Dying Space

"Hey, what you two talking about?" Ivan thundered from his chair, the iridescent blue mermaid on his chest undulating. He set down a pitcher of martinis he had finished mixing.

"I was just telling him what a sweet, intelligent, considerate person you are, Ivan," she said, smiling. "Say, you couldn't spare some of that, could you?" She pointed to the pitcher filled with swirling clear liquid.

"When you finished," Ivan said. "First, you change robot into Russian weapon, then you get vodka."

"Commie hoople," she muttered.

Mr. Gordons lurched. "I have to kill that Remo," he said.

"First things first," the professor whispered softly. "We've got other things to do. A country to save. Trust me."

"I must kill Remo," Mr. Gordons said.

Behind them, Ivan dozed lightly.

"Listen," Dr. Payton-Holmes said. "Nothing is more important than destroying that Volga. You're hooked up now to make sure it can't hurt America."

"I do not care about America being hurt. I care about me being hurt. I must kill that Remo before he hurts me again."

"Are you going to listen to your mother?" she hissed.

"Yes, Mom. I think."

"You can have Remo. But first, the Volga. Now play dead."

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Mr. Gordons snapped into a rigid position, and the professor called out, "Okay, Ivan. I'm done."

Ivan snapped awake with a snort. "This thing now Russian weapon?"

"Yes. All they have to do is reach inside his belly and turn him on."

"All right," Ivan said. "I send you back to cell now and I take robot away. Later, Ivan come to see you. With bottle of vodka. And Ivan."

"Where is that idiot Ivan?" the high commander snapped from her position at the head of the long mahogany table. She shot a look over her shoulder at the door.

To her immediate left, Grigori Seminov placed his monocle in his eye, making him look like half a fish. He was staring at Istoropovich, who sat on the other side of the high commander, the gold balls around his neck clicking softly. While he had had nothing really to do with it, Istoropovich would take credit for having captured the LC-111. There might be enough credit involved to have him think he could make a move for Semi-nov's job as number two man in Moscow Center. Seminov would be on the alert.

The high commander was talking. "Is all ready for the Volga?" she asked.

"All is ready, Commander," Seminov said.

"Fine. When that simpleton arrives, we will make sure that the robot cannot interfere with Volga. Our socialist science will again lead the way in space," she said.

By poisoning the moon? Seminov thought. But he said nothing, remembering the fate of his aunt

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who had had the poor judgment to speak her mind.

Suddenly, the door behind the high commander opened, and Ivan walked in with great dignity, carrying an inert humanoid lump in his arms.

"It is about time, fool," said the high commander, and the tone in her voice told Seminov that Ivan would not be long for Moscow Center. There was a rumor that Ivan's ability to tend to the high commander's personal needs was no longer so great. In some circles, they now referred to him as Ivan the Terrible and said he suffered a prostate problem. He was as worthless, some said, as the mermaid tattoo on his powerful chest.

Ivan set the body face down on a sofa on the far side of the room. "This is Mr. Gordons," he said. "Professor fix him up, make him Russian robot, say all you got to do is turn him on."

"It's nice to know that one of you two can be turned on," the high commander said.

"I leave now," Ivan said.

"Please do," the high commander said.

When Ivan left, she led Seminov and Istoropo-vich to the sofa.

The two men turned over the body.

Ivan's unseeing face stared up at them.

The high commander took a step backward. Seminov moved to put his arm around her, but Isto-ropovich moved forward, grabbed the shirt of the man on the couch, and ripped it open.

There on his chest was the swimming mermaid.

The man on the couch was Ivan.

"And he is dead," Istoropovich said.

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"Then who was that who just left?" the high commander said.

"That was Mr. Gordons," Istoropovich said. "The LC-111."

Outside, in the long corridors that crisscrossed the building, Mr. Gordons stopped to think.

Creativity was wonderful. All kinds of ideas raced through his metal and plastic synapses.

Dr. Payton-Holmes—Mom—had told him that first he would take care of the Volga and then he could eliminate Remo. Wasn't that just like Mom, putting her country first? But Mr. Gordons's creative brain came up with a very creative alternative.

Yes. He would take care of the Volga mission.

After he killed Remo.

And back inside her office, the high commander barked an order.

"Destroy them all. Now. Including the robot. Nothing must stop the Volga."

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The cell was dark and damp, almost airless. Remo lay on the floor trying to breathe. Even that was difficult. His breath came in gulps, his body trembling spasmodically.

So this is the way it ends, he thought. Betrayed by his body, lying in some pesthole like a sideshow freak, all the years of training without meaning, without effect.

And for what? He heard the words in his head, and then he heard them in his ears. He realized that he had spoken out loud, and his voice was echoing off the cell's steel walls and ceiling. For what? For America, which didn't know he existed? For Smith, who didn't care he existed? For Chiun, who always would have been happier with an Oriental student?

For what? the voice asked.

And another voice answered.

