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There was a muttered exclamation. The door opened. The Pope was a tall thin man of about fifty, dressed in ordinary clerical garb. He had a face that would have been handsome if it had not been so haggard. He was very dark and looked like an Indian despite the fact that his patronymic came from a Prussian baron who had emigrated to Argentina in the early twentieth century.
Behind him stood a woman whose face was veiled. She moved forward, and then knelt and kissed his hand. He gave her a blessing; she rose and silently walked out of the room and down the hall. The three looked curiously after her. She had a beautiful figure.
On seeing their uniforms, the Pope's eyes had widened. Now, he said, "Three Angels, heh? I hope that this is a good | omen."
He stepped aside. Broward entered first. The other two kissed the pontiff's hand. He said to Broward, "If you are not an Angel nor an angel, then you are not Howards' man. Nor are you a Catholic. What, then, are you?"
He closed the door, signing to the young priest that he was dismissed. Broward said, "Your Holiness, it is unfortunate that it will take a little time to explain. But I ask that you listen to us to the end."
At the end of twenty minutes, Broward had given his history.
"You would not have come here if you could have gotten help elsewhere," the Pope said. "Now, what do you expect, or hope, that I will do?"
"Your Holiness," Broward replied, "if there were any other way to bring about peace, I would take it. But violence is the only way. And..."
"Why did you come down here in person?" said the Pope. "Why did you not send these two men down with the message that you would launch the bomb if Mars did not surrender?"
He stopped, then said, "Forgive my stupidity. Howards would not believe you, of course; he would have sent ships after you, and you would have been forced to launch that devil's device. Only by overthrowing the present government could you save Mars."
"That is right," said Broward. "And Howards will not listen to anything but a bullet now."
"The servant should obey his master, so St. Paul said. And our Lord said to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's."
"Do you mean to tell me that you obey your political master even if he is evil and is intent on grinding your Church to bits under his heel? Did not Christ whip the money-changers out of the temple? And haven't there been bishops and priests in the Church's history who went into battle at the sides of their secular lords and slew the heathen?"
"True," said the pontiff. "However..."
There was a knock on the door, and the young priest came in.
"Your Holiness, there are armed Angels coming out of Howards' house. They are coming across the plaza towards us. I fear..."
"It has happened later than I thought it would," the Pope said. "You must have been seen when you came around the house. Probably, those watching you thought you were here on business because of your uniforms, even if they had not been notified that Angels were to come here.
"But they also have very sensitive sound-receptors trained on this building. Nothing that is said goes unmonitored over there except for my room, which has been especially soundproofed. And I only got that concession because I threatened to cause trouble, just as I had to suspend confession until I got the confessional booths insulated. Howards had no compunctions about using spy-beams on those."
Broward rushed down the hallway to the window at the end. Halfway across the plaza, advancing slowly, were about twenty men. All were equipped with burpers or rifles except the officers, who wore side-arms. They were spread out in two lines in a crescent, the horns of which enclosed the area beyond both sides of the pontiffs residence.
Broward rolled the window into the slot in the wall, poked the muzzle of his tommy out, and began firing. Within a few seconds, two other tommies also began firing; these were from rooms on both sides of the hall. Quiroga and Saavedra, without waiting for orders from him, had joined the fight.
The Angels in the center who had not been hit raked the front of the house with return fire from their burpers. But Broward, after downing at least six at the first burst, had stepped back from the window. He saw men on the left horn of the crescent run towards the side of the buildings. Three reached safety, but two fell as he shot out of the side of the window.
He ran down the hall to the top of the stairway, paused to jump the length of the steps to the ground floor, but stopped when he heard a burper firing outside in the rear. He ran to the window at the rear of the hall, almost knocking the Pope down, and looked out cautiously.
The young priest was standing behind one of the jeeps and was holding a burper. Obviously, he had been hiding behind the vehicle. Broward decided that it was safe to put his head out of the window. Five bodies were sprawled on the ground along the base of the house.
The Pope, looking out past him, said, "So Father Ignacio took a hand in this without consulting me?"
"I'm sure he did it on impulse," replied Broward. "He didn't join me; he didn't know why I was here. He was only protecting you."
"As Peter drew his sword and sliced off the servant's ear," said Siricio II. "Well, I am not going to rebuke Ignacio or tell him to put up his weapon."
"You'll fight with us?"
"I'll fight in my way," replied the Pope. "I will not shed blood. But I will march with you. By the way, whatever you are going to do, you had better do it at once. I'm sure that Howards has called soldiers to come to his aid. There is a barracks in the next plaza. However, I doubt that more than a quarter of the soldiers will be able to respond. The rest are too sick."
Broward returned to the front window. Quiroga and Saavedra joined him. An Angel, his white uniform splotched with red, was feebly crawling away.
There was no sign of movement from the building across the way. But Broward was sure that armed men were standing behind the windows there. "I wish I had some gravpaks," he said.
"Four should be enough. Let's get them."
A few minutes later, one pak had been tied to the center left side of a jeep. Manipulating the pak's controls, Broward caused the vehicle to be raised several feet in the air. Then he guided the featherweight until it lay on its side at right angles to his jeep across the front. Father Ignacio supplied the strips, torn from sheets, that anchored the near-weightless frame to the front of Broward's vehicle.
"It'll make a shield," the Moonman said. "If their bullets don't wreck the pak or cut the strips, it'll do fine."
He and the two officers slipped into the harnesses attached to the paks, tightened them, and tried the pak controls. Then, they got into the jeep.
"Father Ignacio will take the other jeep and make a run for the elevators," said the Pope. "He will spread the word on the upper levels that Howards is trying to kill me. It will not be a lie, because I am certain that Howards will take such action when he sees what I am about to do."
"Holy Father, what is that?" cried Saavedra.
"What I should have done long ago but held off doing because of politics, or rather, fear of meddling in politics. Also, I was afraid. I was afraid that the Church might be crushed, and I si
Broward hesitated. What if the Angels seized the Pope as a hostage? Well, what if they seized anybody as such? That which must be done would be done, no matter who got hurt '