Part 4

The enthusiasm of the directors was even greater than that of Illia, if possible. None of them seemed to share the fears of some of the expedition members. And, somehow, in the warm familiarity of the committee room, those fears seemed fantastically groundless. Boarder, the elder member of the committee of directors, could not hold back his tears as he finished the report and Underwood had given verbal amplification.

"What a wonderful thing that this should have happened in our lifetime," he said. "Do you think it is feasible? The thing seems so--so fantastic, the restoration of a living creature of half a million years ago."

"I'm sure I don't know the answer to that," said Underwood. "No one does. The construction of the equipment described by the Stroid, though, is completely within range of our technical knowledge. I'm certain that we can set it up exactly according to specifications. It is possible that too much time has passed and the protoplasm has died. It is possible that Demarzule thought in terms of hundreds of years, or, at the most, a few thousand, before he would be found. There is no way to know except to construct the equipment and carry out the experiment, which I will do if the Directors wish to authorize the expenditure."

"There is no question of that!" said Boarder. "We'd mortgage the entire Institution if necessary! I'm wondering what laboratory space we can use. Why not put it in the new Carlson Museum building? The specimens for the Carlson can stay in the warehouse for a while longer."

Boarder looked about the circle of Directors facing him. He saw nods and called for a vote. His proposal was upheld.

With approval given, Phyfe returned to the expedition to supervise the transfer of the repository of Demarzule to Earth, while Underwood began infinitely detailed planning for the construction and setup of equipment as specified by the instructions he had brought from the Stroid repository.

The great semanticist, Dreyer, was asked to help in a consulting capacity for the whole project; specifically, to assist in retranslation of the records to make absolutely certain of their interpretation of the scientific instructions.

Dreyer was a short, squat man who had never been caught without a thick black cigar from which billowed endless columns of pale blue smoke. His face was round and baby-calm. He gave the impression of having achieved the impossible goal of complete serenity in a world that swirled with unceasing turmoil.

* * * * *

He listened quietly when approached, and when Phyfe and Underwood had finished their stories, he said, "Yes, I shall be glad to help. This is a thing of great importance."

But Underwood was forced to shed his mind of sociological and semantic implications of the job they were doing. The technical work involved was of tremendous complexity and magnitude. A mountainous quantity of complicated equipment had to be designed and built, but as Underwood deciphered the instructions of the Stroids and had it verified by Dreyer, he could find no short cuts, nor did he dare attempt any.

The Carlson Museum had been designed along the lines of an ancient Greek temple and was set prominently on a low hill apart from other groups of buildings of the Smithson. Its glistening marble columns made a landmark for miles. It was rather symbolical in a way, Underwood thought, that such an imposing edifice should be appointed for the resurrection of the ancient Great One.

The central hall of the museum was cleared of display cases which had already been set up. Electronic and biological equipment began to flow in as Underwood sent strange fabrication orders to scattered shops and plants throughout the country.

* * * * *

When it was announced that the Carlson would not open on the date previously set, the worldwide news associations were interested and Underwood was suddenly besieged by reporters. He briefly outlined their discovery. It would make some good science supplement yarns, Underwood supposed, and by the time the reporters got through with the stories they would have a whole race of monsters out of space being restored in the Carlson.

Underwood told them as much.

But Davis of the Science Press shook his head. "No, that's not the angle. Archeology always makes good stories, but this is the first time archeology has ever produced any live specimens. We'll build the creature up big from the sympathetic angle. What did you say the inscriptions called him? The Great One?"

Underwood nodded.

"That's it! The mysterious, all knowing brain that has lain dormant in the void for ages, waiting for the touch of a merciful hand to restore life to that mighty intellect and receive in payment the magnificent store of knowledge locked within it. That's the angle we'll use."

Underwood mentally gagged and returned to his work.

Slowly the equipment took shape within the large hall. The center of construction was the ceramic bath which would hold the mass of protoplasm in its nutrient solution and keep it in controlled temperatures and pressures. The complex observation panel was being assembled beside it. From this point every physiological function of the developing mass could be observed as it progressed. Scores of meters would give electronic readings which could be interpreted in terms of developing functions. It was almost like watching the development and growth of a foetus, for that appeared almost to be the course of growth that was to be expected.

Automatic valves would control the injection into the bath of nutrient materials with an accuracy of a thousandth of a milligram. A dozen operators would be trained, were now being selected, for the precise task of watching the bath during every second of the growth of the organism.

The upper half of the walls of the bath was transparent, as was the cover. Inside, under the cover, the broad reflecting cone of the radiator would spray the long dormant protoplasm with life-giving radiation. Giant generators required to provide this radiation filled other parts of the hall.

