Free The Race for God by Brian Herbert

afraid to assert themselves, afraid to proceed without clear-cut approval and instruction.
    Three weeks passed with little occurring. Many visitors grew impatient and left town. Property owners began to speak of having everything demolished and hauled off, and one of the Domingos told the St. Charles Beach Crier that he could secure heavy cables to the vessels and topple them onto flatbed trailers, by which they could be hauled off.
    The biggest problem seemed to be the ships that straddled houses and roads. It wasn’t known how heavy the vessels were, because no one could figure out what they were made of. An alloy, it was believed, and the town council sent for experts to figure that out and to determine if big helicopters could lift everything away. Some people talked about using cutting torches. Insurance companies were going nuts, and their agents were getting in the way of the plans of the property owners, citing exclusions that would or could apply if anyone caused damage by bumping things around.
    The more that occurred along these lines, the more McMurtrey faded into the background. Increasingly, people said unkind things to him on the streets, or pixtelled him, or pounded upon his door, and he couldn’t come up with much to say in return. He stopped answering his pixtel or the door, and began sending a neighbor boy to the store for supplies. Letters piled up for him at the mail station.
    Isolation wasn’t new to Evander McMurtrey. He hadn’t ever cared much for socializing anyway.
    One evening when he was sitting in his darkened living room mulling events over, he heard clunking footsteps on the porch and a sharp series of raps at the door. He didn’t move, heard No Name rustle around in a specially built birdcage.
    There were more raps upon the door, louder.
    A man called out: “Open up, Rooster! We know you’re in there!” Something familiar and unpleasant in that voice.
    McMurtrey didn’t move. Why should he? Undoubtedly they wanted answers, and he had run out.
    The door handle rattled, followed by voices, low and urgent.
    A splintering crash shook the house, and McMurtrey jumped to his feet. The front door was kicked in, with the doorway full of silhouetted figures, their shapes outlined by backlight from the street.
    “There he is,” one of the intruders said, the same one who had called from outside.
    McMurtrey choked out a response: “Get off my property!”
    Someone heat-activated the light switch by the door, and half a dozen men filed in. They were led by a man in a sports jacket who toted a big pistol on his hip, and as this one moved into the light, McMurtrey recognized Johnny Orbust. The familiar voice.
    Orbust’s coat was green, with a lump under one arm that might have been another gun. And McMurtrey recalled the sheath strapped to one calf under the trousers. The visible firearm was in its holster, flap unsnapped. Orbust glanced around nervously, like a cat on unfamiliar ground.
    His companions were a mixed lot: a priest in black, but with an unusual red collar; just behind the priest a disheveled man long of beard and hair whom McMurtrey had noticed panhandling in town; then two very tall, thin men who looked enough alike to be brothers, both with angular birdlike features; and off to one side a fat little man with a stubble of beard and a girth that nearly equaled his height. All looked tough and hard.
    “Let’s go!” Orbust barked. His eyelid twitched nervously, and he gestured with one hand, beckoning McMurtrey.
    McMurtrey felt no fogging of his brain induced by nervous tics, hadn’t suffered that debility since God spoke to him.
    “Go where?” McMurtrey asked. “What are you talking about?”
    “Those ships, Rooster,” the fat man snarled. He wore a long peacoat.
    “Ships in a row and nowhere to go?” one of the tall men said. Then he said something in a low tone to the fat man, calling him “Tully.”
    “Don’t bug me about the ships,” McMurtrey said. “I’ve told