For life. We struggle for life. Because life is pre-

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cious. And knowing that it is precious gives meaning to the work that we do, to the taking of life. Because we bring death only in the service of the

living. Live, Remo. It was Chain's voice. "Chiun," he whispered into the blackness. "Is

that you? Are you there?"

But there was no answer. He heard only the sound of his labored breathing.

But they had been Chain's words. Just as there had been other words at other times. He had lain in the dust once, his body broken, death only moments away, and he had heard Chiun's voice through the mist, saying, "Live, Remo, live. That is all I teach you, to live. You cannot die, you cannot grow weak, you cannot grow old, unless your mind lets you do it. Your mind is greater than all your strength, more powerful than all your muscles. Listen to your mind, Remo. It is saying

to you, 'Live.' "

"Yes," Remo whispered in the dungeon. "Yes." His voice grew stronger. "Yes." Stronger still.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." Until it was a shout. "Yes! I willlive!"

Chiun sat in the corner of his cell, his legs curled before him in a full lotus position, when the panel built into the steel and concrete wall swung away, and a guard deposited Dr. Payton-

Holmes in the cell.

Chiun looked up and said in Russian, "She is in the wrong place. This cell awaits the return of my

son.

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"Is this cell. With you. Orders," the guard said, quickly backing away as the concrete panel closed again on Chiun and the professor.

"Want a drink?" she asked him.

"The air in here is poison enough for my body without my adding to it fermented wastes of flowers."

"Never too late to start," she said. "We'll all be dead in an hour anyway." She took a hefty drink from her vodka bottle.

"That does not concern me," Chiun said. "Have you seen my son?"

"The cute one? With the dark eyes?"

"The meat-eater who twitches," Chiun said.

"No. But he'll be dead too," the professor said.

"Why?"

"Because they're going to launch the Volga. And they don't know it, but I've reprogrammed Mr. Gordons to turn the Volga around and drop it on this building. The germs will kill Russia in an hour." She waved the bottle again. "Last call," she said brightly.

" I care only for my son. He is hurt," Chiun said.

"I told Mr. Gordons that he might have hurt him implanting that transmitter," she said.

"Transmitter?" Chiun said. He was on his feet like a silent puff of smoke, standing over the woman.

"Yeah. Tiniest thing I ever saw. He implanted it in your boy's neck. So small, I couldn't even see it."

"So that is it," Chiun said. "I must find my son."

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"Too late," said Dr. Frances Payton-Holmes.

"Too late."

Another voice crackled into the room. It came over an intercom built high into the ceiling.

"So, professor, you have tried to deceive us. But you have not. We know now what the robot will do. When he is found, we will destroy him." The professor gasped. "He did it," she cried. "Did what?" said Chiun.

"That was the high commander's voice. She said 'when he is found.' That means Mr. Gordons escaped. What a good boy. A good, creative boy."

"I worry only about my son. I must find him," Chiun said. He took a step toward the door panel in the wall, and as he did, the wall moved a few inches toward him. He spun around. All the walls were slowly beginning to close in. The cell was shrinking. "I must find my son," Chiun said.

"I must find Remo. And kill him."

Mr. Gordons spoke those words softly as he stopped at the head of the staircase leading down to the dungeons. He touched his new face, Ivan's face, with his fingertips. "Creative," he said. "I was very creative."

Yuri and Gorky, Istoropovich's two assistants, were running toward him. They stopped as they saw him going down the steps.

"You're going the wrong way, Ivan," Yuri said.

"I am?" Mr. Gordons answered in Russian.

"The alarm's in the other wing. The conference

room.

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"Hey. You no walk like Ivan," Gorky said, his rubber lips working. "Maybe you robot."

"Don't be stupid," Yuri said. "How could Ivan be a robot? Robots can get it up. Ivan can only think about it."

Mr. Gordons thought to himself, I must be creative about this. They should not tell where I am.

Yuri and Gorky were arguing. Gorky said, "Something fishy here," and Yuri unsheathed his pistol and aimed it at Mr. Gordons.

"Well bring him in," Yuri said. He waved the gun at Mr. Gordons. "Get moving."

"Very well," Mr. Gordons said. "I am moving." He moved his arm toward Gorky's thick, fat-layered neck and broke it with a snap.

Yuri fired his pistol. The bullet entered Mr. Gordons's body and exited smoothly out the back. He didn't miss a beat as he poked out the area of the man's chest just below his LaCoste alligator with two steel fingers.

"That is sufficiently creative," Mr. Gordons said as he headed down the stairs. "And now for Remo Williams."

Remo breathed.

Good blood coursed through his veins, searching out his body. "I will live," he said. He felt a wracking ache in the back of his neck, near his spinal column.

"Breathe. Live." He repeated it over and over, and his body heard the commands. It kept repeating its own signal of pain—in the back of his neck, near his spinal column.

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Remo willed his blood to course even more rapidly through his body, flowing steadily down into his right fingertips, heightening the strength and the sensitivity of his hand, his fingers.

