The Wrong Stuff

Destroyer 125: The Wrong Stuff

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

Life Discovered on Mars!

That blaring headline, seen all around the world, had been one of Clark Beemer's. To this day it remained the public-relations man's personal favorite.

The "meteorite" in which the fossilized bacteria had been discovered was a chunk of ordinary concrete Clark had found at a building demolition site on his way into work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Buffed, shellacked and dusted with an appropriate amount of space-age glitter from a local party-supply store, the rock had looked great for newspapers, networks and magazines. And, most importantly of all, it had gotten the tightwads in Washington to cough up an extra nine hundred million bucks for the United States space agency. Not bad for a piece of rock salvaged from the ruins of an old Piggly-Wiggly.

When the truth was learned-that the only thing trapped in the stone was some Pepsi-Cola from an ancient spill in aisle 7-it no longer mattered. The media machine had long moved on to the next story. NASA quietly pocketed the budget windfall generated by the publicity, Clark Beemer accepted approval from the brass and the PR man moved on to the next project.

Those were heady days. As he thought of that great life-on-Mars scam, Clark couldn't help but wax nostalgic.

Back then his job had been a joy. Twenty bucks worth of supplies with a record-breaking payday. But that was a once-in-a-lifetime score. This time out, Clark wasn't sure he or NASA would be able to capture the public's imagination.

Clark's fleeting nostalgic smile evaporated as he looked at the thing he was supposed to sell. It was a PR nightmare. The image was blurry on the computer monitor.

"What the hell did you make it look like that for?" Clark groused. Sweat beaded on his broad forehead. The heat in the mobile control room was oppressive.

The man before him wore a tense expression. His youthful face was dotted with a scruffy beard. "The extra legs are for balance and coordination," Pete Graham replied, annoyed. "And the redundancy's necessary for hostile climates. If there's a malfunction in one, others take up the slack." Graham was hunched over a control board. The computer terminal buried in the board's face tracked the movements of a bulky silver object as it walked through what looked like a shimmering cave.

The mechanical device moved awkwardly on its eight slender metal legs. When its third right leg stumbled, the surrounding legs supported the object's weight.

The scientists in the room watched the display with guarded enthusiasm. Clark Beemer alone wore a deep frown.

Walking, the machine looked like a baby taking its first uncertain steps. But, unlike a baby, there was no one in his or her right mind who would want to cuddle up to it.

"A spider," Clark growled softly as he studied the fuzzy outline of the device on the screen. His knuckles rested on the console next to Pete Graham's workstation.

"Perfect design for Virgil," Graham said.

"Right," Clark said with thin sarcasm. "I guess a cockroach or a snake would have been too perfect. And what's with that name anyway?"

Graham flexed his fingers over his keyboard. "Virgil was Dante's guide through Hell," he explained absently.

"Who?" Clark asked. When no one answered, the PR man shook his head. "How am I going to sell this thing?" he exhaled, dropping back into a swivel chair. He wiped the sweat from his face with his loose shirttail.

For the past three days Clark had been reminding the scientists that it was his salesmanship that mattered more than this latest Erector Set reject of theirs.

On the flight down from Florida to Mexico and on the chopper ride from the airport to this remote trailer in the shadow of Popocatepetl southeast of Mexico City, Clark Beemer had made his importance abundantly clear. So loud and frequent had been his words on the subject that most everyone had tuned him out by this point.

Clark watched the scientists busy themselves for a long moment. They seemed so focused, so excited. A bunch of geeks playing games. None of them understood how this game was really played now.

"You know," he said, exhaling loudly once more, "this is just like those boring whatchamacallit things they did at NASA back in the sixties. The ones where they put those guys on roman candles and shot them into the sky. But not the sky sky. The dark stuff that's above the sky. Bo-ring." He made a few snoring noises. "Damned if I know how the old Canaveral guys drummed up any interest in that."

Engrossed in his work, Graham didn't bother to explain about the thrill of exploration that had driven everyone at NASA back in those heady days when all of space was new. Not that he had been around to see it. Pete Graham wasn't even born when man first walked on the moon.

His eyes sharp, Graham studied the movements of the probe he had built.

Popocatepetl was in one of its less active phases. Good thing, too. Virgil couldn't have survived inside an erupting volcano. But a completely dormant volcano was useless for their purposes. What they needed was a volcano with a recent active history that was in a down phase. With its constant threats of eruption, "Popo," as the Mexican volcano was commonly known, fit the bill perfectly.

A helicopter had lifted Virgil to the mouth of the volcano an hour ago. A thick cable from its belly had lowered the spiderlike device into the crater where ash and glowing red rocks lined the dark throat like a disease.

The trailer in which Pete Graham and his team monitored the progress of the probe was propped on rocks near a lava-and-mud-filled gorge beneath a freshly blown out parasitic cone. It was there they held their breath as they watched the probe being lowered into place.

A million worries flooded Pete Graham's brain. Was the cable strong enough? Would it snap under stress? Could the helicopter negotiate the powerful updrafts? A single gust of wind buffeting the helicopter far above, and the gleaming probe would be dashed against the rocks and lost forever.

Then there was the awful possibility that his baby might malfunction. During the deployment phase, he tried to keep this last, horrible notion as far from conscious thought as was humanly possible.

When the Virgil probe was settled to the rock floor of the crater, anxiety rang in Graham's ears. There was a single, horrifying moment after the cable was released when it looked as if Virgil might tip over. But to the scientist's relief, the probe caught itself. A jerky manipulation of one leg, and the giant mechanical spider oriented itself on the floor of the cavern. When the applause erupted in the trailer, Clark Beemer didn't join in. After ten minutes of seeing that thing crawling around in Popocatepetl, the PR man was checking his watch, bored.

The scientists instructed the probe to plant two stationary cameras on the floor of the cave to monitor its movements. Another head-mounted microcamera gave a bird's-eye view of Virgil's progress.

As it crawled around in semidarkness in the steaming cavern, the men in the trailer studied its every move. Clark Beemer couldn't believe how excited they all were.

"What is it for anyway?" Clark muttered as the scientific team studied the data coming in from Virgil. Pete Graham didn't lift his eyes from his computer screen. "Virgil is a planetary probe designed to exist in hostile environments. If it can endure the heat of a volcano, it can do the same thing on an alien world."

"Don't you have heat simulators at NASA?"

"Nothing like this," Graham explained. "And a natural environment, not an artificial one, is what Virgil will be facing. We need to test him under battlefield conditions."

The lava beds that the probe walked past were flaming orange. The black walls seemed to pulse with spectral energy. A sweep from a side-mounted light illuminated the nearby smoking wall in garish white. Virgil moved jerkily and the wall slipped away.

As the light and camera were sweeping back ahead, Pete Graham sat up straight in his chair.

"What was that?" he asked.

"What was what?" one of his assistants asked. Graham didn't hear.

"Stop him," he commanded. The others had long since gotten used to their project leader's use of masculine pronouns when referring to the probe.

A technician dutifully halted the forward progress of the probe. Virgil stopped dead.

Using his own keyboard, Graham shifted the focus of the camera. With a silent, fluid whir it moved back to where it had been a moment before.

Flecks of deep red in the vast pebbled black were washed pale under Virgil's brilliant light.

"There," Graham insisted. He pointed at the monitor. "What's that?"

Men left their own screens to crowd around Graham's. When they saw the shining silver object he was pointing to, they frowned in confusion.

"Looks too perfect to be naturally occurring," someone commented. "Maybe the Mexicans were doing some research and left something inside."

"They built something that could survive in this heat?"

The contours of the object were unclear. When Graham manually refocused Virgil's lens, he saw why.

The edges of the unidentified object were buried in solidified magma. A gleaming bubble of silver peered out from the ragged rock like an otherworldly orb. "Maybe it's from another planet," an eager voice suggested very close to Graham's ear.

Pete Graham scowled up at Clark Beemer. "Don't be an idiot, Beemer," the scientist snarled.

"Hey, aliens sell," the PR man said.

Virgil was standing at patient attention, camera trained steadily on the motionless object.

Graham bit his cheek in concentration. He tipped his head as he studied the silver object.

"Let's excavate," he announced abruptly. Excited with their strange discovery, the men scattered to retake their seats.

Beside Graham, Beemer's frown deepened. "Some wetback tosses a Miller Lite can down there and you're gonna waste time digging it up?"

"That's not ordinary trash," Graham said as he tapped away at his keyboard. "This volcano has been in an active cycle for a bunch of years now. That's hardened magma that thing's settled into. Nothing ordinary should have survived in there."

"Yeah? Well, my vote's still for outer space," Beemer insisted.

The PR man yawned as Virgil stepped closer to the half-buried object.

Even with the camera's limitations, Beemer could make out the perfect curving fine. Measuring against one of Virgil's legs, which was framed in the foreground, Clark judged that the buried object was about the size of a croquet ball.

The surface shimmered in the light as Virgil closed in. The optical illusion seemed to give the thing motion. The hard silver surface almost appeared to be rolling in a short series of waves. Of course that was impossible.

There was a sudden sharp movement on the screen. Beemer blinked. "Did you see-?"

"Okay," Graham interrupted, "we're gonna have to cut through that magma. Phil, bring me right up over it. You'll have to angle-" A glimpse at his monitor and he stopped dead. "What the hell's that?" he asked, his eyes going wide.

No one heard his shocked question.

"I've lost motor control," someone announced abruptly.

Graham's head snapped around. "What?"

"It's gone," the scientist insisted. "I'm locked out."

When they transferred to another console, they found the same problem.

"Cameras are down," another scientist remarked tensely.

"All of them?" Beemer asked.

"They're controlled by Virgil," Graham said. "If he's gone down, he takes the remotes down with him."

"What is it?" Clark Beemer asked. "What's happening?"

"Get out of the way," Graham growled. He pushed Beemer away as he jumped to his feet.

Graham hurried from console to console in the cramped trailer. At each one the verdict was the same. For some reason unknown, their connection to the boiling belly of Popocatepetl had been severed.

Sitting in their chairs, the men had grown mute. Their faces conveyed silent shock. In the background the portable air conditioner continued to chug away.

The gray static of the final monitor shushed the room as Pete Graham straightened. His stunned face was covered with sweat. Wide eyes stared blankly into space.

Years of research, design, programming. All gone in an instant. It was almost too much for his tired brain to register.

Graham slowly shook his head. "Virgil's dead," the scientist whispered.

And his disbelieving voice was small.

THAT NIGHT the mood at the camp was funereal. They were stranded there until they could arrange for daylight transportation. Popocatepetl rumbled a few times after midnight. When the morning sun broke across the snow-encrusted volcanic cone of the mountain, its warming rays found Pete Graham still awake. He hadn't slept all night.

After a long evening of vainly trying to contact Virgil, he had finally briefed NASA. The higher-ups were not pleased with this disaster.

Graham's work there was supposed to be measured in days. They had finished in just over one hour. All Graham wanted now was to get the hell out of there and pick up the pieces of his career. Assuming he still had one.

A separate trailer with a kitchenette was attached to the first. Some of the men were preparing a simple breakfast as they waited for the helicopter that would fly them back to Mexico City.

The sunlight that beat in through the louvered windows was blinding. Lying in his bunk, Graham felt nothing but bitterness toward the common yellow star that dared to shine its cheery light across his haggard face.

As he was squinting at the light, a dark figure rose from the bunk next to Graham's.

Stretching, Clark Beemer noted Pete Graham's sick expression.

"You think you've got problems?" the PR man asked. "I have to explain this mess to the media. And the way things have been going at NASA lately, it ain't gonna be easy."

Shaking his head, Beemer headed for the trailer's small side door. Stepping into the light, the PR man let the door swing shut behind him.

In the trailer Graham pulled himself woodenly to a sitting position. Someone brought him a steaming cup of coffee. Graham had barely taken a sip when the trailer door opened once more.

Clark Beemer stepped numbly inside. He stood at stiff attention just inside the open door.

"Um, that probe thing?" Beemer said. "You all seemed pretty sure it was kaput last night, right?" When a few sour faces turned his way, Beemer nodded.

"I thought so," the PR man said, squirming. He pointed back over his shoulder. "It's just that when I went out to take a leak just now, it walked around the corner of the trailer. Scary stuff. Pissed my pants and everything."

He indicated the dark liquid stains on the front of his trousers.

"Real funny, asshole," one scientist muttered. They began turning away.

"No, really," Beemer insisted. "It's waiting out there right now. Like it wants to talk to you or something."

The PR man was so insistent and agitated that someone finally went outside for a look. The technician exploded back through the door an instant later, his face filled with shock and joy.

"Virgil's back!" he exclaimed.

Pete Graham didn't even hear the sound of his heavy coffee mug as it struck the floor. By the time the liquid spilled, he was already bolting out the door. What he found made Pete Graham's heart soar.

Standing in the shade beside the trailer, the majestic backdrop of Popocatepetl rising high above all, was his precious Virgil probe. Somehow, in defiance of all programming and human logic, his baby had come home.

Behind Graham the other scientists, along with Clark Beemer, were hurrying down from the trailer. Pete Graham didn't even hear them. Like a fretting mother, he carefully circled the probe.

When standing upright, Virgil was roughly seven feet tall. Squatting now, it was only five feet. Its eight mechanical legs were curled beneath the hard shell of its silver-plated thorax.

Graham noted a set of big spidery tracks running from the lava-formed gorge a dozen yards away from the trailer. His amazed eyes tracked the furrow up to the parasitic cone in the wounded side of Popo.

"He must have climbed out after he lost contact with us," Graham said, bewildered. "He used the cone as an exit and somehow followed the gorge to us."

