ight leg, and thrust his knee into the old man's back.
     Fedor saw red. Without thinking, he sprang onto the windowsill. Another
leap,  and he was in the room.  He landed a powerful uppercut to the bearded
chin of the executioner.
     The blow flung the fakir against the wall,  where  he crumpled  into  a
motionless heap.
     Fedor turned to the Brahman and, snatching  out  his knife, stabbed him
in the chest.
     Both  the knife and  Fedor's hand passed through the Brahman's chest as
if it  were thin air.  Fedor  fell forward, and his body also  passed freely
through  the body of  the Brahman. All he felt was a faint warm wave of air.
The Brahman was incorporeal!
     "Ah-h-h!" Fedor screamed in horror. "Begone, demon!"
     The  Brahman  dashed  to  the  thick, iron-bound  wooden door.  Without
opening the door he passed straight through it and vanished.
     "Rise, young man. Time is precious," said the old man in Hindi. "Do you
understand me?"
     Fedor, who was still sitting on the floor, looked about wildly.  He was
shaking. He brought his trembling  hand to  his forehead and quickly crossed
himself.
     "Rise," the old man repeated imperiously. "Rise and bar the door."
     Fedor  obeyed,  muttering  "Begone,  demon! Begone,  demon!"  under his
breath.
     "Now hand me that vessel."
     Like a sleepwalker, Fedor moved over  to a shelf, took down a vessel of
red glass, and handed it to the old man.
     The old man folded the middle section of the chain in two and dipped it
into the vessel, from which acrid smoke arose.
     "By killing  the high priest you will confer a great  blessing  on  the
people.  But  you  cannot  do  it  with  an ordinary  knife. If  we  are not
interrupted you will understand.  I shall  make your knife suitable for that
purpose."
     The old man lifted the chain out of the vessel and examined the links ,
which had grown quite thin. He tore the chain apart.  Then, dragging the end
of the chain behind him, he hurried over to the lightning machine. He picked
up the ends of wires leading from the  machine and connected them to several
copper vessels. Next  he quickly re-arranged some  silver  rings round which
wires had been wound.
     "Quick, your knife!"
     Fedor stood staring  at the machine  with unseeing  eyes.  The old  man
seized him by the collar of his shirt and shook him energetically.
     "Wake up! Wake up! Do you understand me?"
     Fedor nodded weakly.
     "Give me the knife! Now turn the handle!"
     Fedor turned the handle, producing a shower of blue sparks. The old man
thrust the blade  of the knife into  one of the rings. A faint aureole shone
round the knife.
     "Turn faster!"
     The aureole grew brighter, then suddenly died out.
     "That's enough! Now grasp the knife by the blade."
     Fedor saw his fingers pass through the blade as though it were  made of
air. With a cry, he drew back his hand and stumbled towards the window.
     "I was told you were a warrior but I see you are a cowardly old woman!"
the old man cried furiously. This brought Fedor to his senses.
     Hesitatingly, he picked up the  knife by the handle. It was an ordinary
handle, solid all the way through. He touched the  tip of the blade with the
palm of his hand. His palm passed through it and reached the handle.
     "The blade can now injure no one except the high priest," said the  old
man. "But for him it means death."
     Voices came from below. Looking out, Fedor saw that the yard was filled
with men carrying torches.
     "Now listen to me," said the old man. "As  long as I preserve my secret
my life is safe. No matter how hostile they are  they will not  harm me, for
my death would be more terrible to the high priest  than his own death. This
is  not  the first  time they have  tried to frighten  me  by pretending  to
strangle  me. You have  nothing to  fear  either until they  carry out their
plans. They need you to build things for them."
     Footsteps and voices were heard outside the door.
     "Remember  that only this knife can  strike down  the high priest," the
old man whispered rapidly. "Now it is still too early. But you will slay him
when the time is ripe. Hide the knife outside the window. I'll find a way of
getting it to you. Do you understand me?"
     "Yes."
     Fedor thrust his head and shoulders  out of the window and  slipped the
knife into a hollow in the  stone carving.  The old man also thrust  out his
head,  felt  for the knife with his hand, and  gave a satisfied nod. Then he
returned to  his  place  and seated himself on  his cushion, concealing  the
broken chain.
     All of a sudden  the high priest entered  the room  through the  barred
door. He gave Fedor an icy glance.
     "When you raised your hand against me, foreigner, you did not know what
you  were doing", he  said.  "Therefore, I  forgive  you.  Only by  complete
obedience can you atone. Now, unbolt the door!"
     Fedor stared at him in terror.  Fighting down  his fear, he went to the
door and pushed aside the bolt.
     Lal Chandra entered, followed by servants  carrying torches. At  a sign
from their master  two of them lifted  the motionless body  of the fakir and
carried him out.
     "You do not know our customs, young man,"  Lal Chandra said in  an even
voice. "It was your Karma that brought you here. I advise  you not to meddle
in our concerns, which are beyond your comprehension."
     Thus  ended  a  night  that  had  been  a  nightmare.  But  it  had  an
unexpectedly happy ending for Fedor.
     The next day Lal Chandra took Fedor back to the temple of Kali.


        CHAPTER SEVEN

        IN WHICH LAL CHANDRA SAYS TO FEDOR THAT HE IS NOT NEEDED ANY MORE

     The summer heat began to abate. Monsoonal winds from the ocean piled up
dark rain clouds. The first rains fell in the mountains.
     Lal Chandra went about with  a worried expression on his face. He drove
the builders to exert  themselves to the maximum. Time was running out.  The
stream would start to rise any day now.
     The dam, flood-gate and chute were ready.
     So was the water-wheel. Long wooden shafts now  ran from  it through an
opening in the temple  wall into a room just off the main  hall. Attached to
each shaft were ten wooden discs, each  fourteen feet in  diameter,  covered
with a smooth, shiny coat of a rare resin.
     On either side  of  the discs were gold-leaf plates  across which swept
brushes of fine gold thread.
     Not  far  from the machine stood twelve enormous copper vats.  All this
was  connected  by  an   intricate   system  of  copper  cables  wrapped  in
oil-saturated cloth.  Copper bars  with ebony handles had been inserted into
the cables at intervals. They were used to help switch  the mysterious force
to wherever it was wanted.
     In the main hall of the temple there was a sunken  pool in front of the
statue of  Kali. The copper cables connected with  the concave mirrors  were
hidden in the water of the pool.
     Day by day the  stream rose.  Barred  by  the dam, it filled the  rocky
gorge and raced over the open spillway with a roar.
     After that  memorable  night two sturdy  fakirs openly  followed  Fedor
wherever he went. At  night they slept  outside the  door of his room in the
temple.  It  was utterly  hopeless to  try to  tell Jogindar Singh about the
incorporeal  Brahman,  for  the fakirs  brazenly  squatted  beside  them and
listened to everything they said.
     Could the  incorporeal man have been just  a nightmare? Again and again
Fedor recalled how the knife in his hand had gone through that wraith. Fedor
was not a coward. He had  gone into battle time and again without flinching.
But he felt helpless when it came to mysterious forces.
     Fedor  also  recalled the old  man in the  tower  and the  knife he had
turned  into air  before Fedor's eyes. Fedor  tried to remember  how it  had
happened. While he was turning the lightning  machine the old man had thrust
the knife  into  some  twisted  wires. The  lightning  machine was  somewhat
different from  Lal Chandra's. Fedor vaguely recalled  that  the old man had
said the high priest  could not get along without him. Did that mean the old
man was the one who had made the high priest incorporeal?
     He also recalled the terrified face of the incorporeal high priest when
he, Fedor,  had  rushed at him  with  the knife.  Why  should he  have  been
terrified? Perhaps he had not been incorporeal long and was not yet  used to
it.
     Fedor's head was in a whirl. He simply had to tell  the Sikhs about the
miracle. Ram Das was the one to tell it to. But Lal Chandra had sent Ram Das
off on an errand.
     He  never should have listened to the old man. Instead  of  hiding  the
magic knife he should have plunged it into that  incorporeal high priest and
been done with it.
     Fedor was sitting alone in his room late  one evening when  he suddenly
heard a  deep roar outside. He dashed out of  the room. His guards, sleeping
beside the door, sprang to their feet and ran after him.
     The roar was coming from the chute. Fedor realized that the water  gate
had been raised and water was now rushing towards the wheel. He ran into the
main  room of the  temple. In the darkness  he easily found  the narrow door
behind the six-armed goddess and  stepped into the  secret  room  where  the
lightning machine stood. He saw what he had expected to  see. The discs were
whirling  at a  tremendous  rate, making a soft,  swishing  sound. The  gold
plates had merged  into circles; they reflected the reddish light of the oil
lamps. The air in the room was  filled with the freshness that accompanies a
thunderstorm.
     Six  men, none of whom Fedor  had ever seen before, were tinkering with
the machine. Lal Chandra stood to one side watching. He had not heard  Fedor
enter.
     A  sense of deep injury engulfed Fedor.  He had  put so much hard  work
into building the machine! He had invented so many things connected with it!
Yet they had not even called him to watch the trial run.
     Forgetting  everything  except  his  resentment,  Fedor tugged  at  Lal
Chandra's wide sleeve.
     Lal Chandra started in fright.
     "What are you doing here?" he asked, turning round to face Fedor.
     "Why didn't you tell me?" Fedor shouted.
     "You  are  not needed  any  more." Lal  Chandra's  voice  was no longer
gentle.
     Fedor seized the Brahman by the collar and shook him.
     "I'm not your slave! I'm a lieutenant in the Russian  Navy!" he shouted
angrily. He spoke in Russian, as he always did when excited. "I'll shake the
wits out of you."
     Lal Chandra screamed hoarsely.  The men turned round, dropped what they
were doing, and flung  themselves on Fedor. Fedor fought back furiously. The
Indians  were unfamiliar with fist fighting,  and he knocked  them down  one
after  another. But  they immediately rose  to  their feet and  attacked him
again.
     Lal Chandra bent  down and scuttled  through the  low door.  Fedor tore
himself away from the clinging hands of his attackers and  dashed after him.
Lal Chandra ran back and  forth, hampered by his long robe. For a moment the
two men raced round the grim goddess like children, changing their direction
all the time.
     Men carrying torches appeared, and half a dozen  of them fell on Fedor.
But  he tore loose once more and, making a  leap, caught Lal Chandra  by the
sleeve. With the deepest satisfaction he drew  back his  arm and smashed his
fist into Lal Chandra's cheekbone. The Brahman fell backwards into the pool.
     The last thing Fedor remembered was the sensation  of being  strangled.
When he recovered consciousness he was lying in his room.  His head rang and
his arms ached. He went to the door and gave a pull. It was locked from  the
outside.
     Fedor saw no hope of ever being set free.
     Twice a  day he was  brought a bowl of meagre  fare. Lal Chandra's  men
kept a close watch over him.
     One evening he was sitting on  the floor  of his vaulted room, beside a
low table, going over his notes by  the light of an oil lamp. He had started
a diary long ago, while on  the way to India. But what was the  use of these
notes  now? His eyes wandered sadly  around the dusk-filled room.  He  would
never be able to escape from here.
     He closed his eyes and let his head drop into his hands.
     A pebble suddenly fell on  the floor. Fedor gave a start and jumped  to
his feet.  A faint rustling came from somewhere above his  head. Lifting his
eyes, he saw a swarthy bare arm thrust through the ventilation opening.
     "It's starting," he  thought in alarm. "They'll let snakes down through
holes or sprinkle poison on me."
     "Fedor,"  a  voice  softly  called.   Fedor's  heart  lightened  as  he
recognized  the  voice  of Ram Das. How had he made  his way through  such a
narrow passage? He must have removed some bricks.
     "Let me hear your voice," said Ram Das from behind the wall.
     "It's  me,  all right. Who else  could it  be? Listen to what I have to
say, Ram Das." Fedor quickly told him what had taken place in the tower.
     "Did you say the Brahman is incorporeal?" Ram Das interrupted him. "Did
you say he can pass through solid walls?"
     "Yes."
     "You saw it with your own eyes?"
     "Yes."
     "Are  their gods really so  powerful?" There was a note of  fear in Ram
Das's voice.
     "All is lost," thought Fedor in despair. "The Sikhs were  my only hope.
When they see this miracle at the festival they'll give up all resistance."
     "Listen, Ram Das,  but that's not all." Fedor hurriedly related how the
old man had given the blade of his knife the property of penetrability.
     "Can the incorporeal Brahman really be slain with that knife?" came Ram
Das's hollow-sounding voice.
     "Yes, yes, he can! The knife is  hidden  in a crack in the wall outside
the old man's window. Be sure to get it, Ram Das."
     "The  old  man is kept under such heavy  guard that it's hard  to break
through to  him.  But  I'll  do  whatever I can to  help  you.  You must  be
prepared. Goodbye. I must go now."