He touched his hand to the back of his neck, where the pain signals were coming from. When he touched the spot, he screamed, then again breathed deeply. Ignoring the hurt, his fingers explored the spot. He squeezed it with his fingers and felt a tiny little metallic speck pop from his skin. Instantly, fresh air coursed through his body. It was as if he had just emerged from too long underwater and was gulping life-giving oxygen. He looked at the spot on his fingers. A tiny black dot, almost invisible inside the darkness of his cell. An insect stinger? Perhaps Chiun was right. Chiun.

Remo shoved the black speck into his pocket and walked to the front wall of the dungeon. Chiun must be saved.

As he reached the dungeon wall, it moved forward to meet him. The cell was closing in.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Alarms resounded through the stone corridor outside the long bank of cells.

Mr. Gordons stood silently, feeling the vibrations of heartbeats from inside.

Two of the cells were occupied.

There were two humans in the nearest one. One human in the one at the end of the corridor. Which cell would contain Remo? His delicate ear sensors picked up another sound. Something was moving inside the cells. It was a scraping sound, almost as if the walls themselves were moving.

Which cell should he go to? Which cell contained Remo who must die?

As he thought, seeking a solution, the question was answered for him.

There was a wrenching sound, the sound of stone being crushed under pressure, and then with a whoosh, the concrete panel on the front of

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the nearest cell exploded out into the corridor, in five tons of cracking fury.

Out stepped Chiun. And behind him Dr. Frances Payton-Holmes.

Mr. Gordons looked at them, then let a smile spread over Ivan's features, which he wore.

"Then Remo is in the other cell and Remo must

die."

Chiun leaped into the center of the corridor, facing Mr. Gordons, blocking with his body the android's path to Remo's cell.

"The path to my son must always pass through me," he intoned coldly.

The professor looked back and forth, from Chiun to Ivan, Chiun to Ivan, and then she realized.

"Sonny? Is it you?"

"Yes, Doctor," Mr. Gordons said. "I was creative. I used Ivan's features to confuse everyone. Now I must kill Remo."

"Doctor?" the professor said. "Why not Mom? You used to call me Mom."

"Now I am creative. I know you are not my mother. That does not mean I do not love you." He stared at Chiun and took a tentative step toward the tiny Oriental, who stood almost casually, arms at his sides.

"Remo can wait," the professor said. "Remo must die," Mr. Gordons said. He took another step toward Chiun. Dr. Payton-Holmes ran between them and put her hands on Mr. Gor-

dons's arms.

"Sonny," she said. "You have to listen. I have programmed you to turn the Volga around and to

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crash it into this building. If you do that, Remo will die."

All the programming that was in him, all the synapses and the neuron connections were repeating one message to Mr. Gordons: Remo must die. But another message insinuated itself, a confusing message that he had no experience in dealing with. It said, Listen to this woman whom you respect—and love.

He tried to fight it off. He spoke again to the small woman clutching his arms. "Remo must die. Now. When he is too weak to be a danger to me."

Suddenly, at the end of the corridor, there was another crashing sound. The huge concrete slab that covered the cell opening blasted out into the corridor.

Into the dank hall stepped Remo.

He looked at Mr. Gordons.

"Too late," he said. "I'm back together now, Tin Man."

Without looking around, without taking his eyes off Mr. Gordons, Chiun said, "It's about time."

"Stop carping," Remo said.

"Mr. Gordons injected a transmitter into you," Chiun said.

"See? It's all your fault," Remo said. "You told me it was an insect bite."

"No," Chiun said. "I told you that once I suffered an insect bite. What insect would want to eat at the trough of your body. Are you recovered?"

"Yes," Remo said. ;

Mr. Gordons tried to take another step forward,

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toward Remo, but the professor wrapped her arms

around him.

"Be creative," she said. "You can now. If you do what I want, you will stop the Volga and Remo too. If you go after Remo now, it may be too late to stop the Volga."

"The Volga never hurt me," Mr. Gordons said. "Creativity means being free. Free to think and free to do. The Volga represents people who crush creativity," Dr. Payton-Holmes said. "Why do you think I oppose them so? Do you think your creator would have been allowed to create you if she had lived in this country? Do you think I would be free to think? To work? All your creativity means nothing when you are not allowed to create. Trust me. The Volga."

Mr. Gordons's mouth began to move, then it stopped. It started again. Slowly, he spoke.

"I trust you because I know you love me." He looked down the corridor toward Remo. "Some other time," he said. "First the Volga." "Ready when you are, M. G.," Remo said. "I'm proud of you, Sonny," the professor told Mr. Gordons and squeezed his android arms.

The four of them moved toward the stone steps leading to the next level. At that moment, a small troop of Russian soldiers were heading down the stairs. They saw the four and raised their guns. Mr. Gordons wrapped his arms around Dr. Payton-Holmes protectively, while Remo went over the top of the two of them, vaulting up the fourteen steps in a flying double split. He landed with two fingers embedded in the occipital lobe of one

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guard and a foot protruding through another's chest.

