Part 2

"Wrong," said Rains. "No doom. In seventeen years we'll have rockets that can meet it out in space. We'll load hydrogen bombs into rockets and blow the comet into fine crystals. But the orbit of the particles will still intersect that of Earth, and it will fall as rain."

Gowru searched his memory for a foreign concept. "Forty days and forty nights?"

"I don't know how long," said Rains wearily. "But whatever happens, the water level of the oceans will rise--from fifty to three hundred feet is the present estimate. After we study it longer we'll know exactly. The land area will shrink, but that alone isn't disastrous. Forewarned, not many lives would be lost. Most people will have time to move to higher ground.

"However, there's another aspect. Air is also present in the comet and will be added to our atmosphere. The earth will grow warmer and the higher latitudes will become habitable. Perhaps we'll gain almost as much living space as we lose."

"Then let's rejoice," said Gowru, reaching for the bottle. "It's not every comet which is so considerate."

Rains replenished his own glass. "It's not an occasion for rejoicing. We've calculated that, with the additional atmosphere and moisture, astronomy will become extinct. Cloud covered, the planet will be much like Venus. No one will be able to see the stars." He didn't mention that a few of the highest mountains would still rise above the clouds. He didn't because those mountains were in India and that country would then have a monopoly on the science.

Gowru wrinkled his face in pleasure at the whisky and then assumed a properly doleful expression. "I see. In seventeen years you'll be unemployed." He added consolingly. "Maybe they'll give you a pension."

Rains' vision was growing a little fuzzy, but his intellectual goals had not changed. "It's not the pension," he said irritably. "I intend to save astronomy."

"It's not reasonable to be so obstinate when the heavens decree otherwise," declared Gowru. "You should cultivate an interest in other things. Girls are a nice hobby."

Rains muttered something about girls and Gowru interrupted.

"Good. We can start with girls and there's no telling where we'll end. I'm a guide and I can help in such matters. How many do you want?"

"I've only a normal--"

* * * * *

Again Gowru interrupted. "I was afraid of that--only a normal interest in girls. You should moderate your desires. I can't help you with so many." He shook his head sadly. "Let's get back to astronomy."

"I expect to," said Rains coldly. "As I was saying, at Palomar we have the giant telescope--"

"The big inch," said Gowru fondly.

"You're thinking of something else," said Rains. "In addition to the big telescope we have a secret instrument not duplicated nor imagined elsewhere--a psiscope." Thoughtfully he poured the remaining whisky into his glass.

"Don't ask me how it works. It's designed for use by people of psi powers, of which I'm one. It's incredibly powerful and accurate. With it we've learned things that other astronomers won't know for several years. The data on the comet is one example."

He raised the glass and let the liquid trickle down his throat. "We've also learned things that astronomers with conventional instruments will never find out--that there are teleports in India."

Gowru struggled with himself, and decided to hoard the whisky in his glass. He sipped delicately at it. "I could have told you that and I don't have a psiscope. But how did you find out?"

"Imagine the comet swinging nearer the sun. Under the terrific radiation, the frozen ball of water melts and the atmosphere expands. In our psiscope, clearly illuminated, is an object no one else can see at that distance. It is a peculiar object, man made, and found only in one place on Earth." He paused. "At present we don't have a rocket capable of going to the moon. And yet this object was transported much farther. Therefore, it had to be teleported there."

"Logical," agreed Gowru. "What was this object?"

"I can tell you the city from which it came; you'll have to know anyway--Benares. But my colleagues and I have decided we can't tell anyone what it was we saw on the comet."

"Benares," mused the Hindu. "I know the city well. I was there last year looking for work."

"With your help," said Rains, "we intend to contact this teleport."

"Who's we?"

"My colleagues and I at Palomar."

"And also your government?"

"Our government doesn't enter into this. We couldn't convince them if we tried since they don't believe in psi powers. No, this is solely our problem. We're financed in part by the Rhine Institute and we have other funds which were diverted for the purpose."

