They fell into half a foot of water, while overhead, troops were marching.
They fell into half a foot of water, while overhead, troops were marching.
They fell into half a foot of water, while overhead, troops were marching.
Gowru straightened and looked out. He climbed up and extended his hand, pulling Rains to the top.
As they stood there, a trail of fire rose over the forest, the tank image bursting upward and disappearing. It was too soon. The troops wouldn't find anything though they'd scour around. They'd have to return. Rains was aching to empty his shoes of cold water.
Together they started out, slinking through the deserted camp. They hurried, but they didn't have much leeway. Soldiers began straggling back. There was no time to look for a trail through the swamp, if there was a trail.
They crashed through a dense fringe of vines and fell into the swamp. They had been wet, now they became drenched. Mud clung to them, sticky, foul-smelling slime. Rains could imagine snakes and unspeakable vermin crawling away from them or toward them as they crashed onward. Branches slashed at them, mud sucked them down. Gasping, they floundered away.
Anyone could follow their trail. But no one was likely to associate such bedraggled men with the phenomenon that had lately puzzled the best minds of the Indian army....
Rains was awakened by a rhythmical thud nearby. He jumped up and looked around and then relaxed. It was Gowru pounding clothing on a flat rock in a pool of brackish water. He had pulverized a native plant and added it to the water, producing a reasonable imitation of soap.
Rains wrinkled his nose in disgust. The stench still clung to his body in spite of attempts to wash it off last night before falling asleep. Silently, Gowru gave him some of the soap plant, and he found another pool to bathe in. He emerged feeling much cleaner.
The Hindu had spread the clothing to dry in the clearing. Rains lay down and let the warm sun soak into his bones, pondering. They had no food and couldn't expect to find much in the swamp. And after last night there'd be soldiers around, combing the area, looking for an explanation of the mysterious tank. Now he couldn't expect to enter the Gommaf building undetected from the rear. They'd have to get back to the road that led to the city and from there return to the hotel. Afterwards, they'd have to plan anew. But for the moment, raw survival was paramount.
The clothing soon dried. Dressed, the Hindu looked presentable, but that was because his garments were exceedingly simple. The Western synthetic fabric didn't launder well. Sadly, Rains looked at his reflection in the water. He was rumpled.
They started in the direction they imagined the road lay, staying within the cover at the edge of the swamp. On the plain there were light tanks and armored vehicles, battalions of soldiers, planes circling overhead.
Weary and hungry they struggled for hours through the swamp. At last the wilderness ended. They crouched in the underbrush where the trees stopped and gazed at a building, the front of which faced the road they sought. It was a queer structure, a small-scale skyscraper with chrome plated carvings.
If they could get to the building and then to the highway, they should be safe. To get to the building was hardest. A few hundred yards away platoons of soldiers wheeled in formation. They'd be spotted if they tried to cross the open space.
He sighed. The soldiers might go away, but he couldn't plan on it. What would work—another tank on the plain? It would attract them, all right, but it would also be a signal to mobilize the entire army and put it on guard duty in this area. A sovereign nation didn't want strange tanks inside its borders.
He located the officer in charge of the drill. The sun was hot and the soldiers were perspiring. The lieutenant was not a full-fledged sadist, but he was studying to be one and didn't need much urging. The cadence of command rose sharply. The men turned and began marching out on the open plain.
Rains jabbed Gowru and, crouching low, they began to run toward the building. The distance was greater than he had estimated; he was hungry and short of breath and his mind wandered. He couldn't concentrate and his control of the officer slipped away.
"About face!" screeched the lieutenant, and a half-hundred men were staring at the fugitives.
It was too late to reach the road, but in the building lay temporary safety. Rains dived over the low wall and Gowru followed. He ran across the garden and, reaching a window, tore it open and climbed inside, pulling the Hindu up after him.
As he turned to help, he stared in amazement at the soldiers. The officer was blowing his whistle and shouting into the field radio, but his men, who had darted after the fugitives, had stopped at the wall. Gowru nodded and grinned. "Temple," he grunted.
Of course. With so many nationalities and divergent beliefs, the government had granted immunity from search to those religions, sects and cults that demanded it. The place was safer than he thought. He grabbed the Hindu's arm. "Down," he said.
Gowru grabbed his arm. "Up," he said. "We've got to see what they're doing." It was logical. Rains reversed his direction.