The blood from the soldier who had just incorporated Remo's foot into his own anatomy spurted upward like a fountain. Another soldier, racing toward Remo, slipped on the red pool and skidded toward Chiun.

Wrapping one advancing soldier around another, the old Oriental stopped the oncoming sliding body with his toe. "Gross," he muttered. "How many times have I told you that a sloppy assassin is as worthless as a stupid one."

"Look out," Remo said, indicating a guard who was tiptoeing behind Chiun, his rifle raised and sighted.

"Fool," Chiun said, kicking his leg out behind him to disembowel the soldier. "Do you think I see nothing? Concentrate on your own work."

"Okay, I'll do that," Remo said bitterly. "See if I ever warn you about impending danger again. See if I care who creeps up on you. I'll just look after myself. Looking out for Number One, that's me from now on."

He stopped short when a pointed object whizzed past him a half-inch from his nose and embedded itself in the wall. "What was that?"

"So easily distracted," Chiun said, shaking his head as he finished off the last two guards with a single stroke of his elbow.

Remo picked the object from the wall and examined it. "A fountain pen," he said. "Somebody's throwing office supplies at us." He tossed it aside. Within one second it exploded, tearing a hole the size of a large man out of the wall.

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"When will you learn to leave things alone?"

Chiun groused.

A book of matches zipped around the corner of the corridor like a boomerang. As it approached, it burst into a ball of flame. Remo sidestepped it quickly. Chiun filled his lungs and blew the flaming object into the hole in the wall.

"I'd hate to see what would happen if they sent in the staplers and Scotch tape dispensers," Remo

said.

Another object came flying their way. It landed

at Remo's feet. It was an envelope.

"Ho ho," Remo chuckled. "If that isn't loaded, I don't know what is. What do you think it is, Chiun? Tear gas? A flat Russian grenade?"

"It is an envelope, gentlemen," came a voice from the far end of the hall. Grigori Seminov turned the corner and walked slowly toward them, his monocle glinting with the harsh artificial overhead light.

"There is nothing in the envelope. See for yourselves."

"No, thanks. We'll take your word for it."

Chiun shunted the envelope into a corner with his foot. It touched the wall and exploded into fragments. "So much for his word," the old man

said.

"Ah, you do not trust Russians," Seminov murmured.

"Not Russians who use auto crushers for holding cells," Remo said.

"Or who throw exploding pens," Chiun added.

"Juvenile."

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"Is this less juvenile?" Seminov asked, extracting a 7.65 Tokarev from his uniform.

"Hardly."

"I suppose you think I'm going to shoot you."

"It doesn't look like you're going to light anybody's cigars with it," Remo said. "Look, we'd like to stand here and chat with you about what you're going to do to us, but we have an appointment at your missile lab. You understand."

"Alas," Seminov said. "I'm afraid you'll have to miss your appointment, due to sudden poor health. What a pity." He took a step backward and began to squeeze the trigger. Watching him, Remo prepared to dodge the bullet. It was a simple matter, moving slightly to miss the projectile. Then two running steps forward, and Seminov would be as glassy and cold as the monocle in his eye.

The finger on the trigger squeezed slowly. Suddenly Chiun whispered, "Do you see the hole of the gun?"

Remo widened his pupils to focus on the barrel of the Tokarev. Around the bore were small, round notches surrounding it like a sunburst. Remo and Chiun hit the floor a fraction of a second before Seminov fired, sending a bullet and six small fragments flying into all the walls and the ceiling.

"More gizmos," Remo said disgustedly. No sooner had he said it than Seminov pressed a button on the handle of the gun and the barrel disengaged, falling downward on a hinge.

He fired again, sending an eight-foot-long stream of flame toward the young American and

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the old Oriental. The two of them climbed up opposite walls, allowing the suction of their palms and feet to keep them aloft long enough for the flame to pass.

Seminov squinted behind his monocle. He dropped the gun and took from his pocket a Zippo lighter.

"What's he going to do now, flick us to death?" Remo said.

"Filthy American pigs," spat Seminov.

"That does it," Chiun said. "First he calls me Japanese, and now he calls me an American." He squatted down low near the floor and leaped forward like a floating wizard. Seminov squeezed the Zippo, and a long string of transparent plastic wire shot out, encircling Chiun in a snare.

"Careful, Chiun," Remo said.

"Careful," Chiun mimicked. Without slowing his movements, he slashed through the wires with one fingernail and continued to propel himself toward Seminov.

The Russian's eyes widened. Frantically he searched his pockets. A moment before Chiun landed, Seminov extracted a ring with a black stone and placed it on his finger.

"Come no'closer," he shouted, his voice quavering. With a trembling arm he held out a fist, aiming the ring at the old man.

"Ass, do you expect to kill the Master of Sinanju with a simulated onyx?" With hands so swift, they were only a blur, Chiun took hold of Seminov's fist and twisted it up to his face. The stone in the ring popped open. As Seminov stared, horrified, at the contents of the ring inches from

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his monocled eye, the Russian screamed something in his native language.

