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 sp