In the haunted caverns beneath ancient Earth he found an enemy that even he could not conquer!

Originally published in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, October 1974

"LET THERE BE LICENSE!" Satan spoke, and the orgy began, the writhing figures making weird patterns in the deserted churchyard.... A scene from medieval fantasy? No - 21st-century America, battleground between a religious tyranny that dominates the nation and a bizarre Satanist cult that uses the only weapons it has to fight for freedom. The Satanists are moving more daringly, the Government striking back more harshly - and the moment is coming when the word will flash out for the final battle: "This is Armageddon - repeat, ARMAGEDDON."

Alex was right. The rippers came back. But it wasn’t a rip-off, or even an attack. It was a massacre. The house was dark. The outside spotlights were off. Jeff and Alex were in the attic, with Deb and Kristy; the attic windows, nearly thirty feet above the ground, commanded excellent views on both sides of the house. The others waited in the darkened house downstairs, all armed and ready behind double-barred doors and the iron window screens. There was more tension in the house, Scott had said, than there was in the power lines. His father had remarked the remark. It was the kind of thing that came from minds that were trying to be writers, and once Scott got all that old Poe-type imagery out of his head he might be the writer in the family yet. Jeff was at the northwest window, the one that looked down the long steep hill to the big road. The road was plainly marked by its luminous center- and side-stripes. What he had seen was a damsight closer, just over the hill, just below the cesspool. He squinted. The peachtree trembled, and he swept his gaze back and forth, but nothing else was moving. There was no breeze. Then he heard the sound of a throat’s being cleared, and a moment later moonlight glinted on metal: a gun barrel…