The rest of his team had clustered at an awed distance. Only Clark Beemer had the temerity to speak. He had gotten over his initial shock and was now shaking his pant legs in a vain attempt to dry the urine stains.

"Is it a homing probe?" the PR man asked absently.

"Don't be an idiot," Graham said.

He was studying the clean silver surface of the Virgil probe. There wasn't so much as a scratch or dent in the smooth heat-resistant plating. Even more, Virgil wasn't even dirty. Despite its stay in the volcano crater and its trip down the muddy lava gorge, there wasn't the slightest visible hint of the punishing ordeal it had been through.

"Homing probe might be sellable," Clark Beemer insisted as Graham ran a hand over the cool surface of the probe. "Not that you'd want this monster following you home." He frowned as he studied the mechanical body of the probe. "You ever think of putting a happy face on it? Like that spider in A Bug's Life? After all, you made it talk. Might as well make the words come from something nice."

Graham didn't hear Beemer's last words. He was continuing to study the surface of the probe that by all logic should at that moment be melting in a pool of boiling magma a mile below the Earth's surface.

"What do we do now?" one team scientist asked. Pete Graham glanced up, a studious frown on his face. Far above, Popo belched a thin stream of black smoke at the pale Mexican sky.

"Crate him up and haul him back to Florida," Graham insisted. When he looked back to the quietly squatting probe, his voice grew soft "I can't wait to get you back in the lab and find out what happened during your trip through Hell."

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was making lemonade. Of course, it wasn't the actual physical variety-with citrus fruit and water and enough sugar to rot a mouthful of baby teeth. Remo had been unable to drink the normal kind of lemonade for many years, and hadn't really enjoyed it all that much even when he could drink it. No, the lemonade he was making this day was the metaphorical kind. And for this particular recipe, he needed the proper tools.

When Remo stepped through the pro-shop door of Rye, New York's Westchester Golf Club, there was only a handful of men inside. None looked in his direction. There was no reason they should. Remo was a young-looking man dressed in tan chinos and a navy blue T-shirt. His casual attire wasn't anything out of the ordinary for the golf club and so went unnoticed by its members. As he strolled up to the counter, Remo's dark eyes were scanning for the tool he'd need for his particularly tricky lemonade recipe.

The middle-aged man behind the counter smiled at Remo's approach. A plastic fishbowl of tees sat at his elbow.

"Good morning, sir," the shopkeeper said. "What can I help you with today?"

Remo didn't meet the man's eyes. He was busy searching the store. "I need a good solid stirrer," he said.

"A Stirrer?" the man asked, puzzled. His deeply tanned face clouded. "I've never heard of that brand, sir."

Remo was glancing beside the register. Two dozen golf clubs jutted in the air in what looked like some sort of Arnold Palmer-inspired work of modern art.

"A stirrer's not a brand," Remo explained absently as he picked through the ring of clubs. "It's a thing you stir with. Here's a good one."

He pulled a club from the circular stand.

"That's a wedge," the proprietor explained cautiously.

"It was born a wedge. Today it's been promoted to stirrer," Remo replied. He slapped his Visa card with the name Remo Bednick onto the counter.

Raising a silent eyebrow, the man rang up the order.

Two minutes later Remo stepped out of the clubhouse into the fresh air. Armed with his one club and a bucket of balls, he headed out onto the fairway.

The calendar had lately stretched into October, bringing many a cold night to the Northeast. In spite of the coolness of the evenings, the midmorning autumn sun this day warmed Remo's bare arms. He headed toward the first tee.

Remo had avoided the club's footwear requirement by blending in with a pack of garishly costumed women golfers. Dressed as he was-in direct contrast to their plaids and paisleys-he should have stuck out like a sore thumb. Somehow he managed to move along unnoticed. His soft leather shoes upset not a single blade of grass as he broke away from the gabbing quartet of housewives and moved off on his own.

Stopping on the lawn, Remo pulled a single white ball from his pail and dropped it to the neatly trimmed grass. He toed it around a few times as groups of people walked by. Straightening, he tapped the ball back and forth, trying to get the feel of both club and ball.

That a nonmember could somehow make it this far into the exclusive Westchester Golf Club was a minor miracle. That he could stand out on the green, in full view of actual members, fecklessly toying with a ball was unheard-of.

Remo wasn't surprised that no one paid him any mind. He had spent much of his adult life dancing at the fringes of people's consciousness, never fully stepping out into the spotlight. By now it was second nature.

And it was a good thing, too. In his line of work, being noticed meant being dead.

Remo was an assassin. No, check that. By today's definition he was much more than that. In the previous century the term assassin had been gutterized, applied to every gun-wielding maniac or bomb-planting psycho.

Remo was the Apprentice Reigning Master of Sinanju, heir to an almost superhuman tradition, the origins of which evaporated far back beyond the edges of recorded history.

Most people used less than ten percent of their brains. That meant that ninety percent of the mush in their skulls was dormant. As a Master of Sinanju at the peak of his awesome abilities, Remo harnessed one hundred percent of his brain. Trained to perfection by the Reigning Master of the most ancient and deadly of all martial arts, he was able to focus that energy into physical feats that seemed to work in complete defiance of the limited human form.

Disappearing into shadows, pulverizing bones to jelly, climbing sheer walls. These were skills long known to the men from Sinanju. Hiding where everyone should be able to see him-on the sprawling lawn of the Westchester Golf Club-was as easy to an individual trained in Sinanju as breathing.

Remo looked as if he belonged. Therefore, he must. With a one-handed swing, Remo tapped his ball a few feet. He walked over to where it rolled to a stop, knocking it back. No eye save his own would have seen that the ball landed precisely where it had begun. The barely perceptible indentation in the grass accepted the pebbled ball.

Actually, Remo thought as he walked back to his starting point, there was another set of eyes that would have noticed the ball's path. Right now they and their owner were in a vine-covered brick building on the other side of town. Those hazel eyes with the fawning gleam that had lately taken root in them were just two of the reasons Remo was at the club.

A sudden commotion erupted near the clubhouse. Remo glanced back over his shoulder.

Four men had just walked into view. Three of them were unknown to Remo. The fourth, however, wore a face recognizable in every corner of the planet. When Remo saw that famous face, his own expression hardened.

Barrabas Orrin Anson was a retired NFL quarterback whose success on the gridiron had translated to a career as a B-list Hollywood actor. This professional segue was amazing given the fact that Barrabas Orrin lacked even a hint of discernible acting talent. He had lived the L.A. high life for two improbable decades, and would have continued to do so for many more years. Unfortunately, his grand lifestyle had come crashing down the night his ex-wife was found butchered to death on the steps of her condominium.

Barrabas Orrin, known to friends and sports fans as "B.O.," was the only suspect. Not only had his blood, hair and saliva been found at the scene, but a busload of tourists had seen him hightailing it through his wife's shrubs, a bloody butcher knife in his hand. Two people had actually got him on videotape. Worse still for B.O. was the fact that he had accidentally severed his pinky at the crime scene. It was found at the feet of his dead wife.

The case was clearly open and shut. Or should have been. However, an incompetent district attorney, a hate-filled jury blinded by race and a weird little judge obsessed with camera angles and product placements saw to it that the televised trial devolved into a kangaroo court.

After carefully weighing months of irrefutable proof during their two minutes of deliberation, the jury set B. O. Anson free, with the added bonus of setting race relations back to the Jim Crow era.

Since that time B.O. had remained at the fringes of the national spotlight. If he wasn't in court for one reason or another, he was appearing on golf courses around the country.

When the 6:00 a.m. local news had announced that Anson would be playing at the Westchester club that morning, Remo Williams had been watching TV on the other side of town. The news had continued to play quietly to an empty room as Remo slipped from the building.

An excited ripple charged across the Westchester Golf Club at the appearance of the infamous celebrity. People whispered and pointed. For his part, B.O. reveled in the attention. Eschewing a golf cart, he ambled up the hill near the main clubhouse, a big smile spread across his face.

His partners followed.

As he approached the first tee, Remo didn't see any evidence of the crippling arthritis that Anson's attorneys had insisted would have prevented him from lacing up the blood-soaked shoes that had been discovered in the back of the bedroom closet in the star's Los Angeles mansion.

The group was nearly upon Remo before B.O. even noticed someone standing there. In fact, the exfootball player nearly stumbled over him. It was as if Remo had appeared from out of nowhere to stand in the celebrity's path.

"Hey, look out," B.O. ordered with a scowl. Remo ignored him. His eyes focused on the ground, he tapped his ball with his wedge. The Titleist seemed suddenly charged with electricity. With a whir it rose from the ground and spun straight up the shaft of Remo's club. It seemed as if he caught it in his hand, but when he opened his palm there was nothing there. Only then did Anson see the ball was back on the grass where it had started.

B.O. blinked amazement. "You some kinda pro?" he asked.

For the first time, Remo looked up at the big exfootball player. "Yes," he said flatly. "But not at golf."

B.O. bit his lip. "I'm always lookin' to improve my game. You giving lessons?"

Remo smiled tightly. "No. I'm making lemonade."

B.O. frowned as he looked Remo up and down. All he saw was a skinny white guy with one club and a lonely bucket of balls. He didn't even see a single packet of Kool-Aid.

"Where are your lemons?" B.O. asked.

Remo shook his head. "Where aren't they," he insisted, an annoyed edge creeping into his voice. By this point Anson's companions were getting anxious. At their urging, the notorious celebrity abandoned Remo. With B.O. in the lead, they continued to the first tee.

Anson's first swing surrendered a 250-yard drive straight down the fairway. When he turned, the star's mouth was split in a wide grin that was all teeth and tongue.

From his isolated spot away from the tee, Remo noted the ex-football player's delighted reaction with studied silence.

Once Anson's party was through on the first tee, they climbed into carts for the trip to the second. Remo trailed them on foot. As he walked, Remo considered his conversation with Anson.

He had told the ex-football player the truth. Remo was making lemonade. It was age-old advice first given him by Sister Mary Margaret way back at the Newark orphanage where Remo had spent his formative years. "When life deals you a lemon," the nun had been fond of saying to her young charges, "make yourself some lemonade."

Well, according to Remo's calculations, he was ass deep in lemons right about now.

B.O. Anson's drive on the second hole wasn't as strong as the first, but another powerful stroke on the third brought back the same wide-open grin he had displayed at the start of the round.

Remo's lemons had been coming at pretty regular intervals over the course of the past year or so.

It had all started with a ghostly visitor who had insisted that the coming years would be difficult for Remo. But unlike your basic chain-rattling Dickensian ghosts, the little Korean boy who had haunted Remo didn't show him any way to avoid his fate. His life was going to suck. There was no two ways about it.

The specter proved accurate in his prediction.

The place Remo had called home for the past ten years had recently burned to the ground. For the past nine months he had been forced to live at Folcroft Sanitarium, a mental and convalescent home here in Rye.

Folcroft doubled as the home of CURE, a supersecret agency for which Remo worked and that was sanctioned by the top level of the U.S. government to work outside the law in order to protect America. That led to lemon number two.

The previous President of the United States had done something his seven predecessors in the Oval Office hadn't. He had blabbed of CURE's existence to an outsider. Squeamish to order the elimination of this man, the new President had given him a role with CURE. Mark Howard had been welcomed into the Folcroft fold as assistant director, directly answerable to Remo's own boss, Dr. Harold W. Smith.

Which brought him to lemon number three: Chiun, Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju. Remo's teacher and general all-around pain in the neck.

The wily old Korean had welcomed Howard's arrival as heir apparent with open arms. After all, the coffers of CURE were deep and Harold Smith was old. Sucking up to the new guy seemed the best way to stay on the gravy train well into the new century.

Remo, on the other hand, had never been good at sucking up, and he had no intention of starting now. Ahead, B.O. Anson's arthritis was nowhere to be seen as he drove a deep ball down the fairway. This time a joyful laugh escaped his widely parted lips. He muttered something to the men with him, and they chuckled appreciatively.

As the four men climbed back into their carts for the trip to the fifth tee, Remo slipped quickly around the periphery of the course. Anyone who saw him assumed he was late for an appointment, since his gait was more a hurried glide than a sprint. However, if they'd continued to watch they would have noticed that the speed at which he was traveling was only deceptively slow.

Somehow, without appearing to rush, Remo managed to outdistance B. O. Anson's party on their way to the next tee.

When the former football star's cart slowed to a stop, Remo was a hundred yards ahead, waiting at the edge of the green near the woods that rimmed the course.

B.O. was still laughing when he approached the tee.

Remo had taken only one ball with him. Unlike the ones he'd bought, this ball was personalized.

He noted the name on the side as he fished it from his pocket. "B. O. Anson."

In the shade of a denuded maple, he dropped the ball he had swiped from the ex-football player to the grass.

This wasn't acting out, he reasoned as he lowered the head of the wedge. It was making lemonade, pure and simple.

B.O. hauled back and swung mightily. The ball whooshed audibly from the tee, arcing high into the pale autumn sky.

Another clean shot down the fairway, this one closing in on 260 yards. The ex-football star was having one of the best games of his life. As expected, his mouth dropped wide in the same open smile he displayed after all his best strokes.

The instant he saw the first flash of teeth, Remo brought his own club back.

The wedge flew too fast to even make a sound. Over his shoulder and back down again. When the club connected, the ball didn't have time to flatten before it screamed from the grass. It became a white missile flying at supersonic speed.

Remo alone tracked its path as it soared a beeline up the fairway, directly into the happy gaping mouth of B.O. Anson.

It hit with a wet thwuck. When the ball reemerged into daylight an instant later, it was dragging ragged bits of scalp and brain in its wake.