On his way up the dimly lit tower, Rains collided with someone. From the quality of her robe and jewels and the paint on her face, he placed her as a high priestess of some sort. She smirked at him and beckoned mysteriously; then swayed down the hall, apparently expecting him to follow. Strange behaviour in a temple sanctuary. He shook his head and went on after Gowru.
The Hindu had settled in a luxurious room at the top of the tower and was looking out the window. The temple was surrounded. Not a soldier had entered the grounds, but a solid cordon of armed men hemmed them in. And dust in the distance down the road foretold of more to come. The army wanted them for questioning. How they proposed to get them out of the temple Rains didn't know, but the situation seemed as hopeless as it could get.
With an effort he made his mind slippery and broke contact. A master mentalist was at work. He resisted the impulse to leave the temple and surrender. Tentatively he let his thoughts reach out. No, this was merely a journeyman—the masters were on their way.
He turned in panic to Gowru, who was opening cabinets. Row after row of expensive liquor glittered within. There was little resemblance to a monk's bare cell; the place was more nearly a sybarite's palace. It was a peculiar religion.
Gowru tilted back his head and gurgled. "Want a fog?" he asked. "I've got the raw materials."
A fog wasn't satisfactory. They could elude the soldiers and slip away in the confusion, but they couldn't hope to escape the mentalists. On the other hand, yesterday the tank surface had repelled his own thoughts. It should work.
"Can you put an impenetrable surface around us?"
"Won't work," said Gowru, wiping his lips. "It has to be a closed surface, and if it's strong enough to stop anything it's also strong enough to shear through any material in the way. Up here we'd topple to the ground as soon as a gust of wind came along."
That was an aspect of the shield he hadn't guessed at. He fought frantically for control of his mind. "Then put it around the whole temple, grounds and all. Exclude the soldiers."
Gowru nodded. "I can do that. Within reasonable limits size doesn't mean much, it's the principle that counts. I'll make it a big spherical shield."
Instantly the room became gray, as light from the outside diminished; but most important, the mental tension lessened. Rains looked out. It was difficult to see through the shield, but he could make out dim shapes. The journeyman mentalist tried to get through.
The shield was good, but a new force arrived; the masters were here and added their mental force to that of the journeyman. Rains reeled under the impact. "Make it more intense!" he shouted. "Give it all you've got!"
Gowru grabbed at another bottle and gave it everything. The grayness became blackness and the intruding thoughts of the mentalists, masters and journeyman, disappeared altogether.
He relaxed. Temporarily, they were safe. He felt giddy and his stomach squirmed around. There was no reason for this last effect—none that he could think of....
Rains counted the bottles. It was not an accurate way to determine the passage of time, but there was no electricity and none of the clocks were running. He snapped on the flashlight. How many bottles equalled one day?
He was getting hungry. He'd managed to scrounge some food in the darkness, aided by the flashlight, but it hadn't been enough. On his forays his contacts with the other humans in the temple had been disconcerting. Giggles in the distance and then squeals, but he'd never been able to come upon the source. He didn't blame them for being so wary; the darkness and isolation must seem like something supernatural.
Water was getting low too; only trickles came from the faucet. The shield had severed all contact with the outside world, including plumbing connections, and only a tank and a pressure system inside the temple had kept them going this long.
He'd have to risk a look, perhaps the vigilance outside had been relaxed. He shook the guide. Gowru grunted and stretched out his hand. Rains shoved a half empty bottle in it; he had to conserve. The supply of liquor was getting low, at least in this room. "Can you put a hole in the shield, a small one?"
Gowru raised the bottle and later set it down. "Nope. Takes too much thinking. How about a transparent area?"
"That will do."
Gowru staggered to the window, leaned on the sill and stared out. He stared longer than Rains expected him to. "So that's what happened to it," he muttered. He groped for a chair and sat down, shaking with laughter.
It couldn't be that funny, decided Rains, going to the window. He peered out and it was dark. Gowru had neglected to clear an area to see through. No, there were dots of light outside—it was night, that's all.
That was not all. Very near, as astronomical distances go, and headed toward them, was a comet. Not a comet,thecomet.
Rains sat down before he grew dizzy. What was the comet doing so close, unless they were out in space? He opened his eyes and looked again. That's where they were. Unless he was mistaken, that was Mars over there.
He tried to fit the facts together. It made sense, but offered no hope. He had proof that the shield was adjustable—stronger or weaker. As it was made progressively stronger, it shut out light, bullets, and thoughts. Could it be made strong enough to shut out gravity?