        CHAPTER EIGHT

        WHICH TELLS OF THE END OF THE INCORPOREAL BRAHMAN

     The roads were thronged. From Gujarat and Rajputana in the south,  from
the foothills of the mountain ranges in the north, and from Lahore and Delhi
in the east crowds of people converged on the  river Sutlej, a tributary  of
the Indus, where the miracle had taken place.
     In  the land where lived the apostate Sikhs, who had rejected the  gods
of the Brahmans, these gods had  decided to remind  men of their  existence.
The  goddess  of  love and  death,  the  awe-inspiring  Kali, was displaying
mysterious powers in a long-abandoned temple.
     That was what friendly men told the pilgrims at crossroads and villages
on  the way. These men distributed food and  pointed out the  route. Closing
their eyes as  though in  prayer,  they  related  that a certain pundit  had
attained the highest knowledge.  Although he had  repudiated his body he was
still visible, and hence he  was  called the Mahatma Ananga, the "great soul
without flesh".
     Tales  were told at roadside campfires of how Mahatma Ananga, gathering
his faithful  pupils  about him, had begged the gods, through Kali, who  had
close ties with humans, to bring accord to an earth torn by dissent.
     In response, the gods had given a sign. When the body of a pupil of the
Mahatma  Ananga,  who had died  in  the cause of  the highest knowledge, was
brought to the temple of Kali, the goddess had refused to accept his death.
     The body of the righteous man had been lying in trepidation at the feet
of the ruler  over life and death for many days. Kali  refused to accept his
death.
     Since the goddess kept  a strict account of those who were born, coming
from their  past  incarnation,  and those  who died, passing  into  the next
incarnation, the return to  life  of the righteous man would have to be paid
for by the sacrifice of another life.
     The day of  the sacrifice had been appointed. On that day awe-inspiring
Kali would show one and all the power of the ancient gods.
     The pilgrims arrived  in large groups, keeping  close together.  To lag
behind was dangerous. The elusive brotherhood of Thug assassins  had already
strangled several people to death in honour of their goddess.
     There were crowds of people all around  the temple. The  hollow between
the temple  and the  bank of the  stream was closely packed  with tents  and
primitive shelters.
     Bright  sunlight illuminated a colourful scene: white-robed  men, women
in  flowered  veils,  bronze  faces  and  bodies,  countless  carts.  Temple
attendants distributed an infusion of thorn apple leaves among the pilgrims,
to  "free  them from  their  sins."  This was  a narcotic  that  temporarily
deprived people of their reason and memory. They also distributed a beverage
made  of poppy-seed called "the tears of  oblivion".  They were particularly
generous with bhang, a  beverage made from the juice  of the tender  tops of
Indian hemp mixed with an infusion of nutmeg and cloves.
     Clouds of flies  hovered  above  the camp of the pilgrims. The odour of
fragrant spikenard mingled with the smells of food, human and  animal sweat,
aromatic incense, the  smoke  of  camp-fires, and the wormwood-like odour of
narcotics.
     The pilgrims grew more and more excited. They demanded miracles.
     The  Sikhs, bearded and in turbans, did not take part in  the religious
frenzy. They camped to  one  side  and  seemed to be waiting  for something.
People scowled at them  because the Sikhs were  apostates. Knowing, however,
that the Sikhs did not recognize the philosophy of Ahimsa, or non-injury  of
animal life, they took care to give them a wide berth.
     In the evening innumerable campfires burned bright as people made their
evening ablutions and cooked food.  Temple attendants distributed rice and a
powerful mixture of  opium  and bhang. The excitement that now swept through
the crowd was even stronger than in the daytime. To the beat of drums inside
the temple a Brahman emerged to  announce  that  the  temple was now open. A
howling crowd surged in through the doors, filling the vast hall and all the
passages. The  Sikhs were the last to enter. They  took up places along  the
walls, none of them mingling with the crowd.
     Semi-darkness reigned  inside the temple. The oil  lamps cast quivering
shadows on the sinister faces of the goddess, on the garland of human skulls
round her bronze neck, and on her belt, an interlacing of chopped-off hands.
The rubies in her eye-sockets glowed.
     A human body lay motionless at the  feet of the goddess,  its  outlines
vague beneath the white shroud.
     Suddenly the drums fell  silent. An imposing  Brahman  (appeared on the
small open space between the pool and the goddess. He waited until the crowd
was quiet, then said in a resounding voice:
     "Brothers, do  not be surprised at what your  eyes will see. Keep calm,
for each has his own Karma and the  gods are all-powerful. Let us praise the
great Kali. May the gods show us miracles to strengthen our faith!"
     There was a faint crackle in the dead silence.
     Suddenly, flames leaped  up out of the bowls on the tripods around  the
pedestal of the goddess. A murmur of astonishment ran through the crowd.
     The Brahman pressed  his hands  together in prayer and  turned  to  the
statue.
     "Oh  mighty  one,  oh   black-faced   one!  She  who  tramples  on  the
decapitated!" he intoned. "Manifest your will, for through  you the Creator,
the Preserver and the Destroyer rule us! Give us life or give  us a merciful
reincarnation!"
     His last  words  were drowned by peals of thunder. Dazzling  streaks of
lightning  flashed through the clouds  of  smoke, in  the  direction  of the
crowd,  from the pointed fingers  of the terrible goddess, from the tips  of
her pointed nipples, and from the ends of her long eyelashes.
     The crowd was gripped  by terror. Shouting and pushing,  people hurried
towards  the exit.  But  their way  was barred by crackling  blue flashes of
lightning that came from the bronze lances decorating the archway.
     "Oh you of little faith!" intoned the Brahman. "Why are you frightened?
Did I not announce that the will of the gods would be manifested to you?"
     The lightning stopped, and the crowd ceased to mill about. Silence fell
as the people timidly  pressed closer  to  one another.  Suddenly cries came
from the hall:
     "Look, a dead man!"
     "This man is dead too!"
     "Death has entered the temple!"
     Here and there in the crowded hall lay the bodies of those who had been
struck by lightning.
     "Frightened, you of little faith?" the Brahman shouted. "How can flight
save you from the will of the gods? Does not death at the hands of Kali give
the chosen a better incarnation? Pray! Beg the goddess to open your eyes!"
     Where space  permitted in  the tightly-packed crowd, people  prostrated
themselves, their hands pressed together devoutly.
     "Now gaze on this!" the Brahman commanded. "The Mahatma Ananga himself,
the man without flesh, will appear before you!"
     The Brahman stepped to one side, his hands pressed together in front of
his face.
     A sigh of wonderment swept through the temple as a man in  a long white
robe came  into sight  straight  out of the pedestal. He silently spread his
arms, blessing  the pilgrims, and strode into the crowd. People separated to
let him pass, but he did not need an opening. He walked straight through the
crowd, straight through people. They realized  that he was incorporeal. Some
tried  to  grasp the  hem of  his robe to kiss it  but  their fingers passed
through the fabric as though it were woven of air.
     There were cries of awe-stricken horror beneath the vaulted  ceiling of
the temple.  Men fell to their knees to kiss the floor where the Incorporeal
Brahman had walked.
     After  passing through the  amazed crowd Mahatma Ananga returned to the
Kali pedestal. With an imperious gesture he commanded silence. Then he began
to speak.
     "The gods have  liberated me  from the flesh  that  oppresses man. I am
incorporeal. No human weapon can harm me. I need neither food nor drink. Yet
I am alive. My soul has not  been reincarnated. This is the gift of the gods
to those  who obey them implicitly.  But what do  you  live for, you who are
wrapped up in  concern for your  pitiful bodies? A handful  of rice  is more
precious to you than Nirvana."
     He talked for a  long  time, wrathfully condemning those  who preferred
the miserable  blessings  of  the  present  life  to  future  reincarnation.
Untouchables   must  stop   the  practice   of   adopting  Mohammedanism  or
Christianity. The gods would not forgive those who failed to keep the faith.
The apostate Sikhs had not resigned themselves to their fate. They wanted to
gain possession of lands  that  belonged,  by the  will of the gods, to  the
Brahmans. They must repent and return to the ancient faith before it was too
late. Otherwise the gods would punish them so sternly that no trace  of them
would  remain. The patience of the gods  was exhausted. They were  incensed.
Through him, Mahatma Ananga, they had resolved  to  manifest their  will and
punish the recalcitrants and apostates.
     While all  this was  going on Fedor Matveyev languished in the  machine
room next door, his arms chained to rings in the wall.
     The enormous discs revolved and hummed  rhythmically. Lal Chandra stood
with his eye at a tiny hole in the wall,  watching  what was going on in the
hall.  From time to time,  without turning round, he said something, and his
assistants did his  bidding, moving  the copper bars back and forth to  open
and shut the path of the mysterious force.
     From the way  they moved the bars  Fedor could  imagine what was taking
place in the temple. He could  hear the roar of the crowd and the awe-struck
cries as the miracles were performed.
     He  himself had built these machines whose lightning would  soon reduce
him to ashes. His friends, the Sikhs, were somewhere near,  but  what  could
they  do? They were  lost in  the frenzied  crowd.  Besides,  they too might
succumb to the Brahmans at sight of the miracles.
     Two fakirs approached Fedor, untied his bonds and, gripping him  by the
arms, thrust him through the low door into the hall. He found himself facing
the  Incorporeal Brahman. On  the other side of the pool was a sea of heads,
malicious grimaces and hateful eyes.
     "This wretched foreigner wished to deprive me of life," the Incorporeal
Brahman said disdainfully. "He did not know that only the gods can  do that.
Give him a knife. Let him try once again to pierce my body."
     An expectant  murmur ran through the crowd. A  grinning fakir stretched
out a knife to Fedor, who struck it from the man's hand. The knife clattered
as it fell on the stone paving.
     "If only  I  had  the  knife  the  old man  hid."  Fedor  thought. "But
evidently that is not to be. Say your last prayers, naval lieutenant."
     "Remove the shroud," said the Brahman.
     When the  shroud was lifted,  a naked corpse was revealed lying at  the
bronze feet of the goddess.
     Lightning streaked from the fingers of Kali.
     A  scream  of  horror  rang  through the  hall  and was then echoed and
re-echoed  time  and again.  The corpse  had come to  life.  It quivered and
stirred at the feet of the terrible goddess.
     "Look here, one and all!" the Incorporeal Brahman shouted. "The goddess
refuses to accept the  death of my finest  pupil. He hovers between life and
death. The  time has not yet come for his  reincarnation! But if  Kali is to
return him to life she must receive a sacrifice in exchange!"
     Twelve attendants marched up to the pool in single file. Each carried a
pitcher  on  his shoulder,  the  thick, dark,  odorous contents of which  he
poured into the pool.
     "We  have  brought  you  precious oil as a  sacrifice," the Incorporeal
Brahman  intoned,  turning to the goddess. "Will  you  accept this bloodless
sacrifice?"
     There was a sound of gurgling. The water in the pool began to boil. The
oil  gathered  into a  dark  ball,  then  streaked through the  water to the
opposite side of the pool, throwing up a fountain. For an instant the pillar
of oil  stood  motionless,  then it  collapsed,  sprinkling  the  crowd with
fragrant drops.
     "The goddess rejects  a bloodless sacrifice!" cried the Mahatma Ananga.
"She gives it to you with her blessing. She demands a human sacrifice. Those
pilgrims who  were  chosen  by the sacred lightning have been given a  happy
reincarnation. Their death was a joy to them. But this foreigner will meet a
terrible death, for he  is  alien to  our gods  and will be given the lowest
reincarnation. His soul will pass  into the body of  a blind worm that gnaws
away at seaside cliffs!"
     The water in the pool began to seethe. A bright flame  appeared  on top
of it.
     "See,  the goddess agrees!" shouted the Incorporeal Brahman. "The water
has turned to fire! May the foreigner die without bloodshed.
     Kali herself will give him death. Place him at the feet of the goddess,
beside my pupil. Let  everyone see the goddess take the life of  one man and
transfer it to another man!"
     Fedor  desperately  ran  his  eyes across  the  crowd.  The faces  were
hostile. "This is the end, Fedor Matveyev," he said  to himself.  "Here come
the fakirs. Now they'll seize you-"
     "Watch out, Fedor!"
     Suddenly  he was gripped by  a  feeling of  grim merriment.  He  stared
eagerly at the back of the hall, where the light was dim.
     Something flew over the heads of the crowd and fell at Fedor's feet. In
a flash he bent  down, snatched up his  knife by  the handle, and plunged it
into the breast of the Incorporeal Brahman.  He felt  the cloth of  the robe
resist as it tore.
     A  spreading patch of  blood stained  the  white  robe  of  the Mahatma
Ananga.  He wheezed, choked and would have  fallen  if  Fedor had  drawn his
knife from the wound. But Fedor did not release the handle. He realized in a
flash that if the Incorporeal Brahman fell he would sink through the ground,
creating a miracle that would spoil everything.
     His  ears  failed to register the shouts  of the  crowd, and he did not
know  what was going  on behind  his back. All he  felt was that the Mahatma
Ananga was growing heavier and was slipping sideways.
     Death had returned the usual properties to  the body of the Incorporeal
Brahman.  Although Fedor firmly clasped the handle  the  knife pulled itself
out of the body.  No longer supported by the  knife, the body dropped to the
stone floor with a dull thud.
     An instant of eerie silence was followed by cries of rage and fear.
     Ram Das ran up to Fedor and seized him by the arm.
     "This way!" he cried. "Hurry!"


