Mike Visits a Fosterite Church Service

Mike Visits a Fosterite Church Service is a pivotal encounter between Mike’s still-incomprehensible abilities and the deliberately theatrical world of Fosterite worship. Accompanied by Jill and Jubal, he visits the Archangel Foster Tabernacle, where a slot-machine demonstration becomes an unintended display of his power, and Supreme Bishop Digby turns him into the focus of a public congregation. The service offers Mike no clear understanding, but it leaves his companions with a sharper sense of how readily religious spectacle can absorb him.

Invitation and Arrival

Senator Boone renews the invitation after pressure from Supreme Bishop Digby to produce the Man from Mars, while suspecting that Jubal may keep stalling. Mike brings the invitation to Jubal, who makes clear that attendance is optional. The next Sunday morning, a Checker Cab with a human driver takes Mike, Jill, and Jubal to a public landing flat just outside the Tabernacle’s sacred grounds. Jubal has refused to trust an autocab with his life, and uses the journey to warn Mike that the Fosterites may want both his money and the prestige of having him join their church.

The warning frames the visit as a negotiation as well as a religious excursion. Mike listens, but the landscape draws his attention; he stores Jubal’s advice without yet showing that he understands the risks Jubal sees. For Jubal, the immediate concern is that Mike might be pressured into giving away money or lending his name to the church. The party enters a space where business, entertainment, and worship are not separated but arranged to lead visitors from one to the next.

The Tabernacle’s Commercial Welcome

Boone guides them through a long, high hallway and explains the Tabernacle’s visitor economy. Services run around the clock, but every tourist must pass the same corridor, where slot machines line both walls. The bar and quick lunch counter lie at the far end, so even a visitor seeking water has to pass the machines. Boone presents the arrangement as a deliberate opportunity: winnings arrive as tokens rather than coins, and visitors encounter the bursar’s cage and chances to make charitable offerings before leaving. In his account, money can circulate back into the institution alongside blessings and religious texts; some devoted members, he says, began as visitors playing the machines.

He demonstrates by inviting Mike to try a machine, but Jubal takes the token instead, unwilling to let Mike become fascinated with a one-armed bandit. Mike watches the spinning cylinders and wonders what a jackpot means. Without deciding to cause a result, he extends his time sense, probes the mechanism, and stops each wheel with one Holy Eye showing. The machine responds with a bell, a choir, lights, and a cascade of tokens. Boone is delighted and quickly feeds a token back in to claim the jackpot.

Mike repeats the effect. Boone is astonished that the machine has paid twice in a row, but tries again; Mike, still intent on understanding the result, aligns the eyes a third time. Jill squeezes his hand and tells him to stop. Boone calls for a Cherub and offers the explanation that the machine may need a repairman. When Mike does not intervene, the wheels spin by themselves and display the message FOSTER-LOVES-YOU, while the mechanism fails to deliver the further tokens it attempts to pay. Boone reports three jackpots. The sequence turns an ordinary demonstration into a public anomaly: Mike’s power operates without a conscious plan, while the Tabernacle’s own machinery promptly gives the event a religiously charged interpretation.

The Congregation and Digby

Later, a woman’s message leads Supreme Bishop Digby to announce that he has a message for a pilgrim from another planet: Valentine Michael Smith. Jill tries to stop Mike from standing, but Jubal judges that compliance is easier than a struggle. Mike rises, waves, and sits again as the congregation chants Man from Mars. The sermon seems directed at him, yet its English words are difficult for him to understand; the noise, applause, and shouts of Hallelujah and Happy Day leave him confused. The public naming gives Mike a prominent place in the service, but does not translate its meanings into a language he can grasp.

Boone then insists that the group pay its respects to Digby, who is waiting to meet them privately. He leads them through a small elevator concealed in the tunnel’s decorations to a parlor in the Supreme Bishop’s private apartments. Digby has taken off his vestments and wears flowing robes. He welcomes Mike to the Lord’s House and says that Archangel Foster is watching over him. The public figure who had presided over the noisy service now receives Mike in private, changing the scale of the encounter without dispelling its religious framing.

Departure and Unresolved Meaning

When Mike eventually comes out of Digby’s inner room, Jill immediately asks whether he is all right. Boone explains that Digby has left by a back way into his study and offers the church’s rationale for his habit of not saying goodbye. Jubal declines further assistance and thanks the hosts for an interesting experience. The party leaves without a final exchange with the Supreme Bishop, a small anticlimax after the public announcement that Mike was the object of a special message.

Once they are airborne, Jubal asks Mike what he thought of the visit. Mike answers that he does not grok. His admission gathers the episode’s contrasts into a single unresolved ending: the church has supplied a carefully managed spectacle, interpreted his presence for a crowd, and attached Fosterite meaning to the slot-machine jackpots, while Mike has experienced events he cannot yet understand. The visit therefore advances his contact with Earth’s religious institutions without making him a convert or giving him a settled account of what happened.