* * * * *

It was five months after the actual discovery of the repository that the restoration equipment was completed and tested and ready for use. Public interest in the project had been aroused by the sensational news reports, and a constant stream of people passed the Carlson to glimpse the activities going on inside.

The news stories built up the Stroid as the magnificent benefactor of mankind, as Davis had promised. They presented a sympathetic aspect of a creature imprisoned and doomed throughout the ages, and now being released from bondage and ready to pour out blessings upon his benefactors.

Underwood didn't pay much attention to the news stories, but the increasing swarms of people began to get in his way and hampered operations. He was forced to ask the directors to fence off a large area about the Carlson.

During this time the _Lavoisier_ had been slowly swinging in an orbit about the Earth to keep the repository, taken bodily into its hold, at the temperature of space, until time for the transfer of the protoplasm to the nutrient bath.

Now, with everything completed at the Museum, Underwood and Phyfe returned to the repository to direct the removal of the container of protoplasm, leaving Terry Bernard in charge at the museum. The operators and technicians were ready to take over their duties.

Removal of the protoplasm to Earth was a critical operation. The bath at the Carlson had been brought down to absolute zero and would be brought up a few degrees at a time.

Boarder and the other directors of the Institution did not share Underwood's reluctance for publicity. They were accustomed to the ways of the publicity writers, for much of the income of the Institute depended upon such publicity which drew substantial contributions.

So it was that the arrival of the _Lavoisier_ was widely announced. A crowd of ten thousand gathered to watch the removal of the protoplasm that had once been a great and alien being.

Underwood stood in the control room watching the landing area beside the Carlson as the ship settled deep into Earth's atmosphere. Gradually he made out the identity of the black smear covering the landscape about the white stone building that gleamed like a Grecian temple.

* * * * *

Terry, beside him, exclaimed, "Look at that mob! The whole town must be out to welcome our guest."

"If they don't get out of the landing area, they'll be smeared over the landscape. Collins, contact the base and get that field cleared!"

The communications officer put the call in. The laboratory ship circled idly while the mob moved slowly back to permit the ship to touch down beside the building.

Underwood raced out of the ship and into the building. His technicians were standing by. Each one in turn reported his position operating properly. Then Underwood called back to the ship and ordered the portable lock released.

At once the massive cargo hold was thrown open and the thick-walled lock, bearing the container of protoplasm, was wheeled out.

The crowd caught sight of it as it rolled swiftly into the building. Someone in the far ranks sent up a cry. "Hail the Great One! Welcome to Earth!"

The shout was taken up by hundreds, then thousands of throats until a sea of sound washed against the ears of those within the building. Underwood paused and turned to look out as the sound caught him. A faint chill went through him.

"The fools," he said angrily to Terry. "They'll drive themselves into hysteria if they keep that up. Why didn't the directors keep this whole business quiet? They ought to have known how it would affect a mob of bystanders."

From a distance, Illia and Dreyer watched silently. Underwood hurried away to give attention to the cargo. The lock was wheeled close to the bath and a passage was opened as the two containers were brought adjacent. On sterile slides, the frozen protoplasmic mass slid forward and came to rest at last within the machine for which it had waited half a million years.

There was utter lack of response to that final placement of the mass. Yet those who watched knew that the great experiment had begun. In six months, they would find out if they were successful.

Underwood sent the carriage back to the ship, and the _Lavoisier_ moved to the Institute's spaceport. Then Boarder entered with a score of photographers and newsmen in his wake. They took pictures of the equipment and technicians, and of the protoplasm lying inert within the bath, in which the nutrient liquids would be placed after a temperature of a hundred degrees had been reached.

Underwood did not have time to pay any attention to the newsmen. He tried to be everywhere at once, inspecting meters and gauges, assuring himself that all was functioning well. Every piece of equipment was triply installed for safety in case of breakdown. The instructions warned that, once started, the process of restoration must not be interrupted or death to the Great One would result.

When he had finished his inspection, Underwood felt suddenly exhausted. He turned away to avoid the newsmen whom Boarder was now lecturing on the subject of the strange repository in space and its even stranger inhabitant.

Underwood spied the aged figure standing almost unseen near the recess between two panels. It was Phyfe and he spoke slowly as Underwood approached.

"It is begun," the old archeologist said slowly. "And it can never be undone."

Underwood felt again that chill of apprehension and looked sharply at Phyfe, but the latter was staring straight ahead--straight at the inert block of protoplasm.

_CHAPTER FIVE_

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."