        CHAPTER NINE

     IN WHICH A STAR ABOVE THE WATER TURNS OUT TO BE A SHIP'S LIGHT

     Fedor let the helm slip out of his hands. It did not  matter  since  he
could see nothing whatsoever in the utter  darkness. Besides, it was raining
violently.
     The powerful current swept the small boat downstream. The heavens split
open with a  sound like the ripping of a sail. Streaks of lightning lit up a
wide, swollen river, uprooted trees and a thick wall of rain.
     "We're being carried by  the  current," he thought. "Let's hope we hold
out until dawn." He sat in the stern, trying to shield Bharati from the rain
with his  body.  The girl's  head was in his lap. She  was trembling.  Fedor
stroked her wet hair. He could find no words with which to comfort her.
     Jogindar Singh's body lay  on the  deck, his white robe  a  blur in the
black night. His strong  arms lay by his side.  Never again would those arms
wield an axe.
     The Sikhs had failed to find Lal Chandra. The  sly Brahman  had escaped
through secret  passages.  Almost  immediately after,  armed  men  began  to
encircle the  temple.  The Brahmans and rajahs had evidently  stationed them
nearby in case something went wrong. Shots rang out in the  courtyard of the
temple  and  in  the  dark  passageways. The  Sikhs brandished  their curved
daggers.
     Ram  Das had  led  Fedor unnoticed out  of the temple and  down  to the
stream,  where Bharati  and her  father  were waiting.  They  set out in the
direction of the Sutlej in the rain, stumbling over the rocks in their path.
Shots sounded  behind them. Suddenly Jogindar Singh  pitched forward to  the
ground with  an anguished cry.  Fedor  picked  him up and carried him on his
back.  He and Bharati pushed through  thickets  for a long time  before they
finally  reached  the Sutlej. There  Bharati found the sailboat,  tied to  a
boulder.
     Dawn came at last, the grey light revealing  a rain-spattered river the
colour of yellowish mud. Bharati,  petrified by  sorrow, sat beside the body
of her father.
     It  took every  ounce of  Fedor's strength to guide  the boat towards a
small island. Near the shore he leaped  into the water and  then dragged the
boat up onto the wet sand.
     In the  tiny cabin under the deck  he  found an axe.  The carpenter had
seen to it that the  boat was fully  equipped. Fedor  hacked  out  a shallow
grave in the rain-soaked earth and tenderly  laid the body of Jogindar Singh
in it. After covering the grave with earth he built a mound of stones on top
of it.
     Bharati's rigid  face frightened him.  It  would be  easier for her, he
thought, if she would give way to tears. He touched her shoulder.  Silently,
she turned away from the grave, and silently she climbed back into the boat.
     Waist-deep in the water,  Fedor tugged at the boat to free it from  the
sand. His feet  sank in the silt. Finally he gave a push that took  his last
strength. Dislodged, the boat slid forward into the river.
     Suddenly he heard Bharati scream in terror. Turning his head, Fedor saw
that  her face was  drained of colour. She was pointing at  something with a
hand  that trembled, keeping up  a  piercing cry. Fedor swung round to see a
long  brown  log  heading  rapidly  towards him.  Suddenly the log opened  a
monstrous mouth lined with sharp teeth.
     Fedor  pushed off from the bottom as hard as he could  and scrambled up
onto the  deck of the boat. That very instant he heard teeth snap behind his
back. Before  he  could catch  his breath Bharati flung  her  arms round his
neck,  buried  her  head  on  his chest, and  burst into  tears. She  sobbed
convulsively, her thin shoulders quivering under his hands.
     "You must be careful," she whispered through her tears.  "I have no one
else but you now. Promise you will take care."
     Fedor guided  the boat back into  the  mainstream.  He had never seen a
crocodile  before,  although he  had heard  much about them. He  recalled  a
sentence  from  one of  the  first books  he  had  read in  childhood.  "The
crocodile  is an aquatic reptile  which  weeps as  it  kills  and  eats  its
victim." Fedor gave a wry  smile as he remembered the crocodile's terrifying
jaws. He  did  not  think it  likely that  such  a  monster would mourn  its
victims.
     After  two days of rain the sun reappeared. Meanwhile, they had reached
the Indus, and the mighty river was steadily carrying them towards the sea.
     Fedor  now  tied up  the boat  on  the bank  for the night. He  built a
campfire over which Bharati prepared their simple meal.
     At the end  of a week Fedor noticed that the river  was growing  wider;
the water was turning clearer by the hour. Finally there came a morning when
the boat ceased to  move at all. The incoming  tide was preventing the river
from reaching the sea.
     That meant  the ocean was near. The light northerly breeze carried with
it a tang of salt air.
     Fedor raised the foresail, woven of strong palm leaves. Then he lowered
the heavy copper-bound sliding keel into the water and hauled in the sheets.
The sound of water gurgling underneath the boat filled his heart with joy.
     The water grew  lighter  and bluer until  it was the colour of the sky.
The banks receded farther and farther, fading into a haze. Finally,  a  long
blue sea wave picked the boat up, rocked it gently, and then smoothly passed
it on to the next wave. They had reached the sea!
     Fedor gave a deep sigh of relief and smiled at Bharati. The girl smiled
back at her blue-eyed, good-natured, merry god.
     "Where are we going now?" she asked.
     Fedor had  given  the  matter  a good  deal  of  thought. He remembered
Bharati's  father  saying  that  if  he turned to the right  he would  reach
Karachi,  which Persian  merchants visited frequently.  To turn to the  left
meant sailing southeast towards the Portuguese possessions.
     The idea of travelling across Persia worried Fedor. Although it was the
shorter route he  had heard,  in  Lal  Chandra's  house, vague rumours  that
things were not quiet in the land of the Persians.
     No, it  would  be better to sail  to Diu. Portugal  was  far  away from
Russia and had no reason to quarrel with her.
     And so Fedor turned to the left and sailed southeast, following the low
coast.
     Bharati grew more cheerful.  The sea breezes  put colour in her cheeks.
She boiled rice  and  baked freshly-caught  fish on the hot clay of  a small
hearth  that  Fedor  had fashioned at one of their  stopping places  on  the
Indus. She quickly learned to handle the sails and was soon able to sail the
boat single-handed, giving  Fedor  an opportunity  to  snatch a few hours of
sleep.
     The wind rose. Whitecaps rippled and foamed on the high waves. The mast
swayed, the boards creaked. The boat lay on  its  side, the deck half in the
water.
     Bharati pressed close to Fedor.
     "Why don't you go down below?" he said. "You'll get wet."
     The girl  shook  her head. "I'm  not  afraid of anything when I'm  with
you."
     "Then hold on tight. Otherwise you may be washed overboard. We're going
to be shaken up properly."
     Fedor knew that it would be far from easy to ride out a storm at sea in
their small craft.
     But Bharati trusted him, and he would do everything he could to protect
her.  This  was  not  his first  storm  at sea. He still remembered  how the
Caspian Sea had boiled and raged beneath his ship.
     With great effort Fedor managed to take down the sail. He folded it and
covered Bharati with it.
     The wind continued  to rise as night fell. The sea was a black, howling
wall. It tossed the boat like a nutshell from wave  to wave, up and down, up
and down.
     Fedor's  sole aim now was to hold the  bow into the waves. If he turned
broadside to them, the waves would capsize the  boat at once. It was  a good
thing that  Jogindar Singh had followed Fedor's instructions  to the  letter
when making the boat.  A boat without  a deck  or keel would  have sunk long
since.
     With Bharati's help he fashioned  a  floating anchor. He  took down the
mast, laid it beside the spanker-boom, wrapped both of them in the sail, and
tied  the bundle  together. He attached one end to a long rope tied  to  the
prow. Then he threw the  heavy bundle overboard.  The prow immediately swung
into  the wind.  Held  by the floating  anchor,  the boat  barely moved  and
offered the storm no resistance. The raging wind simply streamed around it.
     Fedor opened the hatch.
     "Down below, quick!" he shouted. He pushed Bharati in front of him  and
jumped down inside after  her,  banging  down  the cover of  the  hatch  and
fastening it.
     It was dark in  the  little cabin but at least it was dry and they were
out of the wind.
     The  boat pitched and tossed, up and down, up and  down. They  lost all
sense of time. Had the night come to an  end? Or had  two nights passed? All
they heard was the thunder of the waves and the creaking of the deck boards.
     "Are you asleep, Bharati?"
     "No."
     "Feel all right?"
     "Y-yes."
     Fedor  rose and groped  about  in the  dark, swearing as he knocked his
head and banged his knees.  Then he  struck flint against steel, there was a
shower  of sparks, and a tiny red  glow  appeared. Fedor blew on the tinder,
lit the oil lamp, and looked at Bharati's pale face.
     "Feel all right, dear? Not seasick?" "No," she whispered obstinately.