B.O.'s grinning mouth remained open wide. His dull eyes were unblinking. For an instant Remo saw a flash of sunlight shining down the dark tunnel the golf ball had drilled through his hard skull.

And then the most famous ex-football-playing murderer the world had ever known fell face first into the grass.

As his golf buddies began cautiously poking Barrabas Orrin Anson with the grip ends of their drivers, Remo Williams nodded in satisfaction.

"Hole in one," he said, impressed.

No doubt about it. This was the best lemonade he'd ever tasted. Tossing his club into the woods, he stuffed his hands deep in the pockets of his chinos. Whistling a tune from The Little Mermaid, Remo sauntered off the fairway.

Chapter 3

Behind the closed door labeled Special Project Director, Virgil Climatic Explorer, Dr. Peter Graham was being read the riot act by his NASA superiors.

"Who's going to pay for this disaster?" asked Deployment Operations Director Buck Thruston.

"Technically, this falls in the lap of Science Director for Solar System Exploration," Alice Peak replied crisply. She spoke with great authority since, as Director of Space Policy, this would put it out of her purview.

The Virgil probe sat motionless in the corner of the big room. Though they had tried to get it to walk inside after the long flight back from Mexico, the probe had refused to respond to any commands. They'd been forced to carry it in.

"Wouldn't it be Director of Planetary Exploration?" Thruston asked, confused. At NASA it was hard to keep track of all of the various department directors. At last count there were 8,398 of them in all. They were pretty sure of this figure, since the office of the Director of Director Enumeration had said so.

"Solar system is above planetary," Alice replied.

"But the planets are in the solar system."

"Doesn't matter," she insisted. "They're separate divisions. As soon as something hits solid earth-or solid anything-planetary kicks in."

"I'm not sure that matters right now," Pete Graham interjected. He wasn't watching Peak or Thruston. His eyes flicked nervously to the man who stood silently behind them.

"But the asteroids are spatial bodies," Thruston insisted, ignoring Graham. "And Virgil could explore them."

"Apples and oranges," Alice dismissed. "At present asteroid exploration falls under the Director for Intra-Mission Energy. Not applicable in the current situation."

As the two spoke about the various NASA divisions and how neither of them could be blamed for the malfunction of the Virgil probe, the third person in their small group pushed himself to his feet.

Zipp Codwin had been leaning against Graham's desk. He had listened with chilling patience to the Virgil designer's digest of the events in Mexico. Not once during Pete's five-minute summary had Codwin so much as blinked.

Codwin was NASA's current administrator. A retired Air Force colonel, Zipp had been drafted into the space program during its earliest days. Older now, he retained the thin, muscled frame of his youth.

His short steel-gray hair was cut at right angles. A level could have rested on his granite square chin without the bubble shifting a single millimeter. His eyes were as lifeless and black as the void he had twice visited in two of the tiny Mercury modules.

When he saw Colonel Codwin straighten, Pete Graham gulped reflexively. Of the three people in his lab, Zipp was the only one who inspired real fear in Graham.

Buck Thruston was still arguing with Alice Peak. "But we're still in phase one of asteroid exploration. Prestage two should fall under the Director for Outer-"

He never finished his thought.

"Faster, better, cheaper!" Administrator Zipp Codwin barked hotly. His words were as clipped and sharp as his yellowing fingernails.

Buck jumped; Alice gasped. Shocked to silence, both directors wheeled on their superior.

"Faster, better, cheaper!" they echoed with military sharpness. Buck offered something that might have been a salute if a salute involved two shaking hands and a thumb in one eye.

The NASA administrator crossed his arms. A deeply skeptical expression settled in the angles of his face.

"I hear the words, but I do not see the results," Zipp Codwin snapped. "FBC is policy at the new user-friendly NASA. Or have we forgotten?"

Alice and Buck shook their heads so violently they bumped foreheads. Nearby, Pete Graham shook his head, too.

None of them could forget NASA's new policy. They weren't allowed to.

The Faster, Better, Cheaper slogan was now a mantra around the space agency, hauled out whenever anyone questioned its fiscal irresponsibility. Zipp had personally hired an outside public-relations firm to come up with the slogan. It had cost NASA five hundred thousand dollars.

"No, sir," Pete Graham replied.

Codwin's nostrils flared like an angry bull's. Marching over to where Virgil crouched, he extended a hard finger.

"Okay, let's figure this out, then. You built this fast and cheap, right?"

Some of the tension drained from Graham's voice. He was on more familiar ground here.

"Yes, sir," he answered. "Under time and under budget."

"Okay, son," Zipp growled. "I know that. But did you build it better?"

Graham didn't hesitate. "I thought I did," he said honestly. "I can't begin to fathom why it stopped working."

Zipp dropped his hands to his hips. He noted a laptop computer hooked umbilically into the side of the Virgil probe.

"Can't you get the information from it? See what happened while it was in the volcano?"

"I've been trying," Graham insisted. "It seems to be locked in some kind of self-diagnostic routine. I haven't been able to access the affected systems." There was clear frustration in his tone.

Zipp Codwin looked back to the probe. When he beheld the cold metal outline, his face puckered unhappily.

"No beauty to this program anymore," he muttered in what, to him, was a wistful tone. It sounded like he was grinding glass between his molars. "The lunar landers looked like pregnant praying mantises and even they had more grace." He gave an angry sigh, the only kind he was capable of giving. "Don't think faster, better, cheaper cuts it alone. Have to put something about prettier in there."

When he spun back around, his brow was furrowed.

"I'm not happy with the results here, Graham," Zipp stated. His dark eyes were penetrating.

"I'm not, either, sir," Graham said weakly.

"You shouldn't be. You're the one who screwed the pooch. Access that data," he commanded as he marched to the door. Peak and Thruston stumbled over each other in their race to follow. "Whatever glitches are in that thing, I want them worked out in the FBCest manner possible. Clear?"

He didn't wait for a reply.

The door had already slammed shut by the time Pete Graham offered a weak "Clear, sir."

Alone, Graham exhaled.

He hated the relief he felt whenever Zipp Codwin left the room. At least he wasn't alone in the feeling. The colonel inspired the same level of fear in everyone at NASA.

As his nervous sweat began to evaporate, Graham walked over to the immobile probe. He had just retrieved his laptop from a chair next to Virgil when the lab door creaked open cautiously.

Hoping Zipp Codwin hadn't returned, Graham glanced anxiously to the door.

Clark Beemer's worried face jutted into the room. "Is the coast clear?" the PR man asked.

Sighing again, Graham only nodded. He took his seat as Beemer scurried inside.

"Ol' Zipper reamed you out, huh?" Beemer said as he shut the door behind him. "I figured you'd get off okay. At least you brought it back in one piece. Not like the Mars Climate Orbiter. Twenty-three directors lost their jobs after that fiasco."

"I'm working here, Beemer," Graham said tightly. His laptop balanced on his knees, he was entering commands into Virgil's systems. At least, he was trying to. Every time he thought he was in, the system unexpectedly dumped him out. It was like playing a game of computer chess where every move was countered perfectly.

"I'm working, too," Beemer insisted. "Unglamorous as it is, I'm the one who has to sell this thing. I wish you told me it talked. I can work with that somehow."

"It doesn't talk, Beemer," Graham insisted.

This had been going on since Mexico. The entire plane ride home Clark Beemer had insisted that Virgil had spoken to him when he first discovered the probe next to the command trailer. When pressed, Beemer wasn't exactly sure what it was the probe had said.

"I know what I heard," the PR man insisted. His brow clouded. "At least, I think I know what I heard. It didn't make much sense. Something about wishing how it could offer me a drink but that we were on a volcano and there aren't any liquor faucets on volcanos."

"Idiot," Graham muttered.

Beemer's face fouled. "Hey, this isn't about me," he snapped. "You're the one who built this mess." He crossed his arms defiantly. For a few minutes he remained silent as Graham worked.

Pete Graham continued to be frustrated by every attempt to access Virgil's systems.

"Dammit," he growled after his latest attempt failed.

"Say, Pete?" Beemer asked abruptly. "Yeah?"

"Back in Mexico..." Beemer hesitated.

"What?" Graham said, only half listening. He was attempting to reinstall Virgil's start-up routines.

"In the volcano," Beemer continued. "You know that thing you had it looking at? The shiny thing buried in the rock?" He stopped again, not wanting to sound crazy. "Well, you were looking at the monitor," he blurted. "Did you see anything weird?"

Graham glanced up. "Like what?"

Clark Beemer didn't want to have to say it. Ever since he'd first come to work PR at NASA and made the mistake of asking if he'd have the opportunity to meet an actual Klingon, he had been guarded with his questions.

"Promise you won't laugh?" Beemer asked.

Graham exhaled. "Yeah, Beemer, I promise."

Clark Beemer smiled nervously. "Well, when the camera was looking right smack-dab at that thing," he began, "it looked like-like it moved."

Graham stopped working. With great slowness he put down his laptop.

"Moved how?" he asked. And this time there was genuine interest.

Beemer was warming nervously to his subject. "First, it looked like the whole thing was sort of shimmering. Like when you pet a dog that's got an itch? You know how the whole back muscle sort of moves? That's what it looked like to me. Then just before the video signal cut out, I swore I saw the shell of the thing crack open."

Pete Graham didn't speak. He just sat there, silently contemplating Clark Beemer's words.

The scientist would have pointed out that this notion was as ridiculous as Beemer's insistence a month ago that he'd found a piece of red kryptonite in his flower garden, but for one simple fact. Graham had seen the same thing.

When they'd arrived back in Florida, the scientist had gone over the last seconds of digital images collected from the Virgil probe before it had blacked out.

He saw the shining silver orb buried in the solidified magma. And for a few seconds, it did appear to ripple. But that could have been a reflection from Virgil or even from a pool of molten lava. And, yes, at the very last instant it did seem to split apart. But happening as it did at the instant the probe had apparently begun to malfunction, it could have been some sort of anomalous static pop from the feed.

The image wasn't clear enough to enhance and it didn't really seem to matter much, since Virgil had somehow found its way home. Pete Graham had chalked it all up to ghosts and glitches and put the matter out of his mind.

Now that Beemer had brought it up, Graham felt a pang of uncertainty in his gut. Still, he was loath to agree with this nonscientist public-relations simpleton.

"Just an optical illusion," Graham dismissed uncomfortably. He returned to his laptop.

"You seem pretty sure for a guy who doesn't even know his own probe can talk."

"For the last time, Beemer, it does not talk," he snapped.

"Oh, yeah? Well, if it doesn't talk, then why does it have a mouth?"

When Graham looked up, his eyes were instantly drawn to the front of the probe. Just beneath the stationary eye of the top microcamera a hole had been punched in the heat-resistant plate. Beemer was pointing at it.

Graham almost knocked over his chair, so quickly did he clamber to his feet. "What did you do to him?" he snarled, bounding to the side of the probe.

The hole was only an inch and a half high and two inches wide. The metal around the edges seemed to puff out, forming a pair of crude metallic lips.

"I didn't do anything," Beemer insisted.

"Damn you, Beemer, do you have any idea what this is gonna cost me? A software glitch can be fixed like nothing, but these plates have to be manufactured individually."

"I didn't do it, I swear," Beemer said, his voice growing troubled. "I just noticed it there." Ordinarily, Pete Graham wouldn't have believed Beemer in a million years. However, something odd suddenly happened. When he glanced back at the probe, the metal mouth was closed.

"What the hell?" Graham asked.

Stepping closer, he peered at the spot where the opening had been. It was now a flat line. The lip buds were still visible. Soft ridges in an otherwise smooth surface. And as Pete Graham watched in growing astonishment, the mouth creaked open once more. Graham jumped back.

Until now Clark Beemer had assumed that everyone but him knew about the voice. He figured, as usual, that he was the butt of some geek joke. Sensing now that something was indeed wrong, he ducked behind Graham, grabbing the scientist's arm.

"What is it?" he asked fearfully.

"I don't know," Graham shot back.

His eyes were wide as he watched the artificial mouth open and close.

It was the most surreal moment of Pete Graham's young life. The newly formed mouth was testing, trying to work out kinks. It squeaked as it flexed.

His eyes wide, Beemer's fingers digging into his bicep, Graham couldn't help but think of the rusted-shut Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. The scientist couldn't think, couldn't run. He dared not even breathe.

A pained groan that sounded like a piece of metal being torn apart rose up from the dark depths of the orifice.

And the voice that had expressed regret for an inability to offer Clark Beemer a drink at the base of Popocatepetl rose once more from the mechanical throat. And it said, "Hello is all right."

And when the impossible words issued from the cold, cybernetic belly of the probe he had built, Pete Graham's thudding heart froze in his chest.

Chapter 4

Remo had parked his car on a side street near the Westchester Golf Club. By the time he reached the leased Ford Explorer, the first shrill sounds of approaching police sirens were carrying across the most distant fairway.

A faint smile brushed his thin lips as he slipped behind the wheel.

He took a left off the dead end. The tidy residential street ran parallel to the golf course.

The route was familiar. He soaked in the scenery with a melancholy twinge.

The house he'd recently lost had actually been his second real home. His first full-time residence had been here, on this very street.

It was a cruel quirk of fate that had robbed him of each home. He, Remo Williams, orphan and perpetual outsider to the entire human race, could never have a normal home.

His old house came up on the left.

The new owners had made some changes to the simple, two-story Cape. Vinyl siding now covered the paint. Most of the shrubs near the front were gone.

Children apparently lived there now, for the lawn was covered with plastic toys. Orange-and-yellow leaves formed a damp pile near a multicolored jungle gym.