Then a tiny dart slithered out of the ring and implanted itself in Seminov's monocle. The glass shattered; the eye disappeared. With a small moan Seminov accepted the dart into his brain, where it exploded with a muffled bang and blew the top of his head onto the ceiling.

"American indeed," Chiun said.

"Is he gone?" came a voice from the shadows. It was Mr. Gordon's, holding on to the professor.

"Yes, and a lot of help you were," Remo said. "We have to get to the missile lab. Do you know where it is?"

"Of course," the professor said. "That's early NASA training. Do you know how to steal a car?"

"Sure," Remo said. "That's early Newark training."

As they sped toward the missile base in a Russianized Ford Pinto, Remo asked Chiun what Seminov's last sentence in Russian was.

"He said, 'Hail, Master of Sinanju,'" the old man said with a smile. "It is good to know he was not all bad."

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

The four of them were surrounded by guards at the entrance to the missile lab.

"They've got us now," the professor said.

"I could kill them, I suppose," Mr. Gordons said, "but I feel that is not sufficiently creative. Now that I'm a creative being, I have to check all my options carefully."

"How about being a little less creative and a little more useful," Remo said, zapping two of the guards with the locked fingers of his left hand.

"That is the most intelligent thing you've said all day," Chiun said as he relocated the cranial cavities of three more guards into the poured concrete flooring.

"That did not sound particularly intelligent to me," Mr. Gordons said dejectedly. "But then, I am less creative than the rest of you. I am just beginning to think creatively. Creativity is still a

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relatively uncommon state for one of my physical components. Actually, I believe that creativity ..."

One of the guards smashed Mr. Gordons on the head with the butt of his rifle.

"On the other hand, creativity isn't everything," he said as he pulverized the man's face with one squeeze of his mighty hands.

"That was a creative maneuver," Chiun said encouragingly. "Perhaps you could be a little tidier next time. Observe." With a slow stroke of his arm, the frail Oriental sent a 260-pound soldier sprawling against the wall. "See? No blood. Much more imaginative."

"I see," Mr. Gordons said. "Excuse me," he said to a guard as he tapped him on the shoulder. "I wish to be creative with you."

The guard mumbled something guttural and blasted Mr. Gordons in the stomach with his revolver. "You are not cooperating with my creative impulses," the robot said. He grabbed the guard around the head and pressed the man's nose into his brain. "How was that?"

"Not bad, kid," Remo said, transforming the kidneys of the last remaining guard into brown

Jello.

Gordons beamed. "Really?"

"Really. Let's get in there." He jerked his head toward the door.

"That's wonderful, son," the professor said. "I'm

so proud of you."

"Thank you, professor," Mr. Gordons said, smiling. "But I am not your son. Now that I'm creative, I know that. It does not mean my feelings for you have lessened."

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"My friend, then," she said.

Mr. Gordons beamed. "Yes. I like that. I've never had a friend before. Can I call you Frances?"

"Can we please get this mutual admiration society into the missile lab?" Remo said, running down a stairway. It led to a windowless stone room.

"This can't be the place," he said.

"It's the place, all right," the professor reassured him. "This is the antechamber. It's used for screening incoming matter for purity. The en-' trance is a sliding stone panel. That one, probably." She pointed to a recessed wall.

Then a voice rang out, echoing throughout the room."You will never enter that lab," it said.

Chiun looked toward the source of the sound. "And why not?" he asked.

Istoropovich approached from-the shadows, the ever-present gold balls dangling from between his fingers. "I know I can't kill you and get out of here alive," he said.

Chiun considered this. "True," he admitted finally.

"And if I allow you to go into the lab, the high commander will see to the immediate destruction of my career, my family, and my life."

"That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said.

Chiun shook a finger at Istoropovich. "Things were more equitable for you peasants under Ivan the Wonderful. A fine leader. At least he would have let you remain to clean the public lavatories."

"Therefore," Istoropovich went on, "my only option is to kill you along with myself."

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Remo sighed. "Looks that way, I guess. Well, you'd better get to work, because there are twelve minutes to launching time, and I'm going in." He tried the door. It was at least a foot thick, made of solid rock. "Come on, Gordons," he said. "How about some creative battering?"

"Have you ever wondered what these gold balls contain?" Istoropovich asked.

"No," Chiun said.

"I shall tell you now."

"I was afraid of that," Remo said. "Say, can you make it fast? We've got an awful lot to do in there."

"They contain cyanide pellets surrounded by sulphuric acid. Once broken, they will turn an enclosed area like this into a gas chamber."

"Oh, come on," Remo said. "What kind of enclosed area is this? We came in through an open door." He indicated the entry to the stairway.

As he pointed, the door slid shut with a soft click.