Gowru sighed. No matter which way he tilted it, there wasn't another drop in his glass. "What are you going to do with this teleport after you find him?"

"Persuade him to come to the United States. We'll get him out of India some way." The country wouldn't take kindly to an attempt to smuggle out one of their mentalists, but it could be done.

"What good will that do?" questioned Gowru. "Even the most experienced teleport can't change the path of the comet. It's too big to move."

"He won't have to move it," said Rains. "We've positive proof that he did transport a--uh--large object to the comet. He did it once and he can do it again, except this time it will be a hydrogen bomb."

"I thought so," said the Hindu disgustedly. "I don't want any part of it. Where will you get that hydrogen bomb except from your government? Let them develop their own teleports, or approach our country through proper diplomatic channels."

"You're not thinking," said Rains. "With a teleport working for us we don't ask the army for a hydrogen bomb. One minute they have it safely hidden, and the next instant it's inside the comet. Let the military boys worry about how it got away and where it went.

"You see, the comet's been captured by the sun and moves in a very eccentric orbit just inside Jupiter. If we vaporize it now, it will lose most of its mass to those two bodies. There'll be little left to fall on Earth." He nodded approvingly to himself. The plan would be effective, if he found the teleport.

* * * * *

Gowru's eyes expanded, enlarged by his own inner fires. "Let's drink to it," he said, extending his glass.

Rains sighed. As a secret agent he needed an analytically clear mind at all times. But he also had to have someone who understood India better than any American could, someone who would work with him wholeheartedly. It wouldn't pay to offend such a person. He opened a bottle, and later, still another....

The train wound through the provinces and cities en route--Bangalore, Jubbulpore, Jetadore, finally arriving at Benares. They could have gone more conveniently by air, every sensible Indian did, but presumably it was worth something to maintain the pose of tourist and guide.

From the window of his hotel Rains could see the Ganges, a muddy, sluggish river still, but an improvement over what it had been thirty years before. More sanitary too; burial customs could not be completely changed in a generation, but the three phoenix barges anchored off shore automatically disposed of the bodies to the satisfaction of all but the most fanatic.

Southward were the spires of a rather shabby building he could identify from photographs, the Rhine Institute of the Ganges. Its value was dubious, of missionary rather than research caliber. In the heart of the mentalist country, it had little prestige and not much more patronage. It was questionable who spied most on the other, the American staff or the supposed native converts. Each side took precautions, but there were startlingly few devices which were effective against an accomplished telepath.

Still, mechanical devices partly reduced the advantages of the Indians. Chewing gum parked in the right places often concealed ingenious mechanisms, and even the birds which were regularly fed at the Institute sometimes swallowed grain-sized instruments which were carried impartially to all the public buildings of the city.

This didn't concern Rains. The Rhine Institute of the Ganges could solve its own problems or fail to do so. But somewhere in Benares there was a teleport. Where?

The regular reports--coded, scrambled, shielded, unshielded, unscrambled, decoded--had mentioned great mentalist activity, but hadn't been able to pin it down. Fakirs and holy men abounded; there were at least a dozen telepaths in the city better than Rains, not to mention clairvoyants.

Communication from the Institute had always been erratic, understandable in view of the hazards. Rains had not seen a report from this branch in three months. Perhaps in the interim they had uncovered more information. He would have to find out. "Gowru," he asked, "are there many fogs in Benares?"

The Hindu wrinkled his face in thought. "I've been here when there were. Not now though; wrong time of the year."

That was not good. Rains didn't want to expose himself, but he had to get in touch with the director of the Institute.

"If you want a fog, I'll get you one," said Gowru.

Rains glanced up. The Hindu was a queer fellow. Rains had dismissed the talk of coloring the comet's atmosphere as drunken boasting, but what if it wasn't?

"Can you actually create fog?" he asked doubtfully.

"Sure. Want a sample?"