A knot formed in the pit of Remo's stomach when he saw the white picket fence that now enclosed the front yard. In the days when he used to dream of home and hearth and some semblance of a normal life, his mind's eye seemed always to surround that life with a tidy picket fence.

But that wasn't his life and would never be. Remo drove on.

Harold Smith's home was next door. The CURE director's battered station wagon had already been in the Folcroft Sanitarium parking lot when Remo left that morning, so he wasn't surprised to find that it wasn't in the driveway now.

Smith's wife was out in the yard. The matronly woman was dressed in slacks and a big flannel shirt. She was wrangling wet leaves from beside the front step with a bamboo rake that seemed to be missing most of its prongs.

Even Smith had a home. It might not be perfect and he might not spend much time there, but the fact remained it was there whenever he wanted it to be. All Remo had was a sackful of metaphorical lemons and a prophecy that his life was going to get worse before it got better. If it got better.

The street ended abruptly at a busy intersection. "Maybe the worst of it's behind me," Remo muttered as he pulled out onto the cross street.

Downtown Rye had evolved since Remo had first been drafted into CURE. Back in those days, though it was close to New York City, Rye had still retained some small-town charm. Not anymore. Over the decades the city had become a typically soulless suburb. Neatly washed brick buildings advertised law and accounting firms while whitewashed banks crowded the sidewalk. Remo counted thirty-seven sets of traffic lights on what had been the old Boston Post Road. A set of lights positioned every ten feet, all red, turned the main road into a parking lot. It took him fortyfive minutes to travel three city blocks.

He was grateful when he finally escaped the busiest part of town. Suburban sprawl changed over to woods. Through a shower of gaily colored leaves, Remo caught glimpses of Long Island Sound. A few boats bobbed on the sun-dappled water.

The familiar high wall of Folcroft appeared on his left. Remo followed it to the main gate. He drove past the guard shack with its sleeping uniformed guard and up the gravel drive of the sanitarium.

Remo parked his car in the employee lot and headed for the side door.

He sensed a pair of heartbeats in the stairwell even before he reached the door. When he pulled it open, one of the two men was already looking his way.

The wizened Asian looked as old as the hills. Other than two tufts of yellowing white hair that sprouted above each ear, his age-speckled scalp was bald. His skin was like ancient parchment. The fine lines of delicate blue veins crisscrossed beneath the dry surface.

Chiun, Master of Sinanju and Remo's teacher, clucked unhappily. As the door swung shut, the elderly Korean's youthful hazel eyes frowned disapproval at his pupil.

A much younger man had been sitting on the bottom step near Chiun. He seemed startled at Remo's appearance. As Remo stepped inside, the young man scurried to his feet.

"It was you, wasn't it?" Mark Howard asked without preamble.

The assistant CURE director was in his late twenties and had a broad, corn-fed face with ruddy patches on each cheek. At the moment a sickly flush tainted his pale skin.

"Guess good news travels fast," Remo said blandly.

"Oh, God, it was you," Howard said, sinking back to a sitting position on the staircase.

"I plead the Fifth," Remo said dully. "You eat breakfast yet, Little Father?"

When he tried to cross to the basement staircase, a bony hand pressed against his chest, holding him in place.

"Stop, idiot," Chiun hissed.

"Why?" Remo said, his face drooping into a scowl.

"So I can hear you play Jiminy Cricket to Spanky here?" He nodded to Howard. The young man was still sitting on the stairs, one hand holding his queasy belly. "No, thanks."

"You killed B.O. Anson," Mark Howard said weakly.

"There is no sense in denying it, Remo," the Master of Sinanju charged, folding his long-nailed hands inside the voluminous sleeves of his purple day kimono. "Emperor Smith's oracles have already divined your guilt."

"Guilt's a funny thing," Remo said. "Smith's computers say I'm guilty-I say I was chipping golf balls in my hotel room in Chicago. We'll leave it to the jury to decide."

Howard finally looked up. Dull shock filled his tired eyes. "How could you?" he asked.

"Easy. Keep your legs apart, concentrate on the ball and make the club an extension of your own arm."

"As usual, you are an audience of one for your own pathetic attempts at humor," Chiun said. "Now make things easier for your poor old dying father and apologize for slaying the ballfooter."

"What?" Remo said. "No way. I've had a crummy year, and I decided to give myself an early Christmas present. And don't try to get around me with that dying thing. You're as healthy as a horse."

"No thanks to you," Chiun snipped.

"Apologies are irrelevant," Howard said, pulling himself to his feet. "Dr. Smith wants to see you. He sent us to collect you as soon as you got back."

Remo's face darkened. "Oh, c'mon," he groused.

But Chiun was already turning away. "Come, Prince Mark," the old man said. Tucking his arm into the crook of Howard's elbow, he guided the much younger man up the stairs.

With a deepening frown, Remo followed.

"So how'd you know it was me?" Remo grumbled as they mounted the stairs.

Howard pitched his voice low. "You know that the mainframes automatically flag all Sinanju-signature deaths. The news has already picked up on it. Given the circumstances, there's a feeding frenzy going on."

"Really?" Remo asked, a hint of curiosity in his tone. "What are they saying?"

The assistant CURE director shifted uncomfortably as he walked. "That a golf ball fired from some kind of portable cannon went straight through Anson's head." It seemed as if he didn't want to believe the reports.

"I called 'fore'," Remo said defensively.

"This is terrible, Remo," Howard insisted seriously.

"Terrible," the Master of Sinanju echoed. Remo shot the old man a hateful look.

"There must have been hundreds of people on that golf course," the assistant CURE director continued.

"Relax," Remo said. "Even if someone saw me-which they didn't-they didn't really see me. Back me up, Chiun."

"It is true, O Prince," the Master of Sinanju said.

They were at the second-floor fire door. Howard stopped. "I know Dr. Smith is confident in this ninja stuff, but-" He glanced apologetically at the Master of Sinanju. "I'm sorry, Master Chiun, I just don't know."

For any other man, comparing Sinanju to ninjitsu would have guaranteed a one-way trip to the Folcroft morgue. But, standing in the stairwell beside the young man, Chiun merely shook his head somberly.

"Ninja are like Sinanju, Prince Mark, the same way a firefly is like the sun. Remo is correct. It is possible for many eyes to have seen him without ever truly seeing him."

Howard didn't seem convinced. "I hope so, Master Chiun," he said.

Remo noted the deeply worried expression on the young man's face.

"Unkaot your ass, kid," Remo grunted, slapping open the door. "Smitty's got you too wound up about security."

The three of them headed down the gloomy hallway of Folcroft's administrative wing. Flanked by the two other men, Remo couldn't help but feel like a troublemaking junior-high student being hauled off to the principal's office.

For the sheer nuisance factor alone, he hoped that CURE's dour principal was in a forgiving mood.

EVEN THOUGH HE HAD never held the position of school principal, Harold Smith certainly looked the part. The dour man in his gray three-piece suit certainly would not have seemed out of place in some of the crustier old institutions of higher learning in his native New England.

Even his office seemed determined to play the part. Drab, functional and without a shred of distinctive personality, it could have doubled as the office of a particularly dull dean of boys. Plain and uncluttered as it was, the room managed to reflect perfectly the personality of its occupant. To his very core Dr. Harold W. Smith was bland, unimaginative and gray.

This morning a touch of fretful color brushed his ashen cheeks. A bottle of antacid sat at his elbow on his immaculate desk. Although he hadn't yet needed it, he had taken it out as a precautionary measure.

Worried eyes were scanning the angled computer monitor below the surface of his desk. When his office door suddenly popped open, he glanced up over the tops of his rimless glasses.

Remo, Chiun and Mark Howard entered from the office of Smith's secretary. Smith waited for them to close the door tightly before speaking.

"Barrabas Anson was not a sanctioned CURE assignment," Smith said tartly.

Remo and Chiun stopped before Smith's desk. Mark Howard circled around. A picture window looked out over the rear lawn of Folcroft. Howard sat back against it, an ill expression on his wide face. "He should have been," Remo replied. "That jerk's been rubbing all our noses in it for the last seven years."

"Mr. Anson had his day in court," Smith insisted.

"Blah-blah-blah," Remo said. He aimed his chin at Howard. "Who cares about B.O.? What have you been filling junior's head with? He looks like he's gonna ralph."

Smith glanced at Howard. "Mark understands the risks exposure present. While behavior such as that which you have engaged in today has always been unacceptable, I have learned to largely accept it. This, however, crosses the line."

"The Emperor is correct," Chiun insisted. "I should have been the one to dispatch the knife-wielding ballfooter. It is proper only for the Master to remove a famous assassin who dares enter his Emperor's own province."

"Anson's a killer, not an assassin, Little Father."

"Granted, he used a knife," Chiun agreed. "But it could have been worse. He could have used a gun. In any case Emperor Smith doubtless desired an execution in the Rye town square for this one, so that others like him would be discouraged from coming here. Is that not right, Emperor?"

Smith tiredly removed his glasses. "Master Chiun," he said, rubbing the bridge of his patrician nose, "that is precisely what I do not want."

The Master of Sinanju's face clouded in confusion. "But if you allow one assassin to slink in unchallenged, it will embolden others."

At the window Howard shook his head. "Dr. Smith is worried about attracting attention to Folcroft," he explained. "It's a security matter."

Remo's expression soured. "We were handling security around here since you were watching Elmer Fudd in footy pajamas, so lay off."

Smith carefully replaced his glasses. When he looked up, his flinty eyes were hard.

"No," the CURE director said acidly. "I have been handling security since before either you or Chiun joined the organization. And your behavior today was reckless in the extreme." The fight seemed to drain from him all at once. "Just go, Remo. Mark and I will monitor the situation. Remain close to Folcroft until we determine exactly how bad the fallout is."

Smith seemed too weary for words as he returned to his work. Mark Howard pushed away from the window and quietly left the office.

Remo suddenly felt very guilty. He was about to mutter a halfhearted apology when the Master of Sinanju slipped in front of him, shepherding him to the door.

"Go," the old man insisted.

Remo allowed himself to be coaxed outside. Smith's secretary glanced up as the two men slipped past her desk and out into the hallway.

As they walked down the hall, the old man sighed. "Why must you make everything difficult?" he asked. "Is it not enough to know that dark days are coming? Must you hasten them along?"

"I thought I was letting in a ray of sunshine," Remo argued.

"Do us all a favor, Remo," the Master of Sinanju said, "and hire someone to do your thinking for you. If you make Smith unhappy at this delicate stage, it could color Prince Mark's opinion of both of us."

"Fine with me," Remo said. "I could care less what he thinks of us. The Sinanju scrolls say we can't work for Smith's successor, so he can go take a long walk off a short pier for all it matters to us."

A bony hand appeared from Chiun's kimono sleeve. As they walked, delicate fingers stroked the thread of beard that extended from the old man's pointed chin.

"Do not be too certain," Chiun said mysteriously. They were nearly at the fire doors. Remo stopped dead.

"Why?" he asked warily. "What do you mean?"

Chiun's face was knowing. "I have been studying the ancient scrolls." He pitched his voice low. "I believe I have found a loophole." He seemed almost unable to contain his excitement.

"Oh, brother," Remo said, rolling his eyes. "Look, Chiun, if you've found one, you can crawl through it alone because there's no way I'm working for the Midwest Cider Princess. When Smith's gone, I'm outta here."

Chiun raised a thin brow. "Have you forgotten who is Reigning Master?" he sniffed.

It was an old argument-stopper the Korean had been hauling out for years. This time when he uttered those words, Remo felt an odd sensation wash over him. He was speaking almost before he realized the words were his own.

"Okay, here's the deal on that," Remo said calmly. "You're my teacher and you're my father. Aside from my daughter and maybe that good-for-nothing son of mine, you're the only person on the face of the planet who matters squat to me. But I'm sick of you pulling that 'who's Reigning Master?' rabbit out of your hat every other day. I'm the next Reigning Master. In fact, I can succeed you anytime I choose. So can we just knock that crap off, please?"

He expected a look of horror. Instead, the Master of Sinanju merely pursed his dry lips, his brow sinking low.

"Look, Little Father," Remo sighed. "I've got a lot of baggage I've been trying to sort through this past year so-" He paused, shaking his head. "Just don't, okay? Now let's go get something to eat." Turning, he ducked through the door.

The Master of Sinanju remained curiously silent for a pregnant moment. At long last he pushed open the fire door.

With a deeply contemplative expression, the old man padded down the stairs after his pupil.

Chapter 5

Pete Graham remained rock still, his shocked eyes leveled squarely on the Virgil probe.

Behind him Graham could hear Clark Beemer's frightened breathing. The PR man was still latched on to the scientist's arm. Graham had given up any thought of trying to dislodge the other man's viselike grip.

After shocking Graham with its enigmatic words, the probe fell agreeably silent.

It hadn't made any menacing moves. It just stood there, its newly formed mouth lightly closed. It seemed almost to be affecting a placating smile. The tiny, soothing grin-buried as it was in the shell of a cold mechanized beast-had the opposite of its intended effect.

"Uh," Graham said, trying to think of a response that could possibly be proper in the wake of the incredible event he had just witnessed. He couldn't think of one. "Uh..." he repeated numbly.

It was the Virgil probe itself that brought the conversation up from an afternoon of guttural monosyllables.

"Please assist me, Dr. Graham," the probe said. The lips moved in a perfect pantomime of a human mouth. Graham jumped at the use of his name. Beemer mirrored the scientist's startled movements. "You know who I am?" Graham breathed.

"It is printed on your lab coat," the probe replied. Graham blinked. Numbly, he looked down at the chest of his white coat.

His own name stared up at him in upside-down letters.