"Let's see how cynical you are after the poison gas takes effect," Istoropovich said. He dropped the balls to the ground and stepped on them. Immediately they began to hiss. A wisp of creamy white smoke snaked out. The air turned foul.

Remo ran back to the stairway door and tried it. It was locked and sealed. Quickly he moved to the sliding stone panel that led to the lab. There was no way to open it without breaking the solid rock.

"Find a way to get air to the woman, if you want to save her," Chiun commanded.

The professor and Istoropovich were hacking

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#

and gasping for breath. To preserve his own oxygen supply, Chiun closed his eyes and slowed his breathing near coma.

"Get some air to her," Remo said to Gordons. He was already feeling dizzy. Concentrating, he began to bring himself to low consciousness.

"I will activate my pollution filters," Mr. Gordons said. He knelt over the professor. His fingers worked inside his shirt, and then he began to hiss like a garage air hose, and he put his face over the professor's and put air into her mouth.

He stopped for a moment and called over his shoulder to Remo. "I only have a four-minute supply. To create oxygen, I must destroy some of my internal circuits," he said. "I suggest you get us out of here."

Remo was slamming both feet against the stone panel, chipping away inches at a time. Chiun walked to it and flicked Remo out of the way. With a circular motion of his arm, he drew a neat zero on the stone with the fingernail of his index finger. Then, his hand moving at a speed too fast to be called a blur, his fingers sped around the circle, tapping the stone so rapidly that the sound seemed not to be tapping, but a buzz.

He stopped, then pressed the heel of his hand into the center of the zero. The round piece of stone fell through on the other side of the door, and the poison gas poured out of the anteroom into the vast missile lab. Remo could feel the air clearing, and he slowly let his breathing and heartbeat return to normal.

He reached through the hole Chiun had just made and found a switch next to the stone panel.

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He pressed it, and the door slowly swung open. Then he went back and propelled Mr. Gordons and the professor, who were still attached to one another by their lips, toward the doorway.

"No!" Istoropovich called weakly from the shadows where he had fallen. He was slithering on his stomach, the muscles of his abdomen contracting in terrible spasms. A trickle of black bile ran from his mouth down his chin. "I will not die for nothing," he groaned.

"That's the way it goes sometimes," Remo said, and turned back to the embracing couple.

"So is this," Istoropovich said. And before Remo spotted the glint of gray metal in the Russian's hands, a shot fired. It rang through the small anteroom, echoing tinnily. It ricocheted off one wall and came to rest with a soft snap in the professor's back.

She arched wildly, her features contorted. "Get them inside," Remo said to Chiun. With a small kick to Istoropovich's throat, he snapped the man's head, and the Russian lay still, the gun warm in his hand.

"Frances," Mr. Gordons whispered. "Why are you acting like this? Frances, stand up."

Chiun shuffled the dazed robot, carrying his limp charge, into the lab.

"Please, Frances," Mr. Gordons said softly.

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CHAPTER TWENTY

They were met by a burst of machine gun fire.

An alarm, high pitched and shrieking, had sounded as soon as Remo opened the wall to the lab. The high commander herself was at the controls of the main launch computer terminal. When the alarm sounded, she abandoned the controls and reached for the automatic submachine gun strapped across her back.

Chiun and Remo leaped high above the spray of bullets, distracting her while Mr. Gordons hid the professor behind a remote terminal, killing the technician who operated it.

The air quality sensors inside, detecting the traces of cyanide from the anteroom, whirred to overload, cleansing the air. As Mr. Gordons crouched behind the terminal with the unconscious professor, he heard the alarm shut off. A hush fell in the lab. The normal chattering and cross-checking of controls ceased, and the only

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sounds remaining were the clicking of computer consoles and the whirring of the atmospheric sensors.

All electronic, mechanical, inorganic sounds, Mr. Gordons thought. It was his first free thought, and it made him sad. This is the sort of place where I was conceived, he said to himself. Clean, sterile, without creativity, devoid of love.

Through the smoky dark glass of the lab. he could see, a quarter-mile away, the huge Volga stationed on its scaffolding, ready for takeoff. This was a place for metal and wire coil and electric impulses and electronic circuitry and glass insulators. And suddenly Mr. Gordons never wanted to be in a laboratory again. He just wanted to take Frances to a place where she could breathe the air she needed, where they would share their lives and love each other forever.

Everything was different now. He was no longer just a machine, another brilliant series of electromagnetic connections. The professor had seen to that. She had, he realized, given him the greatest gift of. all, greater than his ability to walk or talk or assimilate information, greater even than his capacity to survive: she had given him creativity. Independent thought. Choice. With her genius, she had set him free.

"Please don't die. We have so many things to do together," he said to the still form of the professor.

He was answered by the high commander's volley of machine gun fire. Slowly Mr. Gordons stood up, his hands held in front of him. The bullets tore at the skin covering him, but bounced away

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harmlessly when they touched his metallic interior. After a few moments, the weapon clicked when she pressed the trigger, but no more bullets came out.