     The setting  sun warmed his back.  A  northerly  wind  drove lazy waves
ahead of it. The storm was over.
     But it did not make any difference now.
     Fedor sat  in  the stern, stubbornly  holding  the boat  to an eastward
course. The  coastline was  still invisible. He had no idea of how many days
and nights they had been sailing in the Arabian Sea.
     Bharati lay at his knees. That  morning he had poured the last drops of
water in the pitcher through her parched, compressed lips.
     Alas, Fedor  Matveyev!  You are  evidently  not destined  to reach your
native land. Can it  really be that you escaped  death from lightning in the
temple only to die an agonizing death at sea?
     Bharati lay with closed eyes. Fedor anxiously bent over her to reassure
himself  that  she was breathing. One thought was  uppermost in  his mind: I
must save her.
     Night fell instantly, without twilight. The black sky was soon spangled
with bright but remote stars.
     The gentle rocking of the boat made Fedor feel drowsy, but he knew that
if he fell asleep it would  be the end.  With  a tremendous effort he  shook
himself awake and swept his eyes across the sea. What was that large reddish
star that hung  so low in the sky on the  port side? Why was it  so low? And
why did it sway? Fedor sprang to his feet to take a better look at the star.
Why, it was a ship's light! "Bharati! Wake up! A ship!" As if to confirm his
words the wind  brought them the sound  of a guitar and snatches  of a song.
Fedor jumped down  into the cabin. He rummaged about searching for an Indian
gunpowder  rocket. There it was!  He tied it to a stick which he attached to
the bow. Striking flint against steel until his hands bled, he produced fire
and brought the tinder up to the rocket. A hissing red arc soared across the
dark sky.


        CHAPTER TEN

     IN WHICH FEDOR'S MYSTERY REMAINS UNSOLVED

     The January frost had thickly iced the small windowpanes and was making
the pine logs of the walls creak.
     It was warm  inside the house. The long table standing against the wall
was   covered   with  samples   of  ore,   metal  and  coal,   draughtsman's
paraphernalia, manuscripts, and vessels  containing  powders and liquids. In
the  corner stood  a machine  which was  unique in that part  of Russia.  It
consisted  of a lacquered disc covered  with  shiny strips of metal and  set
between two supports topped by copper spheres, a belt drive and a handle.
     The room  was shrouded in semi-darkness. Candles cast a yellow light on
a grey head. A goose quill scratched across rough paper. Although the winter
evenings were long they were not long  enough for Fedor Matveyev. He had not
yet succeeded in unravelling the old mystery.
     Fedor went over to the  machine  and turned  the  handle.  With  a  dry
crackle a thin streak of violet-coloured light flashed between the spheres.
     He  sank  into  an armchair,  folding his  lean  hands,  hands that had
swollen veins but were still strong. His thoughts turned to the past. It had
been a long and hard journey from India to Russia. After sailing a seemingly
endless time along  the  coast  of Africa the  Portuguese frigate had landed
them in  Lisbon. From there they had travelled by sea and  by  land, through
many  countries,  without a  penny to their name, until they finally reached
St. Petersburg. But they had not been able to  leave their  ship on arrival,
for the Neva River had risen and flooded the city. It was said that the tsar
himself  travelled up  and  down  the flooded  streets in a boat, helping to
rescue the drowning.
     How frightened Bharati  had been of  the cold and  foggy northern  city
covered with seething water!
     Soon after, there came the staggering news of the tsar's death.
     Fedor dutifully reported his escape from  captivity, but no one had any
attention  to spare  an unknown  lieutenant. Those were  the  days  when the
succession to the throne was being decided. Finally someone advised Fedor to
go to  the new town of Ekaterinburg and see Wilhelm de  Hennin, the managing
director of a chain of factories in Siberia and  the  Urals, who was said to
be interested in anyone with a knowledge of mining and building.
     On the way to Ekaterinburg Fedor and Bharati stopped  oft  at Zakharino
to see Fedor's parents. His father and  mother were not particularly pleased
to have a daughter-in-law brought from overseas. They did not like  her long
face or her narrow hips,  or the fact that  she was as 'dark as a  Gypsy and
carried herself with dignity.  But since their son was going away soon  they
said nothing. They insisted that  Bharati be christened in the  local church
and  that  her name be changed  to Anna. They gave Fedor some money  for his
journey not much, true, but still it was something.
     At  Ekaterinburg  Fedor  was made to feel welcome and appointed to  the
post  of  chief  mechanic.  His  job  was  to  supervise  mining  machinery,
water-wheels, and dams, and the construction of new factories; also,  he was
put in charge of the fire brigade. He  was given living  quarters, and a new
life began for him. He performed his numerous duties faithfully.
     Russian food and long Russian winters fattened Bharati, made the colour
of her skin lighter and put roses in  her cheeks. She  reared their children
and did her household chores conscientiously,  making liqueurs and preserves
and  laying  in supplies of  honey for the  winter. She  learned to speak  a
fairly good  Russian. When she  and  Fedor visited  his parents a few  years
later the old people received her more graciously.
     As the years passed the operation of the mines engrossed Fedor more and
more. His fair hair became streaked  with silver. His children  were growing
up. Fourteen-year-old Alexander, the eldest son, was preparing to leave  for
St. Petersburg to enter a military school there.
     But he had not yet unravelled the mystery. True, he had discovered what
the mysterious force  that  made the lightning was. Reading all the books he
could  find on this  subject, he  had learned that about  one  hundred years
before,  in 1650, a  certain Otto  von Gericke,  burgomaster  of the town of
Magdeburg  in Germany,  had placed  a smooth  ball of  sulphur on a whirling
axis, and by rubbing it between  the palms of  his hands had  made  the ball
glow and crackle.
     In 1709, the Englishman Francis Hawksbee had substituted a glass sphere
for  the sulphur  ball and  also produced  sparks  with a  crackle.  Mikhail
Lomonosov had mentioned this machine in a poem about the many uses of glass.
     A revolving  glass sphere  crackles and makes flashes of light, Similar
unto those of thunder in the night.
     Fedor also  discovered that the ancient Greeks had  obtained  sparks by
rubbing  a  piece  of  amber  with  a  flannel cloth, and  the  name  of the
mysterious force came from the word electron, the Greek for "amber".
     It was clear  that  the  force in Lal Chandra's lightning  machine  was
electricity, but what a far 'cry  from Hawksbee's harmless  sparks!  Fedor's
disc machine produced far stronger sparks than Hawksbee's ball but it  could
not be  compared with Lal Chandra's machine. How had  the  Brahman  made the
electricity so terribly strong that it  killed people and caused corpses  to
quiver?
     It was evidently  all a matter of being able to  accumulate electricity
in  vessels containing a liquid. With a mental picture of  everything he had
seen in India always before him, Fedor conducted experiment after experiment
with metal vessels into which  he poured various liquids  and then connected
to his machine, but nothing came of it.
     During a trip to St. Petersburg Fedor went to  the Academy of  Sciences
to  talk  with Mikhail  Lomonosov,  the brilliant  young  scientist  who had
recently been appointed professor of chemistry  there. Fedor had  heard much
praise of Lomonosov.
     "There is  as yet  no science of electricity, sir," Lomonosov told him.
"But I hope there will be. I advise you to see Richman. He is  in  charge of
our electricity experiments. He is a foreigner, but he does not put on airs.
Both Richman and I believe that the electricity obtained through friction is
the same  force  as  lightning. We are on the  eve of  extremely interesting
discoveries' 174
     Through Lomonosov's  good offices Fedor wag able to visit the "chambers
for electric experiments", one of the first  electricity laboratories in the
world.
     Richman listened  to Fedor's story with interest  and  made many notes.
Like  Lomonosov,  he  was  engaged in  a  systematic  study of  electricity,
particularly atmospheric  electricity. Lomonosov was searching for the "true
cause of electricity  and  how  to measure it",  realizing that a theory  of
electricity could not be built up without precise data.
     In  1753 Richman was killed  by lightning  while  he was measuring  the
electric force of lightning discharges.
     Lomonosov was showered with reproaches and threats.
     "They wanted  to  shield  man  against  God's  wrath-lightning-but  God
punished them for their audacity!" cried his opponents.
     Although it took a long time for news to reach the Urals, Fedor closely
followed events in St. Petersburg.
     "I'd laugh if I didn't feel like crying instead," Fedor remarked to his
wife. "Remember how  the  Brahmans in India  made lightning  to deceive  the
people? Russia's equivalent of the Brahmans are angry because others wish to
find out what lightning is. If our Brahmans got  their  hands on electricity
they'd very soon reveal their true nature. No, I feel it's a blessing that I
did not tell anyone about my experiences in India or about my experiments."
     "Please give up  your experiments,  Fedor dear," said Bharati, alarm in
her dark, almond-shaped eyes. "Ever since Herr Richman was killed I have had
no peace of mind."
     "No, I won't give up," Fedor said. "If  my  life is not  long enough my
children  will continue the  experiments. They, or  their descendants,  will
live to see a better day."


     The candles began to sputter and Fedor trimmed the wicks. The log walls
crackled in the severe frost. In  the next room Bharati softly sang the same
mournful song she had sung  so long ago  beside the temple of the formidable
goddess Kali.
     Fedor closed  his eyes. People and events of those distant days came to
life again in his mind's eye.
     The old man chained to the wall in the tower-he had probably carried to
the grave his great secret of how to make the human body incorporeal.
     The oil that flowed in a long stream through the water of the pool. The
Incorporeal Brahman. Perhaps he had dreamed it all.
     The  candles shed  a  flickering yellow glow  on the silvery head.  The
goose quill scratched on the rough paper.


     "I conclude this epistle on  the twelfth day  of January in the year of
Our Lord 1762. I think that if the need should arise it would be best of all
if  you  were to seek assistance in  the Academy of Sciences, from Professor
Mikhail Lomonosov, inasmuch as he is well versed in science.


     "My last  wish, my son, is  that the  forces of electricity should  not
come  under the  power of those insatiable mongrels who are concerned solely
with their  own  personal  benefit  instead  of  with  the  welfare of their
country."




        3

        A HALF-TWIST SPIRAL

     Forgive me, Newton!
     The concepts you created still
     guide our physical thinking,
     but we now know that for
     a deeper understanding of world relations
     we must replace your concepts with others.
     Albert Einstein




        CHAPTER ONE

     IN WHICH  CONTRADICTORY  OPINIONS  OF  FEDOR MATVEYEV'S MANUSCRIPT  ARE
EXPRESSED; REX, NOT HAVING AN OPINION OF HIS OWN, HOWLS IN ACCOMPANIMENT  AS
YURA AND NIKOLAI SING

     "I've  deciphered  the  manuscript,  and  translated  in   into  modern
Russian," said  Val. "I found  it  very  interesting  because the eighteenth
century is  just my field. Shall I  begin?" She looked at Boris Privalov. He
nodded.
     They were gathered  on the porch of  a country cottage with a flat roof
and whitewashed walls. The intense heat of late afternoon penetrated through
the patterned leaves of the fig tree that grew beside the porch.
     Every  summer Privalov  and  his  wife  Olga rented  the  same  seaside
cottage,  not far from town. She spent all her time there, while he came out
for the weekends.
     On this  occasion  he  had brought four guests along without giving his
wife warning. They were Pavel Koltukhov, Yura, Nikolai and a girl named Val,
whom   Olga  had   never   met   before;  also,   there  was  an   enormous,
ferocious-looking dog.
     They had travelled down in a crowded suburban train and arrived hot and
dusty. After a refreshing shower  they settled themselves on the porch. Olga
brought out platters of grapes and figs. "Don't trouble yourself now, Olga,"
said Privalov. "We'll all pitch in later on to prepare supper.
     Just sit down and relax. You'll hear a fascinating story."
     "Hear ye, brethren, hear  ye," chanted Yura,  swinging a foot as he sat
on the railing of the porch.
     Privalov put up a hand to silence him. "All right, Val," he said.
     Val  opened  a  red  folder,  carefully  lifted  out  Fedor  Matveyev's
manuscript,  and  laid  it  to  one  side. Then  she  picked  up a  sheaf of
typewritten pages and began to read.