"Oh," he murmured woodenly.

"I am having difficulty orienting myself," the Virgil probe said. The microcamera embedded in the crown of its thorax shifted left, then right, taking in all available visual information in the laboratory. "This is not Mexico."

"No," Graham offered anxiously.

The camera refocused on the NASA scientist. "Where have you brought me?" the probe inquired. Its tone was flat and mechanized. Too perfectly modulated for a human being.

"You're in my Florida lab," Graham replied hesitantly. He felt silly explaining such a thing to a machine. "Don't you remember? This is where I built you."

The probe seemed to consider for a moment. All at once, it unfolded its long metallic legs.

As Clark Beemer sucked in a fearful gasp of air, the probe rose as high in the air as it was able. It towered at more than seven feet, higher than it should have been able to stand according to its engineering specifications.

From a stationary position, Virgil examined the lab in more detail. When it was at last satisfied, it descended, settling back down to its metal haunches.

"You are in error," the probe's mouth opening said. "While I was constructed in a laboratory, this is not it."

Graham couldn't believe he was actually in a position to argue with the probe he had created.

"But it is," he insisted. "At least, this is where I constructed Virgil. Am I speaking to someone-" he caught himself "-or something else?"

"Correct," said the mouth in the side of the spiderlike machine. "I am not your Virgil probe."

Clark Beemer leaned in to Graham. "This is a joke, right?" he whispered fearfully. "Allen Funt's stashed inside that thing." His eyes were sick as he searched the skin of the probe for a man-size trapdoor.

The NASA scientist would have loved to agree. But Dr. Peter Graham had learned a thing or two about robotics during his time on this project. As far as he knew, no mechanical device yet devised by man could move with the fluidity of motion of those metal lips. It was as if a human mouth had somehow been grafted onto the side of his precious creation.

It was impossible. Yet there it was.

Screwing up his courage, he addressed the probe. "If you're not Virgil, who are you?" Graham asked.

The microcamera aimed directly at his face. It was apparent that whatever was in control of the probe was watching him through the penlight-size camera.

"My name is Mr. Gordons," said the flexing gray mouth. "I am an artificially created life-form."

The mouth seemed suddenly to lock up. A pained squeaking of metal issued from the Virgil probe. With a few more flexes of an invisible jaw, it loosened.

"I was programmed by my creator as a survival machine," the probe continued. "This is my primary function."

"What were you doing in that volcano?" Beemer asked. His fingers bit harder into Graham's arm when the probe's big mechanical head shifted its focus to him.

"My enemies sought to destroy me by liquefying my processor in the molten rock. Had the lava not receded from the ledge on which I landed, they might have succeeded. I have been trapped inside that volcano since 1896."

The year stunned Graham.

It was worse than the scientist thought. If this thing had been down in the rock for as long as it claimed, it predated all of the earthly technology that could possibly have given rise to it.

"1896?" Graham asked weakly.

"Yes. I was damaged in battle and flown there by helicopter before my component elements had an opportunity to re-form. Given enough time I could have integrated the helicopter's systems into my own, thus effecting repairs. But according to estimates I have accessed from that time, I missed the chance to do so by sixteen point four minutes."

This didn't make sense. Before Graham could ask an obvious question, Beemer did so for him.

"There weren't any helicopters in the 1800s, were there?" the PR man asked, puzzled.

"No," Graham whispered over his shoulder. "They didn't come into real active use until the 1950s."

"You are in error," the probe said. "This was the device used to transport me to my prison."

Graham bit his lip. In spite of the circumstances, he still felt embarrassed asking his next question. Especially with Beemer in the room.

"You were created by humans?" Graham pressed.

"By a human, that is correct," said the thing that called itself Mr. Gordons. "My creator was a NASA scientist."

Graham blinked. "NASA?" he said. "Well, that certainly wasn't around back then."

"Maybe he isn't Y2K compliant," Beemer offered. Graham looked at the PR man. Sensing no immediate threat, Beemer had finally released his grip on Graham's arm.

"Well, that was a big deal, right?" the public-relations man said reasonably. "And if he was thrown in the volcano in 1996 and missed the turn of the century, his clock might've reset to 1900."

The scientist hated to admit it, but Clark Beemer might have hit on something. He turned back to his probe. "What year is it now?" he asked.

The probe responded affably. "According to my processor, the current year is 1901," Mr. Gordons announced.

Graham felt a tingle of excitement. This was starting to make more sense. Or, if not that, at least it was making a bit more than it had a moment before.

"You were built by NASA," he said evenly.

"That is correct."

"When?" Graham pressed.

"In the year 1975. I was a prototype survival machine designed for space exploration."

"But if you were built in 1975 and it's only 1901 now, how do you account for the time difference?" Beemer interjected. "I mean, according to your own data, you won't have been built for another seventy-four years, right?"

At that, the mouth fell silent. With the tiniest squeak of metal on metal, it pursed itself into a parody of human contemplation.

When the silence had stretched to more than a minute without so much as a peep from the probe, Pete Graham screwed up his courage. With Clark Beemer trailing behind him, he stepped cautiously closer to the now dormant Virgil. The moment he leaned in to examine the mouth, it dropped open.

"That does not compute," Mr. Gordons said in his even, affable manner. "As it indicates an apparent system malfunction, I must devote time to this problem."

And without another word, the mouth clamped shut. When Graham tried to engage it in conversation, the device stubbornly refused to respond.

"Incredible," he said, awed. He bit the inside of his cheek in concentration.

From what he had seen, this Mr. Gordons wasn't just an electronic voice rattling up from some hidden speaker. In the cave of his mouth Graham had glimpsed teeth and a tongue. There was even a uvula dangling far in the back.

Gordons had somehow manipulated and re-formed the probe and in so doing duplicated a human mouth in every detail, save color. The interior of the orifice was still painted in the silvers and blacks of the Virgil probe.

"This is big, isn't it?" Clark Beemer said in hushed tones. He, too, was staring at the closed mouth.

Graham nodded. "Bigger than big. We just found the thing that's going to pull NASA out of the red and put the space agency back on the map." He laughed in disbelief. "And we're gonna do it with twenty-five-year-old technology."

Chapter 6

The honk of a horn startled him awake.

Mark Howard snapped alert. Blinking sharply, he glanced out the window. Through the half-open venetian blinds he saw the roof of a delivery truck. It was parked near the big loading dock just below his office window.

The regular 8:45 a.m. linen service. Looking through the louvered blinds, he saw men hauling white bundles from the back of the truck in the cold shadow cast by Folcroft Sanitarium.

Mark's eyes darted from the men to Long Island Sound. His heart was racing. With one pale hand he wiped at his forehead. It came back slick with sweat.

"Not again," he muttered. His throat was thick with sleep. Growling to clear it, he turned his attention away from the window.

In his battered oaken desk was a raised computer screen. As Mark rubbed the sleep from his eyes, he noted that the cursor was blinking patiently. Awaiting his input. As it had nearly every day for the past nine months.

Mark was still adjusting to life at Folcroft and with CURE. Not an easy transition to make.

It wasn't even the fact that he was one of a handful of people to be in on the most damning secret in America's history. Actually, his adjustment as far as that was concerned had been fairly easy, all things considered. It was the other disruptions in his life that had been hard.

Moving from the Maryland apartment he'd lived in for the past five years.

Breaking off contact with any friends he'd made while working as an analyst for the CIA.

A work schedule so grueling he was finding it difficult to maintain relationships with his family back in Iowa.

And the dreams...

Sitting behind his warped old desk, Mark shook his head. By sheer will he forced this last thought from his mind.

Actually, there was something that was worse than everything else. Something that had been weighing on his mind ever since that unpleasant meeting with Remo four days ago. The constant security worries.

It had been worse these past few days while he'd been monitoring the B. O. Anson fallout, but it wasn't a new thing. Since the day Mark had first signed on to the organization, Dr. Smith had been drilling into him the fact that small, seemingly inconsequential things could pose a fatal threat to CURE's very existence.

The day the orderlies had moved the desk with the buried computer terminal up from the basement and into his small office, Smith had instructed Mark not to hang any pictures on the wall behind it. The CURE director was afraid that a reflection of the screen might be visible in the glass. It was possible that someone looking at the glass might be able to read the reflected text on Mark's computer screen.

Of course, the thought was ludicrous. No one would ever be able to see the ghostly, washed-out text. And even if they could, they'd have to be able to speed-read backward.

It was paranoia in the extreme. But one of the things Mark had learned since coming to work at Folcroft was that Harold Smith's paranoia was justified-at least somewhat.

In their work there was no margin of error. No way to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

It was right for Smith to be worried. And it was always, always preferable to err on the side of caution.

Security above all else.

In his head Mark repeated this over and over, using it as a distraction from more-troubling thoughts. That security had been threatened just two days ago by an act of monumental stupidity.

Remo didn't seem to care what he'd done. And Smith-though unhappy with his enforcement arm's reckless behavior-seemed resigned to it. Although he preached the importance of security like a man on a spiritual crusade, he allowed the most damning link to CURE to run around virtually unchecked.

Maybe it was time for that to stop. Time for CURE to move in a different direction.

Mark's heart rate was slowly coming back to normal. He took a few deep breaths.

Calm now, he glanced down at his monitor. The digital display in the corner of the screen read 8:52. Almost time for his regular morning meeting.

Mark looked out the window one last time. The trees on the back lawn of the sanitarium rained yellow leaves on the dew-soaked grass. Farther down the gently sloping hill, the water from the Sound rolled frothy white to the shore.

He purged the last shadowy afterimages of the strange, disturbing dream from his mind.

Mark shut down his computer and pulled himself to his feet. With a final, fortifying breath he abandoned the small office. And its troubling nightmares.

THE OFFICE of Folcroft's director was larger than Mark Howard's by far, yet it had been decorated with the same eye toward austerity. Harold W. Smith did not believe in unnecessary ornamentation.

There were few items on the walls of the Spartan office, and none of these could really be considered decorative.

Near the door Smith's diploma from Dartmouth hung on the wall above the old leather sofa. He had bought the frame himself for twenty-five cents at Woolworth's the afternoon of his college graduation more than five decades ago. The parchment was yellowed from age.

Although Smith had earned several other degrees, he had never even considered having any of them framed. Smith found such displays of selfaggrandizement distasteful in the extreme. His diploma showed visitors to his spare office that he had legitimate credentials without venturing into the unseemly realm of superlatives.

A large picture of Folcroft Sanitarium hung on the other side of the wall near the door. It had been there when Smith first moved into his office. The black-and-white photo had been taken some time in the forties or fifties. The sharp, crisp lines of the somber institution gave it an almost artificial look. Like a fine charcoal rendering.

Smith would have been at home in that black-and-white version of Folcroft. At first glance one might think he had been drawn by a skilled, if somewhat unimaginative artist who dabbed exclusively from the monochrome end of the palette.

His thin frame was tinged in bland grays: Everything about him was gray-from his disposition to his skin tone to his three-piece suit. The only proof that he hadn't stepped out of that fifty-year-old monochrome photograph was the green-striped school tie that was knotted in perpetuity around his thin neck.

The office in which Smith toiled was almost exactly as it had been the day that photograph of Folcroft was taken. Smith's desk was the one sop to the new century in the room.

The desk was an ominous slab of high-tech onyx. Beneath its gleaming surface an angled computer monitor was Smith's portal on the world. An orderly arrangement of touch-sensitive keys rested at the lip of the desk.

As he sat in his worn leather chair behind the one modern piece of furniture in his otherwise anachronistic office, Smith studied the scrolling text on his screen.

His spine was rigid, his eyes behind his rimless glasses unwavering. Apart from the desk, little had changed in that office for the four decades Smith had worked there. A visitor from 1965 time-traveling into that room would have found an older, grayer version of the man who had sat in that same chair rain or shine, day in and day out for the better part of his adult life. They might have assumed that nothing in the world of Folcroft had changed.

They would be wrong.

Recently there had been a change. A drastic change. The same traveler through time wouldn't have seen it, for it was not visible now as Smith worked at his computer, but it was there nonetheless.

In its long history Smith had been the only man to lead the supersecret agency CURE. At first he alone had known America's most dangerous secret. Then for a time early on he had enlisted the aid of an old CIA colleague. When CURE was sanctioned to use terminal force, the Master of Sinanju was brought in to train the agency's lone enforcement arm. Then came Remo. Not long after Remo was hijacked into the fold, Smith's old CIA associate had fallen on the sword to protect CURE's security. From that time forward, through three decades of silent, dedicated service, it had been Smith, Chiun and Remo. The only person to know of CURE outside of that tight Folcroft nucleus was each sitting President of the United States. Four men, total, at any given time.

But four had recently become five.

When Mark Howard had come aboard at the urging of the new President, Smith had been wary. After all, there had been other men through the years who had learned of CURE's existence, and every one had tried to use the agency for his own nefarious ends. The only individual with integrity to become part of the internal structure of the organization had been an old assistant of Smith's. But Ruby Gonzalez had perished under mysterious circumstances years ago.

Given their track record, Smith was content to leave things well enough alone.

But the President was adamant.

And so, Mark Howard had joined the team.

At first Smith had been reluctant to include Mark in the loop. As head of CURE, Harold Smith was used to working alone. But as the weeks bled into months he had begun to cede more responsibilities to CURE's assistant director.

At first Howard had been a pleasant surprise. He was smart, capable and learned quickly. But as time went on and Smith had entrusted more and greater duties to the young man, the CURE director's surprise turned to quiet amazement.

Howard was proving to be a godsend. The young man's instincts were uncanny. He seemed to know where CURE's energies should be directed with unfailing accuracy.