, "I could kill you now," Mr. Gordons said to the panicky high commander, "if I could find a way that was creative enough to make you suffer as much as you deserve." The handsome face he wore carried a strange bitterness in it.

The high commander looked around wildly. The technicians in the room were trembling and cowering behind whatever protection could be found. On the lighted console of the computer terminal, graphs and assorted countdowns continued to take place, as though they were fully manned.

The commander raised her head defiantly. "It no matter if you kill me or not," she said. "The countdown for the launch is on automatic control now. The Volga will be launched in ten minutes, and nothing any of you can do will stop it." She turned to Remo and smiled, a malicious, triumphant smile. "This is my country. You kill me, you not live long here."

"I've got news for you, sweets," Remo said. "None of us is going to live long here. Gordons over there is programmed to deflect the Volga back to dear old Mother Russia as soon as it leaves the earth's atmosphere."

"You lie!" she said. "You lie."

"He's not lying," came a woman's voice weakly from a far corner of the room.The professor's eyes fluttered open.

"Frances," Mr. Gordons said gently.

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"Who said that?" the high commander demanded with a snap of her head.

"Help me to somewhere I can talk," the professor said. Mr. Gordons carried her to the main computer launch console and lay her on top of it.

The high commander stepped over to her and raised her head arrogantly. "Is true?" she seethed. "Did you reprogram killer robot to deflect Volga back to Soviet Union?"

The professor managed a thin smile before a fit of coughing overtook her. "Yes, I did. I knew your men wouldn't have the time or intelligence to check Mr. Gordons's more complex circuits."

"Deceiving bitch." The high commander grasped the professor around the neck with both hands. In a fury, Mr. Gordons slapped the woman across the face with the back of his hand. She went flying across the lab and, to the shrieks of the dumfounded technicians, struck the smoke-colored windows with a thwack and dropped sprawling to the floor.

Mr. Gordons knelt over Dr. Payton-Holmes.

"Frances," he said.

"Yes, darling," she said.

"Frances, we have failed."

"Why?"

"I .cannot stop this Volga. To produce oxygen a few minutes ago, I burned up the circuits."

"Oh no," Dr. Payton-Holmes said. Her face twisted with anguish. "It must be stopped."

"I don't know how," Mr. Gordons said.

"You are creative. Think of a way."

"I'll try, Frances."

"I love you, Mr. Gordons."

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"I love you too," the android said as the scientist went limp in his arms and died.

Mr. Gordons stood up and looked around the control center. Hé took three steps toward Remo, who wheeled around to face him.

"I am letting you live," Mr. Gordons said. "The Volga was more important to her than anything else, and she loved me. I will stop the Volga and save you for another day."

"How are we going to stop it?"

"I am creative. I will change its trajectory. It will never reach the moon."

Remo smiled. "Go to it, friend."

"I am not your friend," Mr. Gordons said bitterly. "Frances was my friend. She told me that creativity would bring me pain. I should have listened to her. I will be no one's friend again." Softly he kissed the professor on her lips. "I will go," he said. "But I will return for you later."

"Still a robot after all, huh?" Remo said.

"That was what I was created. That is what I will remain." He cast the professor one last look, blinked, and strode across the room. As he walked, he picked up the sprawled form of the high commander, who was just coming to. " What—what are you doing?" she screamed. "Unhand me. Let me down!"

Viciously Mr. Gordons shoved her face first through the dark glass windows. They shattered in a spiderweb pattern, then gave way to the big man with the mechanical stride, and the screaming woman whom he held dangling by her hair.

He tossed her into the seat of an open jeeplike vehicle outside the building and drove quickly to

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the launch site. Remo and Chiun watched through binoculars as Mr. Gordons, still dragging the flailing form of'the high commander behind him, climbed up the scaffolding to the entry hatch of the Volga. Two small monkeys in space suits scurried out as the door opened. Then Mr. Gordons shoved the high commander inside, stepped in himself, and closed the hatch behind him. In a matter of seconds, the missile lifted off in a cloud of white vapor and disappeared into the sky.

"What's he going to do?" Remo asked outside the building.

"Whatever he must, I imagine," Chiun said.

Remo looked up to see the trailing contrail of the missile searing the blue sky. "He got kind of soft over the professor, didn't he?"

Chiun smiled. "Sometimes one is fortunate enough to find something—or someone—more powerful than his strongest impulses. It can happen even to a survival machine, I suppose. That is a good sign for all of us. Especially you."

"What if he gets out of there?" Remo said, thinking of the robot encapsulated in the speeding missile.

"He will find us and try to kill us, obviously."

Remo shrugged. "Hell never get out. That thing will orbit in space forever."

"Let us hope so," Chiun said.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

In Rye, New York, in the executive office of the director of Folcroft Sanitarium, Dr. Harold W. Smith pursed his pale lips as he looked at the black object on his desk blotter through the lens of a magnifying glass.

"So?" he said. "It's a small transmitter."