* * * * *

Perhaps he should, but too many fogs at this time would be suspicious. He shook his head, "If you say you can deliver, I believe you. The only question is, can you cover most of the city?"

"The whole northern part of India," Gowru assured him.

"That much won't be necessary. How long can you hold it?"

"Depends on the wind," said his guide, extending his thumb and forefinger and rubbing them together delicately. "Air's slippery stuff. It fades. I'll have to concentrate."

Rains sighed. He'd learned that when Gowru concentrated he had to be diluted. He set out a bottle....

Rains walked along the bank of the Ganges and glanced at his watch. An hour to sunset. The fog was due at any moment. The Institute was a few blocks away, but he had memorized a map of the area and would be able to get there no matter what happened.

He adjusted his tie in a mirror. No one behind him, but he didn't think they'd be that crude about it here. He practised shutting off his thoughts. His defense was adequate in America, but he wasn't sure how effective it would be against a first rate Indian mentalist.

He went into a curio shop and picked up a small bronze statue of a four-armed god. He was about to pay for it when the woman behind the counter shrieked. He glanced up at her. She was merely a few feet away, but he could scarcely see her through the thick black smoke that curled through the room.

"Fire!" screamed the woman and ran out.

He hurried to the door and then thought of the statue in his hands. It wouldn't do to get involved in a petty theft charge. He ran back to the counter and laid the money down. On second thought he left the statue there too and stumbled out of the shop.

The street was jammed. Storekeepers stood on the curb and shouted, and out of the buildings thick smoke came pouring. Rains sniffed. It looked like smoke but had no smell. He thought he knew what it was. This was the fog Gowru had said he would create.

It was a good fog but it was placed wrong--inside buildings instead of filling the free air overhead. It had the opposite effect from what he wanted. He had expected to approach the Institute through dim and shrouded streets. As it was, he had to elbow people into the gutter in order to move. Fire sirens wailed in a dozen directions and spotting copters took to the air and started circling around.

"Gowru!" he thought sharply, but either the distance was too great or his thoughts were swallowed up by the multitude around him. Contact was impossible.

He'd have to do the best he could; confusion might cover him. A fire truck skidded to a stop beside him and frantic firemen coupled the hoses and went to work. Drenched and swearing Rains fought his way down the street.

As abruptly as it began, the smoke stopped. At least the drunken Gowru had had enough sense to look out the window. Or maybe the sirens had brought him around. Rains shuddered; he could almost see the contents of the bottle diminishing as Gowru apprised himself of the mistake.

He was a block or so from the Institute and the streets were still crowded. Some people had re-entered the stores as soon as the smoke-like stuff stopped pouring out. Others, more fearful, remained outside.

They didn't remain outside long. Overhead, in the sunset sky, an ominous cloud formed. It descended rapidly upon the city. Apprehensively, Rains watched the copters disappear into the dense cloud, and then decided against worrying about them. Radar equipped, they could trace their way through anything.

* * * * *

Shopkeepers gazed at the sky, shuddered, and hurried inside. They closed windows and doors and bolted them. The reason escaped him until he observed firemen clambering into trucks which roared away as fast as they had come. They wore masks, all of them. It was gas they feared.

The fool was compounding the mistake. A quiet, ordinary fog which gathered inconspicuously in the hollows and low places and gradually engulfed the city was what he wanted. This sort of thing was hardly what he had specified.

There was no help for it, and as long as he had the streets to himself he might as well go ahead. Before he reached the Institute the fog fell on him with an almost physical impact. Streetlights winked on briefly and were snuffed out as the fog descended lower, still burning but not discernible at street level.

He shuffled slowly along, touching buildings. This kept him from getting completely lost. There was no one following him physically, he was sure of that. They could still keep track of him mentally and he wouldn't be aware of it, but he doubted that anyone was interested in him at a time like this. They'd be too concerned with the fog.

The dyeman was good--too good.