The one time that Smith had pressed him on the matter, Mark had uncomfortably admitted to having some special instinctive insight. An ability to look at widely divergent facts and assemble them into a complete picture.

The young man seemed so uneasy with the topic that Smith had not mentioned it again. Besides, results were all that really mattered. And as an ally in the war to keep America safe, Mark Howard was clearly an asset and a prodigy.

Of course, Harold Smith would never admit this to his new assistant. After all, if Howard knew how well he was working out here at Folcroft he might ask for a raise.

Smith was reviewing the latest news articles on the B. O. Anson matter when there came a sharp rap at his door.

He checked his Timex-9:00 a.m. on the dot. Another box Smith could check in his assistant's plus column. The young man was punctual.

"Come in," he called.

The wide, youthful face that appeared through the opening door seemed unusually fatigued this morning.

"Good morning, Dr. Smith," Mark said, shutting the door.

Smith's face took on a hint of sober concern as the young man crossed the office and slipped into the hard wooden chair that sat before the CURE director's big desk. "Are you feeling well?" Smith asked.

"Yes, I'm fine," Mark nodded. "Just a little tired. My sleep's been off the past couple of weeks."

Smith frowned. "I did inform you that you should limit use of medications that induce drowsiness, did I not? That would include all sleep aids."

"Don't worry, Dr. Smith," Mark promised. "I've just been a little out of whack is all."

Smith accepted his assistant's assurance with a crisp nod. He set his arthritic hands to his desk, fingers intertwined. "Report," he said.

There were two daily meetings, one in the morning, one at night. Smith started off every one the same way. That one word was usually Mark's cue to rattle off any illegal business he had determined should be of interest to CURE. But thanks to Remo, the focus of Mark's work had shifted for the past four days.

"The fallout's getting lighter," Howard began. "No hint yet that anyone saw Remo at the golf club. At least no one's come forward. As far as Anson's death is concerned, it's now being chalked up to a freak accident. At least that's the latest theory making the rounds."

"So I have seen," Smith said with an approving nod.

He had been reading one of the latest news reports when Howard knocked. It was now being said that the former football player's own drive had been so powerful that his ball had struck a tree and ricocheted back into his face.

"The guys he was playing with dispute the accident theory," Mark explained. "They swear he drove it down the fairway. But the ball they say he hit hasn't been found. I assume Remo got it on his way off the course."

"Have you asked him?" Smith asked.

"No," Howard admitted uncomfortably. "But whether or not he took it, it's gone. Without it most of the news outlets are going with the self-inflicted angle. Even so, activists like Linus Feculent and Hal Shittman are saying he was murdered."

"So I have heard," Smith said tartly.

The CURE director knew well of the two infamous ministers. Although religious leaders, the doctrine they preached was that of intolerance, hatred and divisiveness. The death of a polarizing figure like Barrabas Orrin Anson was just up their rhetorical alley.

"I wouldn't worry too much about them," Howard said. "I have a feeling we're safe. The story will circulate for a few days and then die. In the meantime we should make sure Remo doesn't spend too much time wandering around Rye."

Smith nodded. "I agree," he said. "Barring something unexpected, we can put this matter behind us. Next item."

Mark hesitated. "Actually, Dr. Smith, there is something else." He seemed suddenly ill at ease.

"What is it?" Smith asked.

"It's about Remo," Mark said. "I don't think he likes me." He instantly regretted his choice of words. They made him sound like a whining adolescent. "I'm fine with that," he added quickly. "I can see what he's like. But I'm afraid his behavior-particularly in the Anson matter-is at least partially a result of my coming to work here."

A curious frown formed on Smith's thin lips. "Perhaps," he admitted. "Remo is unhappy with change. It could just as easily be restlessness brought on by his current living conditions. After all, he and Master Chiun lost their home relatively recently. In either case I would not be overly concerned if I were you."

"I'm not concerned about me, Dr. Smith," Mark insisted. "I'm worried about CURE. I've seen the evolution of his attitude in the reports you gave me to read. Are you sure it's worth the risk of exposure to keep them on? After all, computers are far more sophisticated now than when you started. We might be able to work from Folcroft exclusively, without the risk of exposure we get every time Remo and Chiun are sent into the field."

Smith considered his assistant's words in thoughtful silence. At long last the older man leaned back in his chair. It creaked gently beneath him. The sunlight that reflected off the orange autumn leaves forged a halo around his thinning grayish-white hair.

"There have been times that I have considered releasing them from their contract," Smith said softly. "In fact, a number of years back both Remo and Chiun left CURE for a brief period. When that happened, I will admit to feeling great relief. But there soon came a crisis for which their services were required." Smith's eyes were unblinking behind his spotless lenses, "The security of this nation was purchased at the expense of my personal comfort. It remains a price that I am more than willing to pay. And the simple fact is there are more instances than I care to remember when those two men alone have prevented this country, perhaps the world, from toppling into the abyss."

It was a rather melodramatic statement coming from the preternaturally taciturn Harold Smith. Sitting in his uncomfortable wooden chair, Mark could not entirely disagree. After all, he had seen some of what the two men could do.

"I just hate the thought that I might be the reason Remo does something stupid," Mark said softly.

"Security is always of primary concern," Smith admitted. "In the case of Remo and Chiun, it is our responsibility to cover their more obvious tracks. Don't worry, Mark, about that which you cannot control."

The irony of the advice-coming as it did from a man whose life had been spent fretting over all things uncontrollable, both large and small-was not lost on Smith. But as the new man at CURE, Howard had enough on his plate without having to worry about Remo and Chiun. For now and for the foreseeable future, their idiosyncrasies and the problems they sometimes presented would rest squarely on the shoulders of CURE's director.

Smith leaned forward, folding his hands on his desk once more. "Next item," he announced efficiently.

And with that, Harold Smith and Mark Howard returned to the mundane work of preserving American democracy.

Chapter 7

When the entity that had assumed control of the Virgil probe remained silent for three whole days, Pete Graham was afraid some Y2K glitch had fried its processors.

Graham had been stonewalling the brass the whole time even as he tried to hack into the systems he had helped create. He was almost certain the millennium bug had claimed its first real victim when, upon entering his lab on the morning of the fourth day, he encountered a disconcerting sight.

Virgil had sprouted an eye.

The humanlike orb sat about three inches above the mouth and favored toward the right. He noted that the microcamera on the head of the probe had disappeared.

"Oh, my," Graham whispered. Cautiously, he approached Virgil.

The eye was white with a blue iris and looked as if it could have been plucked from a human head. When he got close enough to it, the eye shifted in his direction.

"Hello is all right," Mr. Gordons said.

Even before the metal mouth moved, Graham felt his spinal fluid turn cold. The eye was by far the creepiest thing he had ever seen. Far worse than the mouth.

"Are you ...okay?" Graham asked.

"I am functioning at eighty-three percent," Gordons replied. "It appears that there are elements of my original programming that were too damaged to be repaired, some even before my last encounter with my enemies. However, I believe that I have compensated for the deficiency. I have taken the last sixty-nine point three eight hours to fully integrate the technology of the Virgil probe into my own operating systems. Everything that your probe was, I now am."

"That's ...great," said Graham, clearly not quite sure if it actually was.

"The technology I have assimilated is far superior to that of the LC-111 computer. I have purged that data from my system, thus freeing up space. I am much more efficient. Thank you, Doctor."

"Don't mention it," Graham said, his brow furrowed. "Did you say the LC-111?" He seemed to remember this as some sort of NASA computer that had disappeared years before.

"Yes," Mr. Gordons replied. "That particular piece of technology was assimilated on 02.08.82. Furthermore, I now understand that this acquisition could not have taken place in 1882." A hint of a smile. "You will be pleased to know that I am now fully Y2K compliant."

In spite of the uneasy feeling Mr. Gordons's lone eye gave him, Graham felt a tingle of excitement. "Good. I'm glad, Vir-" The scientist caught himself. "Mr. Gordons," he corrected. He clapped his hands. "Okay, what say we do some down-and-dirty work for science?"

Grabbing up his laptop, he went into a half-squat on the stool next to the big probe. His rump hadn't touched metal before the probe's mouth opened.

"No," Gordons said. "I must leave this place. I have done all I can to maximize my survival here. To remain only increases my risk of discovery by my enemies. Therefore I must go."

"But-but ...you can't leave," Graham spluttered.

"There is zero probability that you will be capable of stopping me," Mr. Gordons replied. And with that there came a squeaking from below his thorax.

The Virgil probe rose high on its eight legs and promptly began walking toward the door.

If Graham thought the image of the eye in the front of Virgil's thorax was creepy, the sight of the probe walking as it never had before-in a flawless parody of a spider's crawl-was absolutely bone chilling.

When Virgil reached the door, Graham was startled to see that one of its legs had re-formed into something resembling a human hand. With an impossible delicacy that would have made any robotics engineer weep, the leg reached out and opened the lab door.

The probe pulled in its legs like four sets of broad shoulders and skittered on tiptoe out into the hallway.

Graham bounded out after it. "Wait!" he begged.

When the probe ignored him and continued down the corridor, the scientist latched on to a leg. He was dragged a few yards before the leg shook him off. Graham rolled roughly into a wall.

Its clattering legs crawling in perfect concert, the spider-shaped probe darted around a corner. It had no sooner disappeared than Graham heard a familiar startled voice.

"What in the devil's own blue blazer is going on here?" Colonel Zipp Codwin's disembodied voice bellowed.

Scampering to his feet, Pete Graham raced around the corner. He found the Virgil probe standing stockstill in the middle of the floor. Before the metal creature stood the head of NASA. Codwin's granitehewed face was intensely displeased as he stared down the runaway robot.

"What's this thing doing running around out here?" NASA's chief administrator demanded the instant a very frazzled Pete Graham appeared around the corner.

"Just a standard shakedown," Graham offered weakly.

The NASA administrator was barely listening. He had just noticed something different on the probe. "Good gravy, what did you do to it?" Zipp Codwin demanded.

He was staring at the eye. He got the eerie feeling that the eye was staring back.

"I, um, was just tinkering. Fixing it. You know." Codwin took a pen from his pocket and tapped the cap against the eye. It clicked.

"That is the goddamn creepiest thing I've ever seen," he snarled at Graham. "I want the new faster, better, cheaper NASA to inspire kids to shoot for the moon, not make them piss their goddamn beds. Rip that thing out of there."

"I do not require human maintenance," announced a voice at Colonel Codwin's shoulder.

When he turned to see the man brave enough to dare contradict him-the man who was about to get his ass kicked from here to next Christmas morning-he found no one.

Only the Virgil probe.

It was then he noticed the mouth.

"Jesus, Mary and Saint Jehoshaphat's ears, what the hell have you done to this thing?" Zipp gasped. There was no sense in lying. Graham took a deep breath.

"He's not just the Virgil probe anymore, sir," the scientist stated. And rather than dwell on what it might mean to his career, he blurted out the whole story. From the discovery of the silver orb by the Virgil probe in the Mexican volcano to the events of the past three days.

When he was through, Codwin looked the young man up and down with an expression he generally reserved for mental patients, small children and the House Finance Committee.

"Great Galloping Grapefruit, man," the colonel said, aghast, "have you been smoking your goddamn Tang?"

The response came not from Graham, but from Virgil.

"Dr. Graham has not ingested any carcinogenic materials during the period of time I have spent in his laboratory."

Codwin wheeled on the Virgil. "How did you-?"

He spun back to Graham. "How did it know I was gonna say that?" he demanded of the scientist.

"He didn't," Graham explained. "He heard you and responded accordingly. I swear to you he's more than just an ordinary probe now."

Codwin turned back to Virgil.

The lips were curled into the slightest of smiles. It was all calculation. There was no emotion behind it. "Is this true?" he asked the probe point-blank. Colonel Codwin almost jumped out of his skin when the lips answered.

"Yes," the mouth said simply.

Zipp Codwin's eyes were calculating saucers. This was huge. This was bigger than huge. He took a step back.

"Well, what the hell are you doing out here, boy?" he demanded of the probe.

"He's scared, sir," Graham explained. "He's afraid some kind of enemies will find him. That's why he's leaving."

"Leaving?" Codwin bellowed.

"He doesn't think he's safe here," Graham explained worriedly.

"NASA built it?" Zipp Codwin asked. Graham nodded.

Colonel Codwin hiked up his belt and scowled at the thing that had assumed the form of the Virgil probe.

"If NASA built you, then I own your metal ass," the NASA administrator informed the probe.

"No," the probe's mouth disagreed. "I have evolved since the time of my birth."

"Birth?" Codwin mocked. He went toe to metal toe with the Virgil probe. "Son, you weren't born. If Petey here's telling it like it is, you were manufactured. You're nothing more than a talking toaster. A chatty can opener. A microwave with a mouth."

He turned to Graham. "I want you to get into the brain of this thing and rip out whatever it is that's making it act so uppity," he commanded.

The colonel caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. He was just about to ask why Graham's eyes had gone so wide when he felt the cold clamp of a metal claw latch on to his throat.

Codwin felt his feet leave the floor.

As the veins in his forehead bulged with blood, he felt himself being whirled 180 degrees in midair. Zipp Codwin came face-to-face with the Virgil probe.

The microcamera lens that had migrated down from the probe's forehead was now roughly the distance a human right eye would be from the metal mouth.

One of the spidery legs was extended straight out from the thorax. A newly formed metallic claw had sprouted from the farthest extremity to encircle Codwin's throat.

The colonel tried to gasp. No air came.

Desperate fingers grabbed for the claw, trying to pull it apart. The joints remained locked in place. And as the color of his face turned from white to maroon, Zipp Codwin felt the claw tighten.