"I just thought maybe you'd like to see it," Remo said, annoyed. "It was in my spine. It almost killed me. That's why we had to let things go till the last second."

"Nonsense," Chiun said. "There were several seconds remaining before it would have been necessary to dismantle the boom ship."

"That was a missile, not a boom ship," Remo complained in Korean. "And if we had so much time, then Gordons wouldn't be flying around in outer space now. We could have finished him off right there in the lab and gotten rid of him for good."

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Chiun clucked. "Tsk, tsk. With you, everything must be total. Life is not total. Much is unfinished, all is question. Become old, Remo, and perhaps you will become wise."

"I'm not going to have a chance to get old with that robot hanging around."

"Oh, how far you are from becoming a true Master of Sinanju," Chiun said. "Your friend is a machine, not a man. Nothing can destroy him. Better to live with him from a distance of millions of miles than next door."

"I wish you'd quit with the Oriental philosophy," Remo said, still in Korean.

"Stop, stop, stop," Smith pleaded. "It's eleven o'clock at night. I do like to get home every four or five days. And you need to rest. Something's brewing on the East Coast which may require your services in a day or two."

"Oh, no you don't," Remo said. "I'm taking some time off."

"Wonderful," Chiun said, smiling. "The ruler of Persia extended a standing offer three hundred years ago to the Master of Sinanju. We are welcome to work for him at any time. For four trunks of rubies a year," he said, wiggling his eyebrows. ^

"There is no Persia anymore, Little Father, It's Iran now. And I'm not working for any guy who wears a hat and a veil."

"What about Africa? The tribe of the Timalu has also requested our services. Oh, it is lovely there. The Ugandan countryside is most—"

"I'm not working for Uganda, either."

"Picky, picky, picky," Chiun said.

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"I'm just taking a rest," Remo said.

"Can we discuss this tomorrow?" Smith asked wearily.

"We're never discussing anything again. This is it. Done. Finito. Vacation time." He walked out the door, stomping deliberately.

Chiun turned to Smith. "I believe I can make him change his decision, Emperor," he said. "However, perhaps I should first accept, with utmost gratitude, the photograph you promised me of the lovely Cheeta Ching."

"Cheeta Ching?"

"The newscaster," Chiun said. "Surely you have the photograph."

Smith grimaced. "I'm sorry, Chiun," he said. "With everything going on, I suppose I forgot."

"Persia is a most amicable place for master assassins, O illustrious Emperor," Chiun said, his eyes narrowing.

'I'll have someone get the photograph right away."

"That is what you said the last time we spoke," Chiun said as he walked out. He slammed the door behind him so hard that the hinges shattered and fell in pieces to the floor.

Smith sighed again and gathered up the papers he was taking home with him.

At the doorway he remembered some computer printouts he had left on his desk and returned for them. He didn't bother to turn on the light, since everything on his desk was within a millimeter of what it had been the day before. He picked up the printouts and stuck them in his coat pocket. In the process, the small transmitter Remo had

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T

shown him fell to the floor and disappeared through the floorboards.

Smith would not think about the transmitter again. The next day, business would go on as usual, and the next evening, the cleaning woman would sweep the floor with a broom as she always did, since Smith refused to requisition either a carpet or a vacuum cleaner for the executive offices of Folcroft; the first layer of dust would sift through the floorboards to obscure the transmitter. It was gone for good, the last memento of Mr. Gordons and the professor obliterated forever.

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EPILOGUE

In distant space, catching light from the Andromeda Galaxy, the orbital capsule of the USSR Volga drifted harmlessly in its slow, unending journey through the universe.

Inside the capsule lay the mummified remains of a woman, her Soviet Army uniform pefectly preserved, its medals gleaming on the skeletal chest. Beside the body rested a small, rough-edged metallic rock.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the rock moved. A centimeter at a time, it began an infin-itesimally slow rotation toward the missile's inner wall. Then it began to move faster, picking up momentum.

By the time it reached the wall, the rock was spinning, ever faster, a whirling blur. Shards of fiberglass splintered off the inside of the capsule. The dent created by the rock deepened to become a small hole, then a larger hole. Then the vacuum

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of space took over, and the imbalance of pressure caused by the hole in the capsule ripped open the smooth walls with a monstrous creak.

The fiberglass interior starred and fragmented. The insulating material between the inner and outer walls flew off into space like cobwebs. And a fraction of a second before the outer walls burst apart in a massive implosion, the small metallic rock spun out the hole and away, plummeting alone through the airless vastness of space.

Contained within the rock was one sound: The steady thrum-thrum of a transmitter. It was stationary somewhere on earth, and already the microscopic components inside the metallic rock were calculating the coordinates of the transmitter. It was calling the rock home to finish an incomplete task. Home, to another identity, another form, other adventures.

The coordinates were set. Once on earth, the entity in the rock would begin its work anew from where the transmitter was calling.

Calling somewhere from Rye, New York, in the United'States of America.

Calling Mr. Gordons to find Remo Williams. And to kill him.

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