“No, I didn't say that-I don't know what I see. I do have my doubts, though. There's an old saying, that what's too good to be true isn't true, and it seems to me that all this wealth might be false, might have the hand of Satan behind it-but I can't say for sure. I'm just a trader in woolens, not a preacher."

“Well,” the barman said, his tone slightly more conciliatory, “I can see how one might wonder. But we do have our preachers here in Little St. Peter, and our doubters, too, and the preachers have answered the doubters. God has smiled on us, in reward for three hundred years of righteous living. If it were Satan's work, now, what Satan does is to tempt men into sin; and while we might've been tempted by the riches of Heaven here, there's been no sin, no one's lured us into evil. It's still honest work, cutting the nearwood or growing the wheat and trading it to the Heaveners, it just pays better than we're used to. The laborer is worthy of his hire, though-you know the Bible says that. The customs say to charge what the market will bear-and it's the Heaveners who set the prices, not us. Some of our folk have even told them, out of Christian charity, that they're paying too much, and they've changed a few of their prices, but they still pay well, because they say they want our trade and will pay high to keep it."

“But how did they get so rich? What if their wealth is the wages of sin, and you're sharing in it?"

“The wages of sin is death, friend. What sort of sin could it be that would bring wealth like this instead? No, what I think is that they've discovered the lost knowledge of the ancients-maybe they found the Mother Ship itself, as well as the Mother Lode. One of our scholars says that they might have found something called a ‘communication sat-in-light', or something akin to that-I didn't catch the words, but it's something that the ancients hung in the sky when they came that might have fallen since. It's a strange and wondrous thing, certainly, but it's a blessing, not a sin."

“Mr. Redeemed, I hope you won't take offense at this, but I wonder if perhaps they haven't been trading with sinners-trading with other worlds. Maybe with Earth itself."

The barman stared for a moment, then burst out laughing. John and Miriam simply watched until he had calmed down.

“Other worlds? Mister, have you heard the histories? Don't you know anything? First off, our ancestors came to Godsworld fleeing Armageddon, you know that-Earth was in its last days, and was surely destroyed long ago. And even if they escaped Armageddon as we did, the other worlds wouldn't have starships any more than we do here, now, would they? They were settled by sinners and fools-they're probably savages huddled around campfires cooking and eating each other."

“We can't be sure Earth…” John began.

“Mister, I wasn't finished,” Redeemed-from-Sin interrupted. “I didn't say my piece. The important thing is, that even if Earth is still there, even if the sinners and philistines still have starships, how far is it? It took our people one hundred and eleven years to cross the darkness to Godsworld! The scientists had to put them all to sleep, and the crewmen all died of old age on the way, leaving their sons to carry on until the folk were awakened. Now tell me, mister-you're a trader-what sort of a trade can you carry on when every voyage takes one hundred and eleven years each way? Would you come all that distance just for nearwood and wheat?” He shook his head. “Even if Earth is still there, we won't be hearing from them again."

John stopped and considered that argument. He had not thought about it before. He knew the legends of the Crossing, of course, and how the People had been put into plastic coffins and made to sleep for over a century, but he had failed to think through what that meant to his belief that the Heaveners were from another world. The People had come to Godsworld; why couldn't others? And of course, they could-but why should they? Not for trade, certainly, not if the journey took a double lifetime each way. Not even for conquest-unless they had been driven off Earth and had nowhere else to go.

That was foolish, though; the skies were filled with stars. Why pick Godsworld?

Perhaps Satan's empire had conquered all the rest, and was now after the only remaining bastion of righteousness; Satan was said to seek power and domination for its own sake, to hate all who opposed him. But even so, to send a conquering army out on a journey that would last centuries…

But would it? Maybe some way had been found of shortening the trip. John was no scholar; he knew that the original People had supposedly travelled as fast as it was ever possible to travel, but he had no idea what the limit was. Might they have been wrong about it? They had been wrong about other things-they had thought their children would live in perpetual peace and harmony, all Christians together, yet the heretics had split the congregation within three years of the Landing, and only now were the People of the True Word and Flesh beginning to see the possibility of reunification within their lifetimes.

No, that didn't seem reasonable. The bartender's explanation made more sense. John still thought, however, that there was something wrong about the entire situation, something warped and alien. Wealth appearing out of nowhere was acceptable-but for that wealth to be in gunpowder and plastic and other, less identifiable things, fabrics and strange plants and dyes, seemed threatening. A single find, however magnificent, should not produce them all.

If not Satan's people, perhaps Satan himself had decided to try new tactics on Godsworld. It was undoubtedly the Devil who had split apart the People and dragged most of the population down into heresy; perhaps he foresaw that the People of the True Word and Flesh, armed in righteousness, would soon bring the world back together if he did not find a new way to stop them. The wealth of the People of Heaven might come directly from Hell itself.

John had never believed that Satan intervened so directly in human affairs; he had always thought of the Devil, when he thought of the Devil at all, as working entirely through the hearts and minds of men. Perhaps he had been wrong.

The whole thing was a mystery, and John wanted to solve it. To do so, he knew he would need to get to the heart of it. Scouting out the military might of Little St. Peter was of only secondary importance. He had to find out who the People of Heaven truly were, and where they were getting their guns and wealth. To do that, he would need to see their homeplace.

He had to get to the Citadel of Heaven, that was the simple truth.

“You're right,” he agreed. “I hadn't thought about that, but of course you're right. Even if you made the trip asleep, the goods might not be worth anything by the time you got back."

“That's right,” the barman agreed, cheerful once again.

“That must be some find they made up there."

“I guess it must be, all right."

“I'd like to see if I can get a little of it for my woolens, then-what's the road to the Citadel like?"

The barman eyed him dubiously. “It's a mighty long walk, through some bad hill country-I don't know if horses could make it."

“But you said Mr. Grace is there, and the traders come and go…” John was honestly startled.

“They don't walk, though; they take the airship over the hills."

“Airship?” John was no longer merely startled, he was astonished. After a few seconds’ confusion, he asked, “Well, then, why can't we take this airship?"

“I didn't say you couldn't; you asked about the road, and where you were worried about prices before, I thought perhaps you couldn't afford the airship."

“Oh.” John was struggling to think about too many things at once. In the past hour he had seen weapons such as he had never imagined on the walls of an unimportant village, and wealth beyond believing-but had had his theory of offworld intervention severely damaged, leaving him with no good explanation for any of it. And now this innkeeper's assistant was calmly talking about an airship's fare as if it were an ordinary ferryboat. “How much is it?"