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again but to drink the dark brackish waters in small ponds and to live forever as a mud slug.
So to that very day, devout Hindus were careful of stepping on mud lest they profane the only remaining son of Gint.
"How spiritual. How beautiful," said Terri, reading the legend under the statue and smelling the incense candles.
"The statue's got a face like a mushroom and seven tits," Remo said. "She's the ugliest thing I've ever seen."
"How beastly you are. In the presence of such spirituality, showing how gross you are."
Their footsteps sounded like coins dropping on the taut skin of a drumhead. The ceilings were painted with snakes devouring babies and slugs drinking from the breast of swamps. This was done in rubies, emeralds and sapphires.
Remo noticed little bundles taped to the ceiling where the support pillars were. Every pillar had them.
They felt wrong. He looked toward Chiun and the old Korean nodded.
"Let's find the writing and get the hell out of here," Remo said.
"It should be right near this temple," said Terri. "But I don't want to profane their religion."
"The only way you can profane it is by having an honest thought," Remo said. He looked up at the bundles and he saw Chiun nod to him. They did not belong in the temple of the goddess Gint.
Tonaka Hamamota, number one adviser to the great House of Wissex, had watched the trio enter the temple.
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He had sat quite comfortably at a distance, letting his computer watch the people. It did not tell him much about their facial features, but instead how they moved and emitted heat. The heat emissions came out on a screen, showing the coolness of the temple stones and the heat of the three bodies entering.
Lord Wissex had assured him the three would enter and so they had, and that was all Tonaka Mamamota needed, since he could trail a target by the scent of the wax in their ears.
Tonaka had been told that there might be danger and that he should report every step as he did it. He thought the idea of danger was ridiculous but one did as one's employer wished.
Tonaka Hamamota wore a blue imitation cotton Sears suit with imitation silk striped tie and an imitation polyester white shirt.
He watched as his computer screen ticked off the facts:
Movement of trio. Males glide with the very motion of body. Woman clomps as is normal. Males seem always to have weight centered.
Pulse. Woman normal. Males subnormal, closer to python than ape.
Position: Males always keep female between them in protective cordon.
Language: Famale doing most of talking; apparently hostile.
First attack: Males' movement instantaneous with explosion. Female, delayed normal reaction time. Scream.
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Terri started yelling as the tile around their feet exploded in little luminescent fragments pitting the walls with impact.
She tried to run but felt a strong reassuring hand on her arm.
It was Remo.
"There's nowhere to run," he said.
"Let me go."
"You can't run. Those are bombs going off. The whole temple's a bomb. Look." And he pointed and she followed his finger and then saw the packages strapped to the pillars where .they joined the graceful dome of the roof.
She felt Remo pull her toward the ground. His finger touched an inlaid tile.
"This is a bomb too," he said. "There are nothing but bombs here. We're in the middle of a bomb."
"Oh, no," moaned Terri. She began to shake.
"It's all right, kid," Remo said. "They're not going to kill you."
"How do you know?"
"You'd have been dead by now," Remo said.
"The bombs were obvious from the beginning," Chiun said.
"Then why did we walk in here?"
"I didn't know who they were for," Chiun said. "It was obvious they were not part of the temple. Look at the strapping. Look at the packages. See how clean the lines are."
"Good taste," said Remo.
"Probably Japanese," Chiun said.
"Definitely not Indian," Remo said.
"It's in good taste," Chiun agreed.
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"Definitely not Indian," Remo said.
"They're going to kill us and you're talking about design," Terri screamed.
"If we're going to die, it's not going to hurt us to talk about design."
"Do something," shouted Terri and Remo obligingly did a little tap dance and sang two bars from "Once Upon a Blue River, Darling."