"Exactly so," I agreed. "We will be looking for the modus operandi,"

"I'm not so great on the old dead languages, Dad," Bolivar said. "But if you mean we will track down this joker and that nutsy religion I am for it!"

"That's the idea. It may very well have a different name, and different ways of bringing in the suckers—but the operating basis will be the same."

"What is that?"

"I haven't the slightest idea. You'll have to work it out as you go along."

"And we search in the past as well as the future," James said. "There is no reason that this church should be confined to just this one planet, and every reason to believe that it isn't."

"Too right," Bolivar agreed. "That goes into the searchplan."

I was proud of my boys. They were taking over, plowing ahead without a moment lost. As for me, I wasn't that rusty an old rat—not yet.

But it was nice to see a couple of shiny young ones sharpening their teeth.

They started at once, putting the search operation into effect. Dividing up the planets between them and working out in an ever—expanding sphere of communication and interrogation. I left them to it. Found a cold beer, took it to my study and whistled at my computer terminal to turn it on. I sipped the beer while I surfed through various data bases, zeroing in on Religion. I needed to know more about this Heaven and Hell business. I found what I needed under Eschatology. It was all about future life after death and was all very confusing. Down through the ages there have been a bewildering variety of beliefs held by an even more bewildering variety of social groups. Sometimes future life was seen as a continuation of present life, under more or less favorable conditions. Though at other times retribution for sins or evil deeds made this future life the very opposite of the one we know. I boned up on Heaven and Paradise, then went on to Hell, Hades, and Sheol. All very complex and very much at loggerheads, one religion with the other. Though not all of them. A lot of them were very derivative and borrowed bits and pieces from each other. My head was beginning to ache.