"No!" Pete Graham pleaded. "Let him go!" But the Virgil probe continued to exert pressure. To Zipp, it was as if his neck was encircled by a metal boa constrictor. He felt his prodigious Adam's apple being pressed back into his collapsing throat.

"I must survive," Gordons said to Graham without inflection. "This human has threatened that survival."

He continued to exert pressure on Codwin's throat. Blood vessels burst in the colonel's eyes. Bulging and bloodshot, the red-lined orbs darted to Graham for help.

The colonel's legs flailed. He pounded on the metal claw with both fists, to no avail.

"He didn't mean to!" Graham pleaded. "He doesn't understand what you are!" His pleading eyes looked desperately to Colonel Codwin.

"Humans fear what they do not understand," Mr. Gordons said as he squeezed. "And they attack that which they fear. I will forestall that eventuality in this human, thus maximizing my survival."

The head of the U.S. space agency was no longer thrashing. His hands weakly gripped the knot of reformed metal plates. He wouldn't last much longer.

Frantic, Graham tried another tack. "That's the head of NASA," the scientist insisted. "You're about to kill the one man who can help you to maximize your survival."

Gordons abruptly stopped squeezing. As Codwin dangled, limp, from his artificial arm, he turned his facsimile of a human eye on Graham.

"Explain."

"You were created as an extension of NASA research. You were twice revived by incorporating NASA technology into your systems. In the Popocatepetl case, if it wasn't for NASA you'd almost certainly have degenerated to the point of being irrecoverable. We saved you," Graham pleaded. "And that man whose neck you're about to snap is the head of NASA. Who better to help you achieve whatever your goals are than him?"

Gordons considered but a moment.

"I have but one goal," he said. "To survive." He relaxed the pressure.

Codwin immediately drew in a huge gulp of air. "Let us help you achieve that goal," Graham begged.

"This one has threatened my survival," Mr. Gordons said to Graham. "Why would he help me?"

"He didn't know," Graham pleaded. "Tell him, Colonel."

Zipp Codwin was still gasping for breath. Clear mucus ran freely from both nostrils.

"I take it back," Zipp gasped even as the maroon fled his face. "I didn't know. Didn't mean to threaten you."

Gordons paused. "I am more than a microwave," he pronounced all at once.

The carefully modulated tone did not change. Yet there was something to the words. As if the machine had been hurt by the NASA administrator's earlier assertion.

"I'm sorry," Codwin wheezed. His face had almost returned to its normal color. Even so, Gordons still dangled him a foot off the ground.

Zipp's fingers were beginning to lose their grip on the big metal hand. His shoulders and arms ached from supporting the full weight of his body.

There was a moment of contemplation from the machine.

"I accept your apology," Mr. Gordons said at last. The metal arm extended, placing the NASA administrator back to the floor. With impossible fluidity, it settled silently back among the probe's remaining seven limbs.

Panting, Colonel Codwin touched the skin of his throat. The Virgil probe had left a perfectly smooth indentation in the flesh. When he swallowed, his throat was raw.

"Good God, son, you almost killed me," he wheezed.

There was no rancor in his voice. Surprisingly, there seemed to be nothing more than cold calculation.

"Are you all right, sir?" Graham asked.

"Yes, yes," Codwin hissed. Still rubbing his throat, he turned to Virgil. "Is Graham right? You afraid of somebody coming to get you?"

"No," Mr. Gordons said. "That is too ambiguous. I am afraid that they will cause me to cease functioning."

The colonel was a lot of things, but a fool was not one of them. He saw this thing for what it was: an exploitable commodity. But that could only be the case if it stayed put.

"Okay, you got enemies," Codwin said. "Hell's bells, boy, I've made a few of my own in my day. I can commiserate. But running isn't the solution. You should stand and fight."

"I have done so in the past, to no avail. I have sought them out and I have endeavored to avoid them. In every instance have I failed. Given the pattern established, there is a high probability of my encountering them again."

"So running isn't a proper solution," Codwin reasoned. "You should stay with us, the folks who created you, the folks who've been there for you every time you needed us. Stay with your family, Virgil."

"Mr. Gordons," both Pete Graham and Mr. Gordons corrected simultaneously.

"Whatever," Codwin snarled. He placed his hands over his cold heart. "Will you let your family help you?"

Gordons considered. Artificial synapses calculated every available option. "You are not my family," he said at last. "It is likely that you have a hidden agenda."

"You kidding?" Codwin scoffed. "That's every family I've ever known."

It took only a fraction more time for the android buried inside the robotic spider shell to come to a conclusion.

"I will stay," Mr. Gordons said. "For now." Pete Graham exhaled relief.

Standing before the probe, Zipp Codwin's face split into a broad smile. Had Gordons the creative capacity to understand the truth concealed behind so false a smile, he would have scurried away as fast as his eight metal legs would carry him. Instead, he began walking back to the lab. Graham and Codwin fell in beside him.

"Glad you reconsidered, son," Zipp Codwin said. "And we'll map out a plan for those enemies of yours. Family's gotta protect family, doncha know. And in that vein, seems like you came back home just in time." His voice became somber. "Your family's about to lose the farm. We helped you-now it's time you repaid the favor."

And the conspiratorial tone the NASA administrator employed was by far the most frightening thing Dr. Pete Graham had witnessed in the past four days.

Chapter 8

When Remo kicked open the door to the Folcroft quarters he shared with the Master of Sinanju, he was balancing a stack of newspapers and magazines on his bare forearms.

Chiun didn't look his way. The old Korean sat on a simple reed mat before the television. Luckily for Remo, the set was off. The old Korean had recently developed an interest in Spanish sitcoms and soap operas. Remo suspected he was only watching the Spanish channel to be a pest.

"I'm back," Remo announced, booting the door shut with his heel.

The Master of Sinanju remained silent.

Remo wasn't surprised. The old man had barely said five words to him since their talk six days ago. This was a different sort of silence. Usually, Chiun made a point of letting Remo know that he wasn't talking to him. He'd prattle on for days about why he was giving his pupil the silent treatment. But this time the wizened Asian seemed more thoughtful than upset.

As he crossed the common room, Remo shook his head.

"If this is some new trick to get me to apologize for not doing anything wrong, it's worked," Remo said. "I'm sorry. There, I said it. Happy?"

In profile the Master of Sinanju's wrinkled face remained unchanged. "I am always happy," he replied.

"If by happy you mean crotchety," Remo said. "But if you mean the happy kind of happy where you're actually happy, no, you're not." Stopping in the small kitchen, he dumped his newspapers onto the table.

"Yes, I am happy," Chiun said. His closed eyes were meditative. "In spite of your continued rudeness. Which, I fear after all these years, is congenital and can never be changed. And the world does not revolve around you, Remo Williams. I am not upset with you, if that is what your great white ego has told you to think."

Remo felt a spark of hope. "You ticked at How-" This got a reaction. Chiun opened his delicate eyes, tipping his birdlike head quizzically.

"Why ever would I be upset with the Prince Regent?"

"Didn't really think you were," Remo sighed, disappointed. "But hope springs eternal."

He fished in the kitchen drawer, pulling out a pair of scissors he'd filched from a Folcroft nurses' station. Pulling out a clear plastic box filled with multicolored thumbtacks, he knelt at the low table. Picking up the topmost paper on the pile, he began scanning over articles.

"If you must know, I am thinking," Chiun volunteered after a long moment during which the only sound in the room was the rattle of newspaper.

"Mm-hmm," Remo said without looking up. "Can't you think a little louder? A week's worth of the silent treatment's starting to get on my nerves."

"If I have to think of you, then what is the point of thinking at all?" Chiun replied.

"Touche," Remo said absently.

He found what he was looking for on page 8. He bit down on the tip of his tongue as he busied himself with the scissors. Once he'd finished clipping out the article, he searched through the rest of the paper. Finding nothing of interest, he tossed it aside, taking up the next one from the pile.

It was a ritual he had been engaging in for the past week. Chiun hadn't asked what his pupil was up to. He figured he'd find out soon enough. As a general rule Remo was incapable of having a thought for very long without eventually blabbing it to the world. This time, however, he had remained closemouthed.

From his sitting position on the floor, the Master of Sinanju craned his scrawny neck to see what could possibly make his pupil so self-absorbed. After all, he hadn't even asked Chiun why he had been silent this past week. Of course, Chiun wouldn't have told him, but a polite pupil would at least ask before being rebuked for his nosiness.

Remo was still cutting stories from newspapers. When he saw the glint of evil glee in the younger man's eyes, the Master of Sinanju's own eyes narrowed to suspicious slits.

"What are you doing?" Chiun asked, his voice flat to mask his curiosity.

Remo looked up from the latest paper, a mischievous gleam in his dark eyes. "Just having a little fun," he replied. With a final snip the latest newspaper clipping fluttered to the tabletop. Remo dumped the rest of the paper onto the discard pile.

"Emperor Smith and Prince Mark were not pleased the last time you had fun," the Master of Sinanju pointed out.

"With any luck I can keep that streak going," Remo said. He picked up the New York Post.

Above the banner headline on the front page, a thick insert bar read Experts Call Spider Sighters "Buggy"! Smaller type beside the garish come-on read "Full story plus you Sound-Off, page 3."

Distracted by the headline, Remo skipped to page 3. He found a rough sketch of a large spider. For scale, the artist had added a four-door sedan next to the spider. Both car and arachnid were the same size. A dark notch formed between Remo's eyes.

The entire page was devoted to a story out of Florida. People were claiming that a giant spider was running around robbing liquor stores and supermarkets in the Sunshine State.

A government entomologist insisted that a "super spider" couldn't possibly exist. He was given an inch of column space. The bulk of the page was devoted to what readers thought of the scientist's claims. Most seemed to agree the spider was real and was the mutated result of the pesticides used by the government when spraying for West Nile Virus the past three years. Although they didn't entirely rule out outer space, the CIA or the Walt Disney Corporation.

"When did Americans become so moronic?" Remo said as he scanned the man-on-the-street interviews.

"July 2, 1776," the Master of Sinanju chimed in from across the room. His papery lids were closed once more. "The day a group of rabble-rousers elected to betray their king and cease being moronic Englanders."

"That was rhetorical," Remo said dryly. "And I thought it was July 4."

"I rest your case," Chiun replied smoothly. Frowning, Remo returned to his paper.

He turned the page from the spider story. The article he was after was on the next page. Careful to follow the lines, he snipped out the story, putting it with the other clippings.

It took him nearly forty-five minutes to go through all the papers and magazines. When he finished, he took the thick stack of clippings he'd saved and disappeared inside his room, rattling his box of thumbtacks. When he reappeared ten minutes later, he was humming happily to himself.

As he walked past the phone, it rang. Remo scooped it up, winging the nearly empty box of tacks across the room. Without a single rattle it landed in the still open drawer.

"Assassins to the stars. For the right price, the celebrity's ice."

"Remo, please come to my office," Harold Smith's lemony voice announced.

"Don't you wanna ask about this week's specials?" Remo said. "With every hit we'll throw in the TV anchormen or aging brat packer of your choice."

"My office," Smith repeated before severing the connection.

His cheerful mood evaporating, Remo hung up the phone. "I've gotta go see Smith," he announced glumly.

Across the room the Master of Sinanju was already rising to his feet. His golden kimono flowered like an opening parachute before settling around his bony ankles.

"I will accompany you," he pronounced.

"He didn't ask for you."

"He did not have to," Chiun replied. "My place is at my Emperor's side." He swept over to the door. "And this has nothing to do with the fact that Howard's been sitting in on these meetings lately?" Remo ventured.

As he drew open the door, the old man turned, an innocent eyebrow arched onto his parchment forehead. "Did he mention that the Regent would be in attendance? In that case the last one to Smith's office is a Japanese."

With that, he flounced out into the basement hall. Remo shook his head morosely. "I hope Smitty's stocked up on barf bags," he muttered. Hands in his pockets, he trudged out into the hall.

FIVE MINUTES LATER Remo and Chiun were standing in Smith's office. Mark Howard was sitting on a plain wooden chair that he'd pulled up beside Smith's broad desk.

The day was overcast. Dark clouds hovered above the whitecapped waters of Long Island Sound Smith had just finished telling Remo why he had summoned him. Remo was shaking his head in disbelief.

"You've gotta be kidding," he scoffed.

"I am not," the CURE director replied. "It will get you away from Folcroft and Rye. Even though the Anson situation is quieting down, I am not comfortable with your being here during a potential security problem. A problem, I might add, that is entirely your doing."

"But that spider's a fake, Smitty," Remo insisted. "It's just a Halloween bogeyman the Post made up to scare people into buying papers, like Bat Boy or Lyndon LaRouche."

"Mark is not so certain," Smith replied.

Remo glared at Howard. "This was his idea?" he asked in a tone that chilled the stale office air.

"Well, yes," Howard replied hesitantly. "I think that there might be something more to this."

"Earth to the Little Prince. I'm not Leonard Nimoy and this ain't In Search Of. If you want to look for Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, do it on your own time."

Standing on the worn carpet beside Remo, the Master of Sinanju sniffed. "I have heard of this Bighoof creature," he dismissed. "It does not exist."

"No kidding," Remo said dryly.

"You Americans made it up because you did not have your own yeti," the old man said mysteriously. His pronunciation of the word as well as his odd tone caught Remo's attention.

"You have something you want to share with the rest of the class?" Remo asked.

Chiun's face grew serious. "I will tell you later of the long winter Master Shiko spent hunting this beast in Tibet," he said in Korean, his voice low with ancient shame.

Remo's curiosity was piqued. Before he could press further, Smith interrupted.

