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.