He stopped at a doorway, pressing his face close to the glass to read the sign on it. It was the Institute, but he didn't intend to enter.

He stepped back from the door and squeezed behind a statue. He was as close to the director as he could expect to get without being observed by the spies on the staff. Telepathically he located the director's office and whispered, also telepathically. There was no reply.

It took him a minute to determine why--the director was asleep. It was better that way. The man wouldn't know he had come, taken the information and left. He stirred around in the sleeping mind, delicately so as not to awaken him. Then he had the information.

Gommaf was the man he wanted. Rains grinned to himself. Gommaf was the teleport, or knew who the teleport was--he couldn't be sure which. That was all he needed.

He wriggled out from behind the statue and walked quickly away. The fog wasn't as intense as it had been, though it slowed him considerably. Gowru must be getting tired. Streetlights were burning faintly overhead.

The fog changed color as he went along, an indiscreet slip. There was a slight brown tinge to it that wasn't altogether pleasant. He walked faster and his stomach felt upset.

Gowru was playing with the fog; that was the only interpretation Rains could place on it. Colors shifted through the spectrum. He wished the Hindu would stop it. A queasy, dirty violet didn't inspire confidence in his own digestive system.

In the midst of all that violet, a low-flying biliously pink cloud came toward him. He turned his head and gulped, but it didn't help appreciably. In the direction he now faced there was a vile green fog shape. It looked something like an appendix, but it was much larger.

He was wrong. Gowru Chandit was not playing--this was for keeps. A valuable man, no doubt of it, but he drank too fast and couldn't control his reactions.

As he looked, the appendix shape writhed slowly and glowed. Other fog forms began materializing convulsively around him, not all of them bearing morphological resemblance to human organs, but not necessarily of more pleasing appearance because of that. And the colors--Rains closed his eyes but the damnable fluorescence seemed to penetrate.

The river was nearby, for which he was thankful. He staggered to it, lay down on the embankment, and retched feebly. The Ganges below became less sanitary for a time. There were certain disadvantages to psi powers, he reflected. This was the first time he had reacted to another's nausea.

Later, he made it back to his quarters.

* * * * *

The boat slid swiftly and smoothly past the cremation barges anchored in the river. The design of the barges was distinctive, two long cylindrical pontoons connected fore and aft by beams which curved above the surface of the water. In the middle of each pontoon was a squat affair resembling a searchlight, each of which was focused inward toward the open space at the center of the barge. Upstream was a long line of small wooden rafts. One at a time they were allowed to float between the pontoons. The searchlights flashed and the beams crossed in the center. The raft burst into flame, water boiled for an instant, and the corpse was utterly consumed. The barge was ready for the next body.

Rains glanced at the mechanism. No matter where he saw it, he'd always be able to identify it. One of them was much newer than the others. This was significant.

Gowru was scowling, so Rains refrained from mentioning the barges. There were many religions in India, now more than ever, and each had its own burial customs. Some rituals were offensive to other sects and he saw no need to antagonize his guide over such a trivial matter.

They were both silent as the boat pulled up to the civic center pier. Government offices and allied functions were situated together in an annex outside the city proper; a sensible solution in a city as ancient as Benares, but one which Rains did not particularly like. There were just too many policemen and security officers around. He shrugged. That was probably the least of his problems.

They mingled with the crowd, sightseers and officeworkers, that rushed off the ship. In a few minutes they were in the center of the government city. Police everywhere, but Rains didn't let that bother him. Presently they came to an impressive building and he stood on the sidewalk and pretended to admire it.

There were heavily barred windows and guards at the entrance. "Here it is," he said softly. "We could walk in."

"This is just Gojmaf," grunted Gowru. "Mere journeymen. You want the Guild of Master Mystics Mentalists and Fakirs--Gommaf."

Rains sighed; he'd not been as fortunate as he'd thought in contacting the sleeping director's mind. He'd not gotten the name of the teleport, but the organization to which that person probably belonged.

