"That's not what I want you to do," Terri yelled.
"Name it," said Remo.
"Get us out of here," Terri said.
"We could get out but you can't," said Remo. "Look at the windows and doors. Do you see those beautiful square lattices that look like borders?"
Terri nodded.
"Bombs," said Remo. "We could get out fast enough but not you."
"You've got to protect me."
"And we are."
"Then do something," she said.
"We are," Remo said.
"You're doing nothing. You're just standing there."
"We're waiting," Remo said.
"For what?"
"For what is going to come, my dear," said Chiun and suddenly there were voices in the temple. It was one voice but because of the echoes it sounded like many. It said:
"I can kill you any time. Watch."
Suddenly Terri's ears ached from two concussions.
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"That is an example," the voice said. "You are in a bomb I have constructed. Resistance is useless."
"See. I told you we were in a bomb," Remo said. "Whole place is a bomb."
"Oh, no," sobbed Terri.
"Send the woman out to me or you will all die," said the voice.
"What should I do?" whined Terri.
"You could die honorably with us," said Remo, "or you could run for your life."
"I don't want to leave you," said Terri. "But I don't want to die either."
"Then go."
"I'll stay," she said.
"No, go. Don't worry about us."
"Will you be all right?" she asked.
"Sure. Go," said Remo.
"I hate to leave you, Chiun," she said.
"Ahhh, to see beauty as one's last sight is but a pleasant way to pay the debt of death that is owed from one's birth."
"You're so beautiful," said Terri. "And you, Remo, if only you weren't so hostile."
"So long, kid," Remo said. "See you around."
Terri stumbled from the temple, holding her head, shielding her weeping eyes from the bright sun. She walked past the pools, following the sound of a voice that told her to keep moving.
The voice kept repeating that when Terri came just over the little hillock facing the temple, the two inside the temple would be released unharmed.
Terri stumbled from the temple gardens and sobbed her way beyond a little hill, where a fat Oriental with a square face, wearing a blue suit,..
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sat in front of a little computer built into an attache case.
"Dr. Pomfret?" he said.
"Yes."
"I have receivers in the temple that capture and magnify my voice. They are smaller than a pencil dot."
Hamamota picked up a tiny microphone, no larger than a thumbnail, and into it he spoke.
"Now you die, Melican dogs."
The temple of the goddess Gint went up in a mountain of pink plaster and spraying jewels. The earth shook. Terri felt her ears grow numb. The pink plaster of the temple was still coming down over the outskirts of Bombay when Terri finally got herself to look over the little hillock. Where Remo and Chiun had been was now only a large, smoldering hole. They were dead.
Then she thought she heard them arguing from the Beyond. The voices came through the buzzing in her ears.
"He called me an American," said Chiun.
"No. He called you a Melican," said Remo.
"That's how they pronounce American," Chiun said.
"So?"