     Val  read  the last word and  turned the page over. For  a few  moments
Privalov and his guests sat  silent, engrossed in those extraordinary events
of two centuries ago, about  which they had  just heard from the lips, as it
were, of Lieutenant Fedor Matveyev of the Russian Navy.
     "Thank you, Val," Privalov said softly.  He rose and  went  over to the
wall to switch on the ceiling light.
     "A  remarkably  interesting  story!"  exclaimed  Olga. "I  can  clearly
picture him. Do you think it's all really true?"
     Pavel  Koltukhov  snorted.  "It's  all  nonsense,"  he  said.  He lit a
cigarette and let out a thick cloud of smoke.
     Privalov asked Val to read, in the original eighteenth-century Russian,
the  section  in  which  Fedor  Matveyev  described how he had  first  flung
himself, knife in hand, on  the Incorporeal Brahman. She  found that page of
the manuscript and read, slowly: "I stabbed  him in the heart, but the whole
knife, and  also my hand  along with it, went through his flesh as though it
were thin air. A second  later he  vanished  from the room, passing straight
through  the closed door. The  door  was made  of wood,  at least two inches
thick, and was bound in iron."
     Koltukhov gave another snort. "Nothing but  a  fairy-tale." He took the
manuscript from Val and  neatly copied a  dozen lines or so from it into his
notebook.
     Privalov  woke  up just  as the sun was  rising. He tiptoed  across the
squeaky floor of the porch and down the steps into  the garden. The sand was
cold under  his bare  feet.  The trees  cast long shadows  across  him as he
walked. In a corner of the garden  he saw Nikolai,  illuminated by the faint
rays of the sun, sitting  on the  low  stone  barrier  of the well.  The red
folder containing Fedor Matveyev's manuscript lay open on his knee.
     "Well, what do  you think  of it all?" Privalov asked as he came up and
sat down beside Nikolai. He yawned  loudly. "You didn't  say a word all last
evening."
     "I'm  wondering about Matveyev's knife."  Nikolai glanced at  Privalov.
"Why couldn't  it be true?  Why couldn't they  have accidentally stumbled on
the specifications of a machine that made matter penetrable?"
     "There you go again, Nikolai. Just forget all about penetrability. They
didn't know enough two hundred years ago to-"
     "But,  Boris,  by accident,  I mean. Fedor Matveyev clearly describes a
machine of just this kind in the tower room in which the old man was chained
to the wall. He  only saw it for a few  minutes and his description  is very
vague. Here's the place  in the manuscript. Listen," Nikolai read  slowly: "
'A wire  spiral,  something like  an  Archimedes' spiral, cut  out of a thin
half-twist of  silver.'  What do you think  that half-twist contraption into
which the old man thrust Matveyev's knife  could have been, Boris? I believe
it must have been some sort of a high-frequency output inductor."
     Boris Privalov smiled. "It's all very vague,  Nikolai, much too vague,"
he said, laying a hand on the young man's shoulder. "I'm far more interested
in the  stream  of oil that flowed through the pool.  Remember? In this case
the  description   of  the  apparatus  is  fairly  clear.  There   were  big
electrostatic generators switched on  parallel with electrolytic  capacitors
of  an enormous capacity or,  as Fedor Matveyev  put it,  'copper vessels to
collect  the mysterious  force'. If they really  did  make oil  flow through
water in  a  compact stream- well, that means they'd solved the problem of a
power  ray and  the building up of surface tension. But those reflectors  in
the pool, I mean, their shape-"
     "Yes,  shape," Nikolai said, following his own  train of  thought. "The
shape of the inductor, devil take it!"
     "But look, Nikolai. The Hindus just hit on it blindly.  But we won't be
groping in the dark the  way they did. This  isn't the  eighteenth  century,
thank goodness. We need a theoretical foundation. I  told you what Professor
Bagbanly said, didn't I? Let's have no more of this primitive tinkering with
spirals. An installation has to be set up, and we'll need your help."
     Nikolai nodded. "But what about the manuscript?"
     "We'll send it to the Academy of Sciences."
     Nikolai closed  the  folder with an angry  gesture and  climbed to  his
fe3t. "So  we just  forget  about  the  whole thing, is that it?"  he  asked
bitterly, turning and walking towards the porch, tall, lean and tanned.
     Privalov  followed him  with his  eyes,  then lifted his shoulders in a
shrug.
     (The  beach was crowded, for it was Sunday. The  suburban trains spewed
city  dwellers out  of their  stuffy  carriages  by  the  hundreds  and  the
thousands. All the places under the awnings and umbrellas were occupied; the
white sand was thickly covered with tanned bodies.
     Boris  Privalov and his friends settled themselves at the water's edge,
where the sand was a bit cooler. Lazy waves lapped at their feet.
     Val  put  on her bathing cap and  waded slowly into the water. Yura and
Nikolai plunged into the  waves and were soon racing each other to the buoy.
Rex,  who did not like to bathe, barked  at them for a while, urging them to
come back, then lay down and stuck out his tongue as far as it would go.
     Olga Privalov set up her beach umbrella  and lay down in its shade with
a book.
     Pavel Koltukhov folded a page  from a  newspaper  into  a hat which  he
perched on his head as he stretched out on the sand beside Privalov.
     "I'd like to borrow one of your engineers for a couple of days, Boris,"
he said. "What for? To dabble in resins?"
     "Let me  have Jura.  He seems a clever lad." "Certainly.  But see to it
that he has time to do his own work too." "Naturally."
     "What  was  it  you copied out of the manuscript last night?"  Privalov
asked  a few minutes  later.  "Seek  and ye  shall find," Koltukhov answered
vaguely. Then he started telling Privalov how necessary it was  to  draw up,
without delay, a cost estimate of the research involved  in the transcaspian
oil pipeline project. The murmur of his voice put Privalov to sleep.
     Nikolai and Yura came running out of the water, their bodies dripping.
     "If Nikolai  keeps it up  we'll  have  to put him in a  straightjacket,
Boris," Yura said as he flung himself onto the sand. "He insists that  Fedor
Matveyev  was  telling the truth when  he talked about an incorporeal  man."
"Oh, shut up!" muttered Nikolai. But Yura continued: "Anyway, I'm sure I had
the last word. I  asked him this:  if  that old wizard really  possessed the
property of  penetrability  then why didn't  he sink  through  the  ground?"
Privalov lay on his back on the sand, his eyes closed blissfully against the
sun.
     "Do me a favour, boys" he said in a drowsy voice. "Stop pestering me."
     The bountiful sun was spreading hot  gold  over the beach. Two or three
clouds  hung in a sky pale from the heat. A suburban train blew its  whistle
close by,  and soon another eager  crowd of  city dwellers streamed from the
station to the beach.  They moved  in a file along the water's edge, a  gay,
perspiring throng. Koltukhov  grumbled as  some of  them stepped  across his
lean shanks.
     One  of  the  passers-by halted as he  caught sight of  Koltukhov.  Rex
raised his head and growled.
     "Is that you, Pavel?" the newcomer asked.
     Koltukhov looked up. Above him stood Nikolai Opratin.
     "Why,  hullo  there,"  said  Koltukhov  lazily,  lifting  his  hand  in
greeting. "Lured by the sea and the sun too, eh?"
     Opratin courteously raised his straw hat to each member of the group in
turn, then went off to change into his  swimming trunks. When he returned he
stretched out on the sand beside Koltukhov.
     "What's new, Pavel?"
     "Nothing much. We heard an Indian fairytale  yesterday." Koltukhov then
proceeded to  give a  humorous  version  of  Fedor  Matveyev's adventures in
India.
     "The damned fool!" Privalov thought. "Still, why make  a secret of it?"
He removed his eyeglasses and went into the water.
     Opratin listened to Koltukhov with a smile.  But  the moment  Koltukhov
jokingly mentioned Fedor Matveyev's knife the  smile  vanished and Opratin's
face grew strained and attentive.
     "Let me interrupt you for a  moment, Pavel, but  that knife-You say the
manuscript describes how it was given the property of penetrability?"
     "Oh, that's all nonsense," said Koltukhov. "It's just a fairy-tale. The
only thing I can put stock in  is the  electrostatic generator. That sort of
thing was well within the scope of the eighteenth century. By the way-" Here
Koltukhov  felt he  was making a  very neat  transition to the one topic  he
wanted  to  talk to Opratin about. "By the  way, I hear  you have a powerful
electrostatic generator at your  Institute. Mind if I drop in from  time  to
time and use it? I'll try not to impose on you."
     "By all means," said Opratin. "What will you be using it for?"
     He never got  an answer, for Koltukhov  launched into  reminiscences of
his adventurous youth.
     Val came running up. She pulled off her bathing cap, shook out her dark
hair, and sat down beside Olga.
     "Is she the one, did you say, who translated  the manuscript?"  Opratin
asked Koltukhov in a low voice.
     "That's right. Would you like to meet her?"
     "That was a most interesting  find you made," Opratin said to Val after
Koltukhov had  introduced him to her. "It  isn't every day  that an original
manuscript from Peter the Great's time turns up."
     Opratin then entered  into  a  lively conversation with Val.  Yura gave
them  a sidelong glance, called to Rex, and headed for a large rock  nearby.
Nikolai joined him  there. Dangling  their feet in the water they  began  to
sing, in mock earnestness, a plaintive old Russian ballad.
     "What are you waiting for, Rex?" Yura said sternly.
     The  dog threw back his head, gave a convulsive yawn, and then began to
howl softly in accompaniment.
     Val glanced towards the two young men and shrugged.
     The dreary song went on and on for a long time.


