"It does, unless I renew it."
The barge had drifted away from Earth like the temple, and then the
shield had disintegrated in such a way as to leave the barge subject to
the gravitational field of the comet which had then captured it.
"Can you alter the shield at will so that one side is affected by
gravity and the other not?"
Gowru Chandit, dyeman extraordinary, saw what the question was aimed
at. He scratched his head. "Can I, by varying the strength of the
field, take us to Mars? I think I can."
An astronomer's dream! While his colleagues were merely looking at it,
Rains would be on Mars! It would take cunning work by the Hindu, but
if Gowru said he could do it, Rains couldn't disbelieve. There was one
drawback though, and that reflected on his face.
"There's no water and little air on Mars," said Rains. "We'll reach it,
but we'll die soon after."
"Hmmm," said Gowru. Coming from anyone else it would not have been a
profound comment. He got unsteadily to his feet and paced around the
room, gathering bottles as he went. He squinted out the window. "The
very fabric of space," he muttered. He seemed to be looking at the
comet.
He beckoned to Rains. "Come here." He had enough liquor inside and he
really didn't need what he held in his hands, except perhaps he liked
the feel of bottles. "Look," he said, and pointed. Rains looked.
There was the comet, streaming away from the sun, headed in the
direction of Mars, though it would miss by several million miles. He'd
seen it before.
But, somewhere in space it struck something. There was nothing there,
but it broke into tiny fragments and slanted toward Mars. There was no
doubt that Mars was going to capture most of the mass, and would soon
have an abundance of water and oxygen.
But there was nothing for the comet to strike! Except--Except what?
"The very fabric of space," Gowru had muttered, and that proved merely
that he was a poor semanticist. The _structure_ of space. That's what
he worked with, not molecules, though he didn't know it. Gowru had
projected a space warp inclined chutelike toward Mars, and when the
comet came along it had collided with a plane surface anchored to the
entire universe.
Water, air, and a new planet to explore, with Gowru Chandit as his
companion. But there was still one last defect. He groaned aloud.
"Is there something else to complain about?" asked Gowru.
Rains gestured savagely to indicate the whole temple. "I'm a man of
science," he said bitterly. "I resent being marooned with religious
fanatics."
"Don't worry. They're women."
That made it worse. Monks, or the Indian equivalent, he could ignore.
But could he do the same with grim and dour females intent on saving
his soul?
Just the same, they were going to be on Mars with him and in
self-defence he'd have to learn their religion, the better to refute
it. "What are the fine points of their theology?" he asked.
"Very old," muttered Gowru. "Priestesses are selected for temperamental
qualifications. Rites are ancient Hindu, maybe older than that."
"Rites?" he queried. "Sacrifices?"
"It's no sacrifice," yawned the other. "They're a local fertility cult."
Rains' mind swung back to the priestess he had encountered on first
entering the temple, the only one he'd seen. The hall had been dimly
lighted, but she'd been young and very seductive. If the others were
like her--Any scientist worth his salt believed in fertility, one way
or another.