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.