        CHAPTER TWO

        IN WHICH NIKOLAI AND YURA DISCOVER THE SKETCHES OF THREE BOXES

     As the hardware in Cooper Lane became more  and more sophisticated Yura
said, with a click of his tongue, gazing proudly around the room:
     "Wonderful! Even Faraday never had a home laboratory like ours."
     Despite the obvious advantages  of the laboratory  over Faraday's  they
were not making  any  progress worth mentioning.  The two  young men created
electrical fields of various  kinds around the "mercury  heart", which  beat
conscientiously  but showed  no  signs whatsoever of increasing its  surface
tension.
     A breakthrough of some kind was definitely needed.
     One  day  Nikolai  invited   a  young  engineer  from  the  Institute's
automation department named Hussein Amirov to drop in and take a look at the
"mercury  heart".  Hussein spent a whole  evening testing  the oscillator on
different frequencies.  "Nice  little toy  you've  got  here,"  he  said  to
Nikolai.  "But  there's  something wrong with the operating conditions. I'll
think about it."
     The  next morning  he phoned Nikolai. "Look here, old man, your mistake
is that you're not letting the high frequency through in pulses. You'll have
to  put  in  a   tuning-fork  breaker."  Soon  after,  Nikolai  installed  a
tuning-fork. An electromagnet kept its prongs in constant vibration, and the
contacts on the  prongs closed and disconnected the circuit. Movable weights
attached to the prongs regulated the frequency of the oscillations.
     Pulses  had been a good idea. But  Nikolai and Yura could not manage to
hit on a combination  of high  frequency  and  breaker  frequency that would
cause the mercury heart, contracted by increased  tension, to  stop beating.
On the other hand, perhaps no such frequency existed at all.
     One  evening  the  two  were  busy as  usual  with their  installation,
experimenting with a  new series of frequencies. And as usual,  the  results
were disappointing.
     "We can sit here from now to doomsday and still neither of us will ever
be another Faraday," Yura said to Nikolai, pushing back his chair noisily.
     "You're right," Nikolai  agreed with a sigh. He  shook  his fist at the
"mercury heart".  Then  he  took out Fedor  Matveyev's  manuscript  from his
briefcase. He  had  borrowed it from Privalov for the evening.  It was to be
sent  to Moscow  the next  day  with  an accompanying  letter  by  Professor
Bagbanly.
     "Is  the  half-twist  spiral in  that manuscript still  preying on your
mind?" Yura said. "What do you think it might lead you to?"
     "You  know what  as well  as  I  do. If  we could increase the  surface
tension of liquids it means-"
     Yura waved his hand impatiently. "I didn't have that in mind. According
to Fedor Matveyev the knife acquired penetrability after the old man who was
chained to the wall thrust it into that spiral. Do you really think-"
     "I don't think anything. All I want is to find a new form of inductor."
Nikolai carefully turned the pages of the manuscript.
     "Let's have a  look at  the  last page,  where  he writes about Mikhail
Lomonosov," said Yura.
     They read in silence for some time.
     "That  damned half-twist spiral!" Nikolai  exclaimed, rummaging in  his
pockets for his cigarettes. "What  are you doing that  for?" he asked  Yura,
who was holding a sheet of the manuscript up to the light.
     "Look! Some sort of drawings."
     Pencil lines were visible on the  back of the  last page. The lead  had
rubbed  off almost  completely, only the faint traces  of lines pressed into
the thick paper by the point of a hard pencil could be seen.
     "Why, that's our box! But there's more than one."
     A firm hand had  drawn three boxes,  one below the other, and indicated
their  sizes.  Two  of  them looked like the box in which  Fedor  Matveyev's
manuscript had been preserved, while  the third  was square and  flat. There
was an inscription under  each drawing. All three boxes bore the letters A M
D G, evidently meant to  be engraved. Below the  letters was  a drawing of a
crown, and below that, in smaller script, the letters J d M.
     "Our  box  should have the same  letters on it, don't you  think?" Yura
picked up  the  box and  examined it.  "Yes, here they are. We didn't notice
them before because the lines were filled with rust."
     Nikolai frowned. Where had he seen those letters before? He  went  over
to the bookcase and ran his eyes over  the titles on the backs of the books.
Finally he pulled out Vicomte de Bragelonne and started leafing through it.
     "My memory didn't let me down," he remarked with satisfaction. "Listen:
'Bewildered, Baizerneaux de Dmoutlezun leaned  over his shoulder and read, A
M D G...'."
     Taking the book from  Nikolai, Yura read aloud the footnote,  a grin on
his face: " 'Ad  majorem Dei gloriam. To the greater glory of God. The motto
of the Jesuits.' But what's  J d  M? It isn't in the book.  What  a  lot  of
puzzles Lieutenant Fedor Matveyev has given us to solve!"
     "We need a system," said Nikolai. He took a sheet of paper  and quickly
wrote:

     Boxes Inscriptions Size of boxes in drawing
     Length Width Height
     1 La preuve 9 1 3/4 1 3/4
     2 La source 9 1/2 2 2
     3 La clef de mystere 4 4 1/2


     Yura  rubbed his  hands vigorously.  "That's  a  good  idea. Now  we'll
translate the inscriptions. Call up Val. She knows French."
     "Well,"  Nikolai said  after talking with  Val, "la  preuve means  'the
evidence',  la source means 'the source' and la  clef de mystere means  'the
key to the mystery'."
     "The key to the mystery, you say?" Yura took a caliper and measured the
height,  length  and width of the  iron  box.  "It's 257.5 by  54.2  by 54.2
millimetres. Get out  your slide-rule and calculate the ratio. Divide  257.5
by 54.2."
     "It's 9 1/2 by 2 by 2," said Nikolai. He glanced at his chart. "Our box
with the manuscript is the one called 'the source'."
     è'Well, that's clear," said Yura. "Now, what's the  unit of measurement
used in the drawings? If we divide 54.2 by two we  get 27.1 millimetres. The
English inch is equal to 25.4 millimetres. So-"
     "So it isn't  in inches.  We'll  come back  to  that  later. Now  let's
systematize what we know."
     They draw up another table:
     "Someone put the manuscript in the box that finally came into our hands
and ordered  two more boxes, one  for 'the evidence' and the other for  'the
key to the mystery'.  It probably wasn't Fedor Matveyev.  It's hardly likely
he would  go  in for Jesuit mottos. Who  was  it, then? What's hidden in the
other boxes? And where are they?"

     Inscriptions Size of Boxes Remarks
     In the scale on In millimetres
     the drawings
     Length Width Height Length Width Height Missing
     Evidence 9 1 3/4 1 3/4 243.9 4 7.4 47.4
     Source 9 1/2 2 2 257.5 54.2 54.2 Our box
     Key to the
     Mystery 4 4 1/2 108.4 108.4 13.55 Missing

     Yura and Nikolai spent a number of evenings in a fascinating search for
the key  to the enigmatic inscriptions.  A M D  G told them that Jesuits had
been directly involved in the affair. What the letters  J d M meant, though,
was a complete mystery.
     In  the public  library they found a  book  on heraldry from which they
discovered that  the crown  on the boxes  was a count's crown. They realized
that J d M were the initials of some count, the "d" standing for "de".
     Next  they settled down to read  everything they could find  about  the
Jesuits.
     Yura and Nikolai had a big notebook  in which they entered all kinds of
information on  things  like  radio  circuits,  photography hints,  sailboat
designs, poetry, designs of scuba gear and underwater guns, data  on surface
tension and so on.
     Now they put into it copies of the drawings of the three boxes with the
following commentary:
     (a) The old French inch is equal to 27.1 millimetres.
     (b) This  inch  was abolished  in France on  the 19th Frimaire  in  the
eighth year of the  Republic, that is, on December 10, 1799, when the metric
system was adopted.
     (c)  The  inscriptions  were  made in a  pencil  with a lead  of ground
graphite  mixed with clay and  baked, much  like modern  pencils. Pencils of
this type appeared after 1790.
     Deductions
     1. The type of pencil shows that the inscriptions were made after 1790.
The  measurements  were  made  before  1799,  when  the  metric  system  was
introduced,  or possibly after, since  it  took a long time for  the  metric
system to come into general use.
     2. The  letters  A  M  D  G  indicate that  the  person  who put  Fedor
Matveyev's manuscript in the box belonged to the Society of  Jesus. He was a
count and his initials were J d M.
     3. The box was found on the territory of the Russian Empire, from which
the Jesuits were expelled by Tsar Alexander I in 1820. Between 1803 and 1817
the  Ambassador  of the  King of Sardinia  to  Russia  was Count  Joseph  de
Maistre, an important Jesuit, and the J d M could have been his initials. He
was  a mystic and an  obscurantist who  was  unlikely to have recognized the
metric system introduced by the godless Convention  but was quite likely  to
have used a new-fangled pencil with a lead of ground graphite.
     4.  Fedor Matveyev could  not  have lived  until  the year 1803. Only a
grandson or a great-grandson could have been alive and grown-up between 1803
and 1817.
     General Conclusions

     The  information  in Fedor  Matveyev's manuscript about electricity and
the uses to which it was put by an  Indian religious sect came to the notice
of Count  de Maistre,  the Jesuit, between  1803  and 1817,  and aroused his
interest, probably because he thought it might benefit the Society of Jesus.
For some reason, the  Count hid  the  manuscript  in  a little iron box  and
engraved the initials of  the Jesuit motto and his  own initials on the box.
He  named  the  box   'The   Source',  evidently  meaning  'the  source   of
information'.
     In addition, the Count ordered (or intended  to order)  two more boxes.
We know their  dimensions. One box, almost the same  size as  the  box which
Boris Privalov  found, was to contain 'The  Evidence'-but we do not know  of
what-and the other, a flat box, was to be  for 'The Key to the Mystery'. The
third box  may have  contained  the results of experiments  to  unravel  the
secrets of the Indian Brahmans that Fedor Matveyev described."

     "Not bad at all," said Boris Privalov  when Nikolai and Yura showed him
the notebook. "It's all quite logical. But where do you go from here?"
     "We'll start a search for the other two boxes," Nikolai replied.
     "Should we make inquiries of the Society of Jesus?"
     "That would be  going  too  far. We'll confine ourselves  to the bazaar
meanwhile."
     "The bazaar?" Boris glanced questioningly at Nikolai. "But  of  course!
That's  the only  link you  have,  isn't it? You'd better not delay. I heard
it's going to be closed down for good very soon."


     The bazaar's "hardware department" was practically deserted and Nikolai
and Yura quickly found the man they had dealt with before. It took them some
time  to convince him they were  not guardians of the law.  Only then did he
confess that the iron  bar which Privalov had bought  was part of a batch of
junk obtained illegally from a state-operated scap metal depot.
     A delicate and tactful interview  with  the man  in charge of the depot
led to an introduction to  the crew  of  waste disposal truck No. 92-39. The
crew immediately took Nikolai and Yura for detectives. The two young men did
not bother to disillusion them.
     The driver and  his assistants studied the iron box, talked it over for
a long time and finally recalled the address of the house where a family had
thrown out a great deal of junk just before moving into a new flat.
     Yura  and Nikolai found  the house.  A  loquacious  concierge told  the
amateur detectives that  one of the  tenants had indeed  moved out  early in
summer.  His name was Benedictov. He had discarded a lot of  old things when
he moved.  The  neighbours had always complained  of his experiments at home
for they had inevitably short-circuited the electricity. She could give them
his new address.


