Craig gripped the priest's arm, heard his own words tumbling out: "It
proves nothing, Padre! There can still be a God!" He found that he
meant it desperately.
The priest turned, stared at him, then looked faintly amused.
"Conviction? _Now?_ You are a more fortunate man than I."
"No, Padre! Your work! Religion is deeper than...."
Brulieres' eyes flashed with some of their old vitality. "My work? This
is the God in whose name I have schemed and, Heaven help me, killed."
Slowly, mechanically, Brulieres drew the heat-weapon from his garments.
He aimed it at the groove around the slab and thumbed the trigger. The
rock skirled, and ran to solidify in waxlike lumps. The smoke was acrid
in Craig's nostrils.
When the slab was mostly cut around, some inner seal gave way and air
sucked loudly into the crack. With a wrenching sound, the slab tore
loose. It tilted under some power of its own, and lowered itself to the
floor.
Lights, harshly angled and dramatic, flashed on in the small room
beyond. It was bare except for the stone platform on the floor, and
what rested upon it.
Mechanically, Craig stepped in and moved aside to make room for the
others. Brulieres went to the opposite side of the platform and Dientes
crouched beside him. Rabar stood hesitantly in the doorway.
* * * * *
The creature was larger than a man and like nothing earthly;
many-limbed, built as if for a higher gravity. There was no apparent
decomposition or dessication. The atmosphere of the chamber had
evidently been chosen to preserve.
There was still a pungent, half-unpleasant smell, being rapidly drawn
away through ducts in the ceiling. There was a face of a sort, and two
closed eyes. The face was recognizably strong. The thing might have
been called ugly, but Craig found a handsomeness about it too. He
recognized the drama with which the body was arranged and lighted, and
somehow for this last small vanity he loved the creature even more.
Dientes clutched at the priest's robe. "It is a lie, Padre!" And, as
the priest remained silent, Dientes turned desperate eyes to Craig.
"Mother of God! Will no one say it is a lie?"
Craig felt emotionally depleted. Inside him were a sick regret and a
hollowness where something had died, but cold reason remained. If there
is no God, he thought, we're just intelligent animals, and we're free
to live by our wits. If there is no God, then there is no Devil either.
He pondered that ... and decided with grim amusement that there was
Devil enough.
And, in any event, there were needs and desires, friends and enemies.
He stepped swiftly around the alien and took the heat-weapon from the
priest's limp fingers. He turned toward Rabar, who was (beyond any
worthwhile doubt) an enemy, and who was standing in the doorway with an
annoying mockery in his eyes. Of _course_ he's happy, Craig thought;
he's a Bolshevik agent and an atheist. There'll be damned little
religion anywhere, now.
He raised the weapon calmly, every nerve and muscle alert, like an
animal ready for action. He watched the triumph fade from Rabar's eyes.
As his thumb felt unhesitatingly for the trigger, he watched the growth
of fear.