The Gommaf building was on another street and wasn't easily located, but they found it. They sat at a sidewalk cafe and inspected it from a distance. It was not a pretentious structure and there were neither bars nor guards.

The absence of visible security measures was disturbing. It suggested several possibilities: that there was nothing of value inside, that Gommaf had complete confidence in the ordinary police patrol, or that they relied on other means of protection. The last seemed likely.

It was a local organization and Rains had never heard of it. That was not strange. There was much about India that had never reached the Western world. There were records inside, the records of a teleport, and he had to get to them.

He couldn't just walk in; somewhere there was a master telepath on duty. Rains had confidence in his own ability, but he saw no point in overmatching himself. "What do you know about Gommaf?" he asked.

His guide looked at the tea with less than delight. "It's fairly new," he said slowly, searching his memory. "Organized about ten years ago, I believe. There was competition at first. Some of the mystics, mentalists and fakirs thought they were outside the orbit of ordinary trade unionism. They formed a rival organization and tried to eliminate Gommaf's chief organizer, a man called Handas Bvandeghat. They found him one morning while he was practising yoga, and of course he refused to interrupt his spiritual contemplation. They riddled him with machine gun bullets."

Rains nodded. "But they couldn't kill the idea. Handas Bvandeghat became a martyr and the organization went on in spite of, or because of, his death." It was a familiar story.

"Who said he died? Handas Bvandeghat is president of Gommaf."

"But they machine gunned him!"

"Sure, they shot him. But he's a fakir, still makes a living letting people drive spikes through his body. What's a few bullets to him?" Gowru swallowed the tea and made a face. "Of course, there were some physical consequences. Even today Bvandeghat has trouble keeping food on his stomach." Gowru wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Holes," he added.

* * * * *

It was not such a familiar story after all, but it did emphasize the difficulties. An organization headed by such a character would be tough. The telepath to spot intruders, which had previously been merely a possibility, became a certainty. An approach to the front entrance was inadvisable.

But the comet was still hurtling through space and the only man who could avert the collision was the teleport. Rains had to contact him. He produced a map and consulted with his guide. After some discussion they evolved a plan.

"If we come through the rear it's your opinion the telepath won't detect us?" Gowru murmured, obviously doubtful.

"It's worth trying," said Rains, folding the map. "Behind the Gommaf building is an electric fence and behind that is open country, mostly swamp. Normally the swamp is considered impassable, but there is a way through it. The telepath has to concentrate mentally just as you do visually. He'll be expecting trouble from the front. I sneak in from the rear, examine the records, and get out again before it occurs to him that I've been there. After that I still have to contact the teleport, but once I know who he is, that's easy."

"Why not rent a copter and set it down in the middle of the swamp? It will save a lot of walking."

"It would, but it would also inform Gommaf that we're up to something. No, we'll just have to walk." Rains stuffed the map into his pocket. "Are there any shrines on the road to the city?"

Gowru Chandit shrugged. "There are shrines anywhere in India except straight up."

Rains nodded with great satisfaction. There'd be one there too when the hydrogen bomb exploded inside the comet. A bright flaring shrine to astronomy.

The road was paved but dusty. There were other tourists walking toward the city so Egan Rains and Gowru were by no means conspicuous. At some distance from the civic center they stopped at a wayside temple. They entered and examined the strange but not notable architecture, the intricate but not always esthetically pleasing carved walls. When they were not observed they slipped through a side door and hurried to the rear where they plunged into the light underbrush. In half an hour they were at the edge of an open plain. No one followed them.

After some discussion they decided to skirt the plain, and started out, keeping well within the shadow of the trees which separated plain from adjacent swampland. They circled back toward the civic center, toward the narrow spot of firm ground that reached nearly to the electric fence behind Gommaf. In the middle of the afternoon they rested and ate some of the food they had brought with them.

"Psst!" said Gowru, waving his great hand.