     When  the door opened, Yura later said, Nikolai tensed all his  muscles
for flight. Rita was no less amazed to see the two young men.
     Yura  was the  first  to recover. "Please excuse  us,"  he  said in  an
unnaturally loud voice. "May we see the master of the house?"
     "He's not in. What do you want to see him about?"
     Nikolai opened his mouth to say  something but all that  came out was a
hoarse sound. Yura hastened to his rescue.
     "We'll explain what it's all  about, but talking here in the doorway is
somewhat inconvenient."
     Rita led her uninvited guests into the flat.
     "My name is Yura Kostyukov," Yura said, "and this is my friend  Nikolai
Potapkin."
     "I'm Rita Benedictov."
     Yura was beginning to feel quite at  home. "You go in for diving, don't
you?" he said in a casual, friendly tone.
     Rita frowned. "What did you want to see my husband about?"
     "We'd like to  know  if you had a small iron bar in your old  flat. Not
really a bar, though, but a metal box with Latin letters engraved on it."
     "Latin letters?" Rita repeated slowly.
     "Yes.  The letters aren't very large and they're filled  in with  rust.
The  box isn't much bigger than this." Yura marked  off a  rectangle  on the
green  tablecloth with his finger.  "The thing is  that the box contained an
eighteenth-century manuscript. We found the box quite by chance in a pile of
junk at the bazaar.  The man who sold it to us said it came from a  house in
Krasnoarmeiskaya Street.  There we were told you had thrown out a lot of old
junk when you moved. You did live in Krasnoarmeiskaya Street, didn't you?"
     Rita did not reply. As she  stood there beside the table  the lamplight
gave her hair a golden sheen.
     "We've  discovered that there should be two more boxes," Yura  went on.
"We don't know what's in them, but we may assume whatever is there will have
either scientific or historical value." All of a sudden his patience came to
an end. "In brief," he said, "if you're the one who threw out that box maybe
you can tell us where the other two boxes are."
     "Two more boxes, you say?" Rita asked thoughtfully.
     "That's right, two more."
     She looked Yura straight  in  the eye and said  firmly:  "You're  quite
mistaken. We did  live in Krasnoarmeiskaya Street  before we moved into this
flat but we did not discard any small metal boxes."
     "What a  pity," said Yura  after a moment. "Please excuse us for having
taken up so much of your time."
     They  hurried downstairs. When they were  outside, in the street,  Yura
gripped Nikolai by the arm.
     "We're on  the right track!" he  exclaimed. "She knew  the box we  were
talking  about  but she hadn't known there was a manuscript inside  it.  She
thought  it was  just  a solid  bar of rusty  iron and she threw it out. Now
she's sorry."
     Nikolai  said  nothing.  He  was wondering  why Rita's  face seemed  so
familiar.
     Yura shook  him  by  the  shoulder.  "Wake  up, you miserable creature.
There's a mystery here,  and  as  sure as my name is  Yura I'll  get to  the
bottom of it. Together with you, right?"
     It is hard to say  which caused  a greater  stir  at the  Institute-the
transcaspian  pipeline project or  Fedor  Matveyev's  manuscript.  Following
Privalov's  detailed report to the staff about the manuscript, debates raged
in  the departments  and laboratories over the  Incorporeal  Brahman and the
stream of oil flowing through  water. Many linked up the stream of oil  with
the Caspian  pipeline problem. The  more fervid imaginations  gave birth  to
fantastic  plans. The wildest and most hare-brained  schemes were put before
Privalov.  Some   he  discussed,  while  others  he  angrily   dismissed  as
ridiculous.
     "What have  I done to deserve this?"  he grumbled. "The pipeline across
the Caspian  will  be  built  of the  most ordinary pipes-I repeat, ordinary
pipes."
     That was the honest truth. But it was also true that Professor Bagbanly
had  visited the Institute several  times in  the evening  and  had had long
talks with Privalov. It was true, too, that a  surprising machine  was being
built in  one of  the rooms in Privalov's  laboratory.  Engineers  Yura  and
Nikolai, and also Valery  Gorbachevsky, the lab  technician, could have told
something  about  it,  but  they  had  strict  orders  not  to  divulge  any
information.
     Pavel Koltukhov was displeased  by all  the  feverish  and  far-fetched
schemes  being  hatched at the  Institute. The  most stubborn  debaters were
invited to his  office, where he first heard them out  and then cooled their
ardour with a stream of caustic remarks.
     Meanwhile,  Koltukhov continued to work on his resins. Sometimes, after
synthesizing  a  new  compound,  he  would step  across the  street  to  the
Institute of Marine Physics and  drop  into  Opratin's  laboratory. He would
melt the  resin in a mould and place  it between the plates  of  a capacitor
linked up with a powerful  electrostatic machine. While the  resin was being
charged  Koltukhov  chatted  calmly  with  Opratin about this  and  that and
related  episodes from  his  life. "Does  your resin hold its  static charge
long?'" Opratin asked him one day.
     "That depends on how I charge it. Your chief told me you are setting up
an installation with a Van de Graaft generator on an  island  somewhere. Now
if we were to charge the resin from that generator-"
     "I'm  afraid you'll have Lo wait some  time for that," Opratin  smiled.
"We've just begun installing it."
     Pavel  Koltukhov  had his heart set  on a  strongly charged resin  that
could be used to  insulate underwater  pipelines.  He believed that  a  thin
insulation layer having a static charge could prevent corrosion more cheaply
and reliably than the many layers now used to cover the pipes.
     "I knew about the properties of electrically charged resins before, but
it never occurred to me before," Koltukhov said. "Fedor Matveyev was the man
who gave me the idea." "Fedor Matveyev?"
     "Remember the eighteenth century manuscript  I  told  you  about on the
beach?"
     Opratin's expression grew guarded and his eyes flickered. "Why, yes, of
course. But what's the connection?"
     "Matveyev wrote that the Hindus  carried some kind of resin up into the
mountains," Koltukhov said slowly. "They left  it for a time on high  peaks,
where  it  received what they called 'heavenly  strength'. This gave  me the
idea that the Hindus might have been using the energy of cosmic rays without
actually being aware  of  it. There would be plenty  of  cosmic radiation at
high altitudes. They must have had some excellent resins, which  they turned
into highly charged electrets."
     "Highly  charged  electrets,"  Opratin  repeated  softly,  tapping  his
fingers on the table. "Yes, that certainly has possibilities."
     In  the  twenties  of  the  present  century  two Japanese  researchers
discovered that some resins become charged and turn into permanent and quite
new sources  of  electricity after having been melted and  left to cool in a
strong  electrostatic  field,  between  the  plates  of  a capacitor. Like a
magnet,  they  pass  on  their  properties  without losing  them. These were
electrets. If an electret is  cut in two,  new  poles will  arise at the new
ends.
     Yura found himself spending more  and  more  of his time in Koltukhov's
resin  laboratory.  He liked  making new  compounds according to Koltukhov's
formulas and measuring the electricity in the charged resins.
     One day Koltukhov sent Yura  over to Opratin's laboratory to charge the
latest batch of resin.
     Opratin  greeted Yura pleasantly, showed him the electrostatic machine,
and helped him to switch it on.
     Yura  looked about with curiosity. There were several  people  in white
overalls  at  work in the laboratory. One of  them, a thickset  man  with  a
shaggy  head of hair, sat  with his  back  to Yura, at  a table  on which an
aquarium with  a wire coil round it  and a valve  oscillator stood. "Are you
doing high frequency experiments?" he asked casually.
     "Oh, that's just a minor project," Opratin replied  with a  keen glance
at Yura. "Are you interested in high frequencies?" "No, not particularly."
     A tall, husky man  in  blue overalls entered the laboratory. To  Yura's
surprise, this was Uncle Vova Bugrov.
     "Comrade  Benedictov,  here's  the food for your fish," Bugrov  said to
Anatole Benedictov in a deep, hoarse voice.
     The shaggy-haired man sitting beside the valve oscillator turned round,
nodded, and took the two paper  bags Bugrov was holding out to him. Yura was
unable to shift his gaze from the man's broad face and puffy eyelids.
     "Why, hullo," said Bugrov shaking Yura's hand. "What brings  you to our
Institute?"
     "Do  you work here?"  Yura  asked in surprise, his  eyes still fixed on
Benedictov.
     "I'm a laboratory technician. I've switched to science now.  They think
very highly of me here. You know, I'm training a group of scientific workers
in wrestling."
     "What does Benedictov do here?" Yura asked in a low voice.
     "Benedictov?  He's a  scientist. He knows all there  is  to know  about
fish. Shall I tell you what else  I'm doing?" Bugrov asked boastfully.  "I'm
an inventor, if you want to know. I'm making an  electric  dynamometer. What
d'you think of that?"
     After charging  the resin Yura rushed back to his own Institute and ran
up the stairs two at a time.
     "There's  news, Nikolai," he shouted.  Panting,  he told  Nikolai about
seeing Benedictov, about the valve oscillator and about Vova Bugrov.
     Nikolai ran the  palm  of his  hand  across  his  high  forehead. "High
frequency-  and fish? I  wonder- But  Opratin is  studying the  level of the
Caspian, isn't he?"
     "Benedictov's the man to ask about the iron boxes."
     "You think he'd tell you?"
     During  the  lunch  break Nikolai  remained in the deserted laboratory.
Sitting at his desk,  he cut a thin strip from the sheet of drawing paper on
his board. He pinned one end to the desk, twisted  the other in a half-curl,
and glued the ends together.
     He sat for a long time  staring, in deep thought, at the twisted  piece
of paper.  Then, with  a pencil, he  drew a line along the edge of the paper
until  it came full  circle. The line ran round  both sides of the  strip of
paper, without Nikolai  either lifting his pencil from the paper or crossing
the  pencil  line at  any point.  This  strip of paper  was the  model  of a
mathematical paradox known as the Mobius band. From  the mathematical  point
of view the band had no thickness and its surface was not divided into outer
and inner surfaces.  It was only a surface, and nothing more. A window  that
mathematics had opened up into the sphere of the Unknown.
     Nikolai made a second strip twisted in the same direction  and tried to
put it inside the first one, but  this proved to be impossible. By trying to
put one strip into another he  would have to  bring the inner surface of one
towards the outer  surface of the other. But if neither had an outer surface
or an inner surface how could he do this?
     Nikolai  flung the strips on the table  and  propped up his head on his
hand. "What if I made a similar spiral out of copper and linked it up to the
output circuit of an oscillator?"
     He went  out  to the lounge,  pulled Yura  away from  a  game  of table
tennis, and said: "Do you remember a thing called the Mobius band?"


