those organizations run." He struck a match savagely. "It's not rational!"

"Wait a minute, Chief, wait a minute." Thomas wrinkled his brow in an intense effort to remember. "Maybe there has been such work done -- I seem to recall something I read once, something about Napoleon being the last of the generals."

"Huh?"

"It's pertinent. This chap's idea was that Napoleon was the last of the great generals to exercise direct command, because the job got too big. A few years later the Germans invented the principle of staff command, and, according to this guy, generals were through: as generals. He thought that Napoleon wouldn't have stood a chance against an army headed by a general staff. Probably what you need is a staff:"

"For Pete's sake, I've got a staff! A dozen secretaries and twice that many messengers and clerks -- I fall over 'em."

"I don't think it was that kind of a staff he was talking about. Napoleon must have had that kind of a staff."

"Well, what did he mean?"

"I don't know exactly, but apparently it was a standard notion in modern military organization. You're not a graduate of the War College?"

"You know damn well I'm not." It was true. Thomas had guessed from very early in their association that Ardmore was a layman, improvising as he went along, and Ardmore knew that he knew; yet each had kept his mouth closed.

"Well, it seems to me that a graduate of the War College might be able to give us some hints about organization."

"Fat chance. They either died in battle, or were liquidated after the collapse. If any escaped, they are lying very low and doing their best to conceal their identity -- for which you can't blame them."

"No, you can't. Well, forget it -- I guess it wasn't such a good idea after all."

"Don't be hasty. It was a good idea. Look -- armies aren't the only big organizations. Take the big corporations, like Standard Oil and U. S. Steel and General Motors -- they must have worked out the same principles."

"Maybe. Some of them, anyhow -- although some of them burn their executives out pretty young. Generals have to be killed with an ax, it seems to me."

"Still, some of them must know something. Will you see if you can stir out a few?"

Fifteen minutes later a punched-card selector was rapidly rifling through the personnel files of every man and woman who had been reported on by the organization. It turned out that several men of business executive experience were actually then working in the Citadel in jobs of greater or lesser administrative importance. Those were called in, and dispatches were sent out summoning about a dozen more to "make a pilgrimage" to the Mother Temple.

The first trouble shooter turned out sour. He was a high-pressure man, who had run his own business much along the lines of personal supervision which Ardmore had been using up to then. His suggestions had to do with routing and forms and personal labor savers -- rather than any basic change in principles. But in time several placid unhurried men were located who knew instinctively and through practice the principle of doctrinal administration.

One of them, formerly general manager of the communications trust, was actually a student and an admirer of modern military organizational methods. Ardmore made him Chief of Staff. With his help, Ardmore selected several others: the former personnel manager of Sears, Roebuck; a man who had been permanent undersecretary of the department of public works in one of the Eastern states; executive secretary of an insurance company. Others were added as the method was developed.

It worked. Ardmore had a little trouble getting used to it at first; he had been a one-man show all his life and it was disconcerting to find himself split up into several alter egos, each one speaking with his authority, and signing his name "by direction." But in time he realized that these men actually were able to apply his own policy to a situation and arrive at a decision that he might have made himself. Those who could not he got rid of, at the suggestion of his Chief of Staff: But it was strange to be having time enough to watch other men doing HIS work HIS way under the simple but powerful scientific principle of general staff command.

He was free at last to give his attention to perfecting that policy and to deal thoroughly with the occasional really new situation which his staff referred to him for solution and development of new policy. And he slept soundly, sure that one, or more, of his "other brains" was alert and dealing with the job. He knew now that, even if he should be killed, his extended brain would continue until the task was completed.

It would be a mistake to assume that the PanAsian authorities had watched the growth and spread of the new religion with entire satisfaction, but at the critical early stage of its development they simply had not realized that they were dealing with anything dangerous. The warning of the experience of the deceased lieutenant who first made contact with the cult of Mota went unheeded, the simple facts of his tale unbelieved.

Having once established their right to travel and operate, Ardmore and Thomas impressed on each missionary the importance of being tactful and humble and of establishing friendly relations with the local authorities. The gold of the priests was very welcome to the Asiatics, involved as they were in making a depressed and recalcitrant country pay dividends, and this caused them to be more lenient with the priests of Mota than they otherwise would have been. They felt, not unreasonably, that a slave who helps to make the books balance must be a good slave. The word went around at first to encourage the priests of Mota, as they were aiding in consolidating the country.

True, some of the PanAsian police and an occasional minor official had very disconcerting experiences in dealing with priests, but, since these incidents involved loss of face to the PanAsians concerned, they were strongly disposed not to speak of them.