He looked outside. It could.
Gowru had exerted himself and the shield had sliced through earth, water and sewer connections. Centrifugal force and the motion of the solar system through space accounted for their present position. The temple had whizzed away from the face of Earth before the astonished eyes of the Indian Army.
Gowru was still laughing. He clapped Rains heartily on the back. "So that's where it went," he said.
"Where what went?" asked Rains. They were doomed to be flung into outer space and nothing could save them.
"The Benares cremation barge. It floated to the comet."
Float was hardly the word for the intricate process that had taken place. Rains could see the comet, and he had known all along that the barge was on it.
"What do you know about the cremation barge?" he asked.
Gowru fondled the bottle. "One day I was swimming in the Ganges and an alligator—"
"There are no alligators in India."
Gowru Chandit gestured in defeat. "If you must know, I didn't have a job and each night I swam out to the barge to sleep. I slept late one morning and the crew found me and tossed me off. I had to swim in."
"But you always swam in anyway."
"Makes no difference," said Gowru. "So, when they left that night, I projected a shield around the barge. Come to think of it, it was probably like the one I've got around the temple. Anyway, in the morning the barge had disappeared and no one, including me, knew where it went—until now. The city had to buy another one to replace it."
Rains looked at him dazedly. That's what he'd seen in the psiscope—the barge—and it was for this reason he'd come to Benares. But it wasn't a teleport that was responsible; it was his own guide, Gowru Chandit. Gowru hadn't known because he hadn't told him.
There were other aspects. "After the shield is created it dies down?"
"It does, unless I renew it."
The barge had drifted away from Earth like the temple, and then the shield had disintegrated in such a way as to leave the barge subject to the gravitational field of the comet which had then captured it.
"Can you alter the shield at will so that one side is affected by gravity and the other not?"
Gowru Chandit, dyeman extraordinary, saw what the question was aimed at. He scratched his head. "Can I, by varying the strength of the field, take us to Mars? I think I can."
An astronomer's dream! While his colleagues were merely looking at it, Rains would be on Mars! It would take cunning work by the Hindu, but if Gowru said he could do it, Rains couldn't disbelieve. There was one drawback though, and that reflected on his face.
"There's no water and little air on Mars," said Rains. "We'll reach it, but we'll die soon after."
"Hmmm," said Gowru. Coming from anyone else it would not have been a profound comment. He got unsteadily to his feet and paced around the room, gathering bottles as he went. He squinted out the window. "The very fabric of space," he muttered. He seemed to be looking at the comet.
He beckoned to Rains. "Come here." He had enough liquor inside and he really didn't need what he held in his hands, except perhaps he liked the feel of bottles. "Look," he said, and pointed. Rains looked.
There was the comet, streaming away from the sun, headed in the direction of Mars, though it would miss by several million miles. He'd seen it before.
But, somewhere in space it struck something. There was nothing there, but it broke into tiny fragments and slanted toward Mars. There was no doubt that Mars was going to capture most of the mass, and would soon have an abundance of water and oxygen.
But there was nothing for the comet to strike! Except—Except what? "The very fabric of space," Gowru had muttered, and that proved merely that he was a poor semanticist. Thestructureof space. That's what he worked with, not molecules, though he didn't know it. Gowru had projected a space warp inclined chutelike toward Mars, and when the comet came along it had collided with a plane surface anchored to the entire universe.
Water, air, and a new planet to explore, with Gowru Chandit as his companion. But there was still one last defect. He groaned aloud.
"Is there something else to complain about?" asked Gowru.
Rains gestured savagely to indicate the whole temple. "I'm a man of science," he said bitterly. "I resent being marooned with religious fanatics."
"Don't worry. They're women."
That made it worse. Monks, or the Indian equivalent, he could ignore. But could he do the same with grim and dour females intent on saving his soul?
Just the same, they were going to be on Mars with him and in self-defence he'd have to learn their religion, the better to refute it. "What are the fine points of their theology?" he asked.
"Very old," muttered Gowru. "Priestesses are selected for temperamental qualifications. Rites are ancient Hindu, maybe older than that."
"Rites?" he queried. "Sacrifices?"
"It's no sacrifice," yawned the other. "They're a local fertility cult."
Rains' mind swung back to the priestess he had encountered on first entering the temple, the only one he'd seen. The hall had been dimly lighted, but she'd been young and very seductive. If the others were like her—Any scientist worth his salt believed in fertility, one way or another.