        CHAPTER THREE

        IN WHICH THE SAME BRIGHT IDEA,
     NECESSITATING FEDOR MATVEYEV'S KNIFE,
     OCCURS TO BENEDICTOV AND OPRATIN

     "At last!" Opratin exclaimed, running his eyes across the letter, which
was typed on an official letterhead.
     Ever since summer, Opratin's imagination had been fired by the  letters
A M  D G on  Benedictov's box  that  had  contained  the missing knife. When
Benedictov  showed  him the box  Opratin  had immediately recalled  the  old
underground  passage in Derbent, the crucifix on the  chest of the skeleton,
and, lying beside it, the small flat box on a golden chain, with the letters
A M D G engraved on it.
     From what Pavel Koltukhov had  said  Opratin  now knew that  there were
three boxes, and that the third box, the one in Derbent, contained some sort
of "key to the mystery".
     Opratin had written  a number of cautious letters, first to Derbent and
then to Moscow,  after  learning that  the  agent's equipment had been  sent
there.  Now the  long-awaited reply was in his hands. The  agent had been  a
submarine officer  in the Italian Tenth Torpedo-Boat Flotilla, notorious for
its sudden raids on British naval bases with mines guided by frogmen.
     Part of the Tenth Flotilla had been transferred  to the Crimea in 1942.
When the Nazis broke through to the North Caucasus  part of the Flotilla had
concentrated submarines and frogmen-guided torpedoes  at Mariupol on the Sea
of Azov for transfer to the Caspian Sea.
     Vittorio  da Castiglione,  an officer of the Tenth Flotilla, parachuted
down onto the Caspian coast near Derbent on a dark autumn night. His mission
had  probably been to reconnoitre the underwater  approaches to  the port of
Derbent and note installations that could be attacked with guided torpedoes.
But he had wandered into an old  quarry and had perished there. Nobody would
ever have learned about Vittorio da Castiglione if Opratin  had not stumbled
over him.
     "To recapitulate," Opratin said  to  himself,  "one box contained Fedor
Matveyev's manuscript and another the knife. But what was  in the third box?
Probably  something  very important  that  would throw light  on the  entire
mystery."
     Well, he'd soon know what it was all about.
     Nikolai Opratin rubbed his hands in satisfaction.
     The  Institute  of Marine Physics was  making preparations to raise the
level of the Caspian Sea. This undertaking was based on the extremely simple
proposition  that a heavy  rain  can produce one and a half  millimetres  of
precipitation  in one  minute. If rain poured down constantly on  an area of
thirty square kilometres of the Caspian day in and day out, the level of the
sea would rise three metres in the course of a year. Water for the downpours
would have  to be "borrowed" from the Black Sea, where there  were  plans to
build  a  powerful nuclear water boiler.  A new  Soviet method of  obtaining
nuclear energy made such an installation possible.
     As a  gigantic fountain of steam gushed  forth from  the depths of  the
Black Sea  a  system of  directional antennae would  force the endless  grey
cloud to snake its way over the Caucasus Mountains. On reaching the downpour
area in  the  Caspian  Sea the  cloud would  enter  the  zone  of a powerful
electrostatic field.  Here the concentrated  steam would  lose its  heat, be
converted into water, and pour down on the sea.
     Laboratory  No. 8 was  setting up  cloud condensation  experiments, and
this  kept  Opratin,  as  head  of  the laboratory,  very  busy  indeed. The
installation had given  him  a good  many  sleepless nights. Erection of the
installation on  a remote,  uninhabited  island  in the Caspian  was nearing
completion.  Opratin was personally  supervising  the operations. He  had in
mind certain other plans that were linked up with this installation.
     The two new members of the staff  introduced  a somewhat  disharmonious
note  into  the  carefully  planned  arrangements in  Opratin's  laboratory.
Shaggy-haired,  absent-minded  Anatole  Benedictov  spilled  reagents   from
bottles  on the tables, broke a  great many vessels and  often caused  short
circuits. He argued  with Opratin in a loud voice.  Yet Opratin  was patient
with him, and this was what aroused the greatest astonishment.
     With Benedictov's arrival  the "fish  problem" suddenly loomed large in
the Institute programme. At any rate, it occupied all the best places in the
corridors, for that was  where Anatole Benedictov had set  up his aquariums.
He plagued  the  assistant manager in charge of  supplies with  demands  for
various types of food for his fish.
     Feeding  the fish  was one of  the duties of the new lab technician,  a
husky, rosy-cheeked man with  slits for eyes and  a  tuft of reddish hair on
top  of his  head. This was Vova Bugrov. Bugrov very soon felt quite at home
in the  world  of  scientific research. As one watched  him  puttering about
beside the spectrograph, softly humming  a popular tune, one  felt  that the
delicate cassettes were doomed.
     "I wonder why Opratin ever  took this chap on as  a technician,"  staff
members  asked one another.  "He  looks  more like  a gangster than anything
else."
     To everyone's surprise, though, the new technician turned out to have a
light touch;  his  huge  paws handled  the  precise  instruments  gently and
deftly. Bugrov could do a marvellous soldering job. He put great effort into
developing  the spectrograms, and he  kept a detailed journal (with spelling
mistakes in it, true) of the functioning of the various lab instruments  and
machines. This was more than even Opratin had expected from Bugrov.
     The motorboat skimmed across the bay towards the open sea.  Prow lifted
high, it left behind a pair  of long, spreading, foamy moustaches.  It was a
calm, sunny morning in October, with a slight chill in the air.
     Bugrov, his cap pulled down over his forehead, sat  beside the outboard
motor. Suddenly he pricked up his ears.  Above the  steady roar of the motor
he caught snatches of an interesting conversation.
     "No, I don't think they know about the knife," said Nikolai Opratin.
     "Then why did they come asking to see me?" Anatole Benedictov retorted.
"They  asked  questions, Rita says,  about three small iron  boxes. But  why
three?  One  contained  the  knife; in  the other,  you say,  they  found  a
manuscript. But where does a third box come from?"
     "That's my business."
     Opratin wrapped his raincoat more closely round him.  Benedictov  tried
to light a cigarette but every  time he struck a match the wind blew it out.
He swore as he kept tossing matches into the water.
     On reaching the island  they guided the boat into  a cove with a gently
sloping  shore.  Bugrov cut the  motor and nimbly jumped out  onto  the damp
sand. He tied the painter to a length of pipe he had driven into the sand on
an earlier visit to the island.
     Here, on this desolate little island, Laboratory No. 8 of the Institute
of Marine Physics had set up an experiment facility.
     Two months ago  a blunt-nose self-propelled barge  had pulled its  flat
belly up onto the sandy shore, and a tractor, followed by a crane on crawler
treads, had rolled out of its dark interior with much clanging.
     An  old concrete  pillbox built on the island  during the war  had been
converted into a pilot plan for cloud condensation.
     Benedictov and Opratin climbed to the top of the low but steep rise and
disappeared  inside the former pillbox. Bugrov  remained  on  the  shore. He
walked up and down the sand for a while to  stretch his legs,  then sat down
on a rock to think.
     There  was plenty  to  think  about. For  two  months now  he had  been
punching the clock, something he had never done before in his life- and what
was  he getting out of it?  Where was the  knife for which he  had agreed to
take on the job of lab technician?
     It was  becoming embarrassing. Friends were laughing  at him. A steady,
full-time job, of  all  things!  In  science, too!  It  was time  he gave up
working like a horse, they said.
     Bugrov couldn't have agreed with them more. He would give it up-just as
soon as he finished his dynamometer. It would be a beauty! All you'd have to
do was step on the footboard  and  flex your muscles,  and the machine would
show you how strong you were. There would be no lights or bells, like in the
ordinary dynamometers. This one was strictly scientific.
     All of  a sudden Bugrov grew angry with  himself. What was  he thinking
about?  The  knife  was  what he needed!  Then  he  would  be  able  to tour
provincial towns with an astonishing knife act.
     He scrambled up the rise  and approached the pillbox. After opening the
inclining steel door he entered an underground passageway lined with shelves
holding  storage cells.  The passageway led into a round room  with a  domed
ceiling.  An internal combustion engine  stood there. From  this room Bugrov
passed through a narrow doorway into what had once been the casemate.
     The  room  was crowded  with  laboratory  equipment.  Red-hot filaments
glowed in an electric fireplace. Nikolai  Opratin and Anatole Benedictov sat
at a table under a bright light.
     Bugrov  marched  to the middle  of  the room  and stood there, hands in
pockets, his padded jacket flung open. His face wore an insolent expression.
"You promised me the knife," he said. "When will it be ready?"
     Opratin  drummed his fingers on the  table. "Look here," he said in  an
even voice, "if you  get on my nerves  you'll never lay eyes on the knife at
all. Can't you see we haven't set up all the equipment yet? Be patient."
     "I'm patient,  all  right," Bugrov  replied defiantly. "Too patient, in
fact. I'm just warning you. You'd better speed things up."
     "That will  do. Instead of complaining you could put  your  energies to
better use by tinkering with the power generator. You're the one who will be
servicing it."
     Bugrov pushed his cap to the back of his head and left the room.
     The mutiny on the island had been put down.
     "I can't see why you have anything to do with that gorilla," Benedictov
remarked.
     Opratin  shook  his head. "Rank ingratitude, I call it. That gorilla is
the person who gets you those ampoules you're so fond of."
     Benedictov said nothing.
     "He's right. We'll have to speed things up," Opratin went on. "We won't
be  here alone forever.  We'll have  to start work  on cloud condensation as
well, and that means researchers will be coming here to work. I shan't allow
them to see the equipment in the room below, of course, but still- Anyway, I
have  an  idea." He told Benedictov of his talk  with Pavel Koltukhov, about
the  episode  mentioned  in  Fedor  Matveyev's  manuscript  and   about  the
electrets.
     "Don't you  see?  The Hindus  may very  well have used  electrets as  a
source of energy. Electrets have a peculiar property to which I have given a
great deal of thought."
     "Namely?"
     "A shift  in polarity. Sometimes an electret begins  to lose its charge
within a few hours. The  charge drops to zero and  then increases again, but
now the positive  and negative poles have  changed  places. An electret with
altered poles will exist for an indefinite time. Sometimes this happens  and
sometimes  it doesn't. W7hat changes  take  place  in the substance  of  the
electret? What is this zero threshold across which its charge passes? That's
the question."
     "A magnet magnetizes other substances without losing its properties. An
electret  charges  other   substances  without  losing  its  charge,"   said
Benedictov.  He  was  speaking  with  his eyes closed,  concentrating on his
words. "Splendid!  That confirms  my  idea.  What  we must do is  set up  an
installation in  which the knife will transmit  the charge.  The knife  will
charge  other  bodies  with its  properties, will  remake their structure to
resemble  its  own.  To  put  it  more  exactly,  the  knife  will  transmit
penetrability."
     Opratin stared at Benedictov in silence for a few seconds.
     "Transmit penetrability," he repeated in a low voice. "Use the knife as
a transducer. That's a brainwave!"
     Benedictov coughed to clear his throat and then amplified his idea.
     "It's a brainwave!" Opratin  repeated, striding  up  and down the room.
"Do you mean to say we can do it with living material too?"
     "Exactly. My experiments with fish make me confident of success."
     Opratin  stopped  pacing the floor. "To sum up, we'll make an  electret
with switched polarity that  will create a permanent  field. We'll intensify
the  field with a  powerful  charge of static electricity, using our Van  de
Graaff generator. We'll set up the installation in such a way as to make the
fields intersect. We'll place Fedor Matveyev's knife, the transmitter of the
'charge,' at one intersection and an ultrashort wave radiator at  the other.
It will  be a kind of  cage in which we'll  put some  of your fish, or maybe
dogs.  Or anything else,  for that  matter.  We'll keep  changing  the field
intensity and  keep on  experimenting until we hit on just the right angle!"
Opratin's eyes sparkled. He was so excited that he could hardly stand still.
"Yes, we'll force that knife to transmit its properties to another object!'"
     Arguing and interrupting each  other,  the two  scientists proceeded to
sketch designs of the future  installation.  Suddenly Benedictov flung aside
his pencil and rose, his joints creaking.
     "The  knife," he said. "We must have the knife. We  won't  get anywhere
without it. I don't think you're searching for it the way you should."
     "I've combed the sea floor at that place three times." Opratin stopped,
then added in a lower voice, "Is there any reason why your wife  should want
to hinder our work?"
     "Hinder our work? No, although lately she's  been urging me to drop  my
experiments. But that's all. Why do you ask?"
     ^Because  the knife doesn't seem to be at the bottom of the sea. I have
a feeling your wife is concealing it."
     Benedictov's face grew long. "Impossible. Why should she do that?"
     "Why  should  she  try  to  persuade  you  to  give  up  this  line  of
experiments?"
     Benedictov  did  not reply.  The  electric  fireplace threw red shadows
across his gloomy face.
     "Never mind, you leave the knife to me," Opratin said. "I'll get it."


        CHAPTER FOUR

     IN WHICH VALERY GORBACHEVSKY'S LITTLE FINGER PLAYS THE LEADING PART

     Nikolai and Yura  were now completely engrossed in the enigmatic Mobius
band. Their  catch-all notebook was filled to overflowing with  formulas and
sketches of intertwined bands.
     "Your idea of using one side  is marvellous, Nikolai!" Yura  exclaimed.
"I'm sure the Mobius band will give us the field we need. Imagine! No pipes!
A stream of oil flowing straight through the sea!"
     Yura's enthusiasm was infectious. "I've estimated," Nikolai said, "that
doing away with  pipes to transport oil across  the Caspian would save about
25,000 tons of steel."
     "But that's not the main thing," Yura said impatiently. "We'll learn to
control surfaces. It'll be an epoch-making discovery!"
     "Now don't let our imagination run  away with  you,"  Nikolai remarked.
"We aren't in that class at all. With our limited resources we  can only set
ourselves  a limited goal like increasing  the surface  tension of a drop of
mercury. If we succeed we'll try to do the same with oil."
     Yura grew downcast. "Is that all?"
     "No, not quite. Don't spread this all  over the Institute and don't say
anything, meanwhile, to our chief. Is that clear?"
     "Yes,  strictly confidential," Yura said with  a sigh. "The Inquisition
put the same kind of pressure on Galileo."
     The  evenings in Cooper Lane were now a busier time than ever. Yura and
Nikolai  had  enlisted  the  services  of  three  young  engineers from  the
automation  department, who  helped  them  to assemble  intricate electronic
circuits. They often blew the fuses and then had  to go out with a candle to
repair  the damage. Luckily,  Nikolai's  mother  was a patient, kind-hearted
woman.
     One day lab  technician Valery Go