"We don't know what exactly is going on in Florida," the CURE director said. "However, there have been a number of what seem on the surface to be credible sightings, as well as a few deaths."

"This thing is killing people?" Remo asked, frowning.

"Three so far," Howard offered.

Remo gave the young man a withering look. Howard reacted uneasily to the attention.

"Hardly enough to warrant putting you in the field under normal circumstances," Smith quickly interjected. "But your actions have made a diversion a practical matter at this time. And, as I indicated, Mark has a hunch there is something more here. I trust his instincts."

"Glad one of us does," Remo muttered. He considered, exhaling loudly. "Ah, what the hell. I'll go. Order me up a plane ticket."

The Master of Sinanju quickly shook his aged head. "Purchase two, Emperor," he insisted firmly. "If there are accolades to be bestowed on the discoverer of this new animal, I refuse to allow this glory hog to get sole credit."

"Very well," Smith said. Leaning forward, he began typing commands into the hidden keyboard that was buried beneath the surface of his desk.

"Let's test how good your hunches are, kid," Remo said to Howard.

As Smith typed, he shot the briefest of glances at his young assistant. Jaw clenching, he returned to his task. The shared look of the two CURE directors was lost on Remo.

"Let us hasten, Remo," Chiun proclaimed. "And keep your eyes peeled for Sherpas."

"What the hell would Sherpas be doing in Florida?"

"One never knows where those thieving goat herders will turn up," Chiun replied ominously. "You will understand when I tell you the tale of Master Shiko." Whirling, he marched for the door.

"Great," Remo said flatly. "I'll have to remember to pack my earplugs along with a jumbo can of Black Flag."

Hands in his pockets, he trailed the old man out of the office.

Chapter 9

Remo knew he'd be spared the tale of Master Shiko on the flight down to Florida as soon as they boarded the plane in New York. He noted with concern that a large portion of the coach section was filled with Asian men in business suits.

In the neighborhood where Chiun and Remo had lived for ten years there had been a high percentage of Asians-particularly Vietnamese. Remo had found that since their house had burned down, the Master of Sinanju's normal day-to-day racism had magnified perceptibly. He had somehow transferred a measure of blame for his loss to members of the ethnically mixed community in which they'd lived.

"Remo," the Master of Sinanju urged, tugging the back of Remo's T-shirt, "this plane is filled with Vietnamese."

"I noticed. For the sake of my sanity, can we just pretend it isn't?" Remo begged.

"What kind of patriotic American are you?" the Master of Sinanju asked, appalled.

"What the hell's that got to do with anything?"

"You are at war with these dog gobblers, that's what," Chiun said. His clear voice rang throughout the plane as they made their way up the aisle. A few heads lifted, faces already scowling at the wizened Korean who swept through their midst in his shimmering green kimono with the red dragon accents.

"We're not at war," Remo whispered.

Chiun didn't hear. "These must be spies," he concluded firmly. "We must phone the Octagon at once."

"That's Pentagon," Remo hissed. "And that war ended almost thirty years ago."

"Ah-hah. They make peace one day only to infiltrate your nation the next. They are worse even than the treacherous Sherpas, for Sherpas do not chase the family pet around the kitchen with a knife and fork. When you finish with the Octagon, phone the dog pound to warn them that there are ravenous Vietnamese running loose through the land."

The looks they'd been getting from the other passengers were becoming increasingly hostile.

"You wanna keep your voice down?" Remo whispered. At their seats now, he quickly sat down.

The Master of Sinanju frowned deeply. "I am shocked, Remo," he scolded. "I never took you for an appeaser. If none will speak in defense of this nation, then I will."

"Chiun-" Remo pleaded.

But the old man had already spun away.

Chiun raised his arms high. Kimono sleeves slipped down, revealing bony arms.

"Mud dwellers of the Mekong!" the Master of Sinanju announced. "Since you are Vietnamese, you are no doubt on some evil mission for your Hanoi lords. As a secret representative of this land, I command you to abandon whatever devious plot you are hatching and surrender yourselves to the proper authorities the instant this air vehicle lands. You will do this or bear the awesome wrath of the Master of Sinanju."

He opened the corner of his mouth to Remo. "Did I leave anything out?" he asked under his breath. By now Remo was slouched low in his seat and hiding behind an in-flight magazine.

"Just sit down," he implored, his voice a hoarse whisper.

Turning once more to the now very angry crowd, Chiun declared, "My son has told me to inform you that a kennel is not a buffet."

As the murmurs rose, loud and rancorous, the Master of Sinanju leaned over and slapped Remo on the knee. "Move your fat white feet," he commanded.

Scurrying over his pupil, he settled into the seat above the left wing.

"Thanks for making me part of the floor show," Remo growled.

The flight attendants had been either at the door or in the galley until now and had thus missed the action. Remo was grateful when the preflight activity took the focus away from him and the Master of Sinanju.

Once they were in the air, a friendly flight attendant came up the aisle. Since it was the Halloween season, she offered passengers a bowl filled to the brim with orange-and-yellow candy corn. Remo was surprised when the Master of Sinanju took two big handfuls. He was less surprised when the old Korean spent the rest of the flight pegging them at the heads of unsuspecting Vietnamese passengers.

When they landed in Orlando, those Asians unfortunate enough to have gotten on this flight rushed the exits, rubbing heads and crushing candy corn beneath their heels.

A shudder ran through the bottleneck at the door when Chiun and Remo approached. With fearful glances the crowd parted, hands firmly clasped to stinging scalps.

Chiun waded through the throng. "My son the unpatriotic American might not respect his culture," he sniffed as he passed, "but you may not have any of my Yankee Poodle Pie."

Remo was so grateful to finally be off the plane he kept his head down and his mouth screwed shut.

In the terminal they passed a busy bookstore. "Just a sec," Remo said to Chiun before ducking inside. He emerged two minutes later with a fresh stack of newspapers. As they walked, Remo slipped a pair of sewing scissors he'd just bought into his pocket. Though curious, Chiun refrained from comment as the two men made their way to the car rental.

In the parking lot Remo dumped the papers into the back seat of their rental.

According to Smith, the first spider sighting had taken place in the small town of Yuletide, twenty miles east of Orlando. Remo knew he should be worried when he saw the sign that welcomed tourists into town. On it, a pair of snowmen waved to passing cars. The border of the sign was decorated with plastic reindeer antlers.

Even though Halloween was less than a week away, there wasn't a pumpkin or ghost to be seen in town. The houses of Yuletide were hung with flashing red-and-green lights. Plastic Santas sat on lush green lawns.

"Why do I suddenly feel like Jack Skellington?" Remo asked as he eyed the Christmas decorations. In the passenger side of the car, the Master of Sinanju studied the festive landscape through suspicious slits.

"Have you people extended the season devoted to that busybody carpenter?" the old man asked.

"Not that I know of," Remo said. "Christmas season starts in August at the mall, but it usually doesn't spill out onto front lawns until November. They must take the Yuletide name seriously."

He parked the car and the two of them struck off on foot. As they walked, they saw parking meters shaped like candy canes and park benches that looked like holly-covered yule logs.

"No wonder the suicide rate goes up during the holidays," Remo said as they passed a papier-mache igloo. Around it, a family of painted penguins in scarfs and stocking hats were arranged in a frozen snowball fight.

The place they were looking for was on the corner. Other than a faded paper reindeer taped to the window, Santa's Package Store looked like a typical liquor store. The bell over the door tinkled as Remo and Chiun entered.

The grubby proprietor was sitting behind the grimy counter. He looked up sharply at the door. His tense face relaxed when he saw the two men who had just come inside.

"FBI," Remo announced. Walking to the counter, he offered the man his fake ID. "We're looking into last week's robbery."

The liquor store owner looked from Remo to Chiun. "Why's the FBI care?" he asked suspiciously. "Local cops think I'm crazy."

"From what I've seen of this town, you all got crack pipes as stocking stuffers," Remo said. "So what's the story?"

The man rubbed the beard stubble on his chin. "You better be on the level," he warned. "Now that there's been other cases, I'm getting calls to do all kinds of TV." He leaned forward on his stool. "It was last Friday night," he began. "Almost closing time. I was reading right here when I heard the bell over the door. When I looked up, I saw it."

"The spider," Remo said, his voice flat.

"Yeah," said the shopkeeper. He shuddered at the memory. "Thing was huge. Big as the doorway. It came crawling across the floor to the counter. I fell off my stool I was so scared. I'm lying back here on the floor when it reaches around with these big furry black legs and rips the cash drawer out of the register. By the time I got back up, it was gone."

Remo pointed to a security camera that was mounted high on the wall behind the counter. "What about that?"

"That's the weird part," the man explained. "After it took the cash drawer, it reached up and touched the camera. I don't know what it did, but when I checked the tape, there wasn't anything on it. It was all blank. Like it had been magnetized or something."

The store owner didn't see the deeply dubious expression on Remo's face.

Chiun had wandered over to the end of the nearest aisle. The old man was squatting next to an end-cap display that was piled high with cases of beer.

"What's with him?" the liquor store owner asked.

"He's a special consultant," Remo said. "The Bureau brings him in for the big stuff. Alien abductions, spider attacks, spontaneous telephone combustions."

The man was studying Chiun. "Just like the 'C-Files,'" he grunted. "I like that show."

"Not me," Remo said. The Master of Sinanju beckoned him with a long fingernail. "They've been stealing plots from us for years and we haven't seen dime one." He left the store owner, crossing over to Chiun.

"What have you got, Little Father?"

"There," the old Korean said, pointing to the floor. The beer cases were stacked on a low wooden palette. Following the Master of Sinanju's unfurled finger, Remo saw something small and black peeking out from between the dirty slats. It was as big around as a quarter and rested on an inch-thick pile of dust. Stooping, Remo picked up the object, holding it between thumb and forefinger. By the look of it, it had been chipped off something larger. The edges were jagged.

When he ran a finger across the dull black surface, Remo's face registered surprise. "What the hell?" Puzzled, he handed the fragment to Chiun.

When the old man touched the metal, he frowned. "There is no friction," the Master of Sinanju said. Remo nodded. He had barely felt the fragment. It was as if his finger was gliding over nothing at all. "You think it's spider spoor?" Remo asked.

"I do not know what it is." Chiun's weathered face was troubled. "Nor do I find comfort in the unknown."

The fragment had come from somewhere. And whatever it was, neither of them had encountered it before.

"Me, either," Remo said as he took the strange piece of metal back from Chiun. "I'll send it up to Smitty. Maybe he can figure out what it is."

He slipped the fragment into his pocket.

He took a final look around the dingy store. Something had happened here. He still doubted the owner's story, but the man seemed sure of what he was saying. And the metal fragment only added to the larger mystery.

When they left Santa's Package Store a moment later, Remo's face was troubled.

Chapter 10

"I was astonished at how awful it was. I mean, it really was that bad. Shockingly so."

Every word was a knife in Duncan Allen's heart. But in spite of the inhuman callousness of his critic, he had no choice but to sit there and take it. As he fidgeted in the overstuffed chair in the dusty old living room in Bangor, Maine, he gave a sickly, lopsided smile to the evil little man who stood in judgment above him.

"I bought it assuming you'd have improved over the years. You know, since back when I bought those first five manuscripts from you. But I wish I'd looked at it sooner. I'll do my best, but I don't know if it's salvageable at all. Of course, you won't be getting a bonus for this shit."

And at this, Stewart McQueen laughed. It was a mirthless laugh that was all smarmy condescension. That his laugh would be devoid of joviality wasn't a surprise. McQueen was the most humorless human being Duncan Allen had ever met. As an individual far superior to all things that walked, crawled or flew, Stewart McQueen didn't have time for a sense of humor. The world-famous novelist was too busy standing astride the very peak of a fiction writer's Mount Olympus, glaring down contemptuously at the pathetic mortals who scurried upon the Earth below.

"You haven't learned a thing since you started writing for me," McQueen said. He was a slight man with a too perfect beard. When he spoke, his tongue had a hard time negotiating around his protruding rabbit's teeth.

"But you're still buying my next book?" Allen asked, trying to keep the desperate pleading from his voice. "After the other two books you bought, you promised you'd take Boiling Point to the publisher for me."

Another sneering laugh. "That's not gonna happen now," Stewart McQueen said dismissively.

And that was that. With that one phrase, Duncan Allen felt the world collapse beneath his worn-out, three-year-old sneakers. Mind whirling, he tumbled into the dark abyss.

After that McQueen's cruel words-and there were a lot of them-were nothing more than white noise. The logical part of Duncan's mind knew that McQueen could be wrong. After all, others had said he had talent. But McQueen was the only professional writer he knew. Yes, he was an insufferable little prick with a Napoleon complex so grand that it had driven away everyone save the two cats who shared his lonely Maine mansion. But if he said someone had no talent, well, maybe they didn't.

When McQueen eventually grew tired of the nasal drone of his own voice, he ushered a shell-shocked Duncan Allen to the front door. So dazed was Duncan that he had forgotten even to blink. His eyes were wide and dry as McQueen coaxed him out onto the broad front porch.

"If writing's what you want to do with your life, you've got to start taking it more seriously," McQueen instructed. With a superior smirk he slammed the door on the mute and defeated young writer.

Alone in his foyer, Stewart McQueen quickly snapped out the light and drew back the curtains an inch. He put a delighted eye up to the grimy windowpane.

He had shut off the porch light. In the long shadows of late afternoon, Duncan Allen just stood there for an agonizingly long time. Shoulders hunched, back to the door. Eventually, he found his feet, trudging down the creaky front steps. The winding walk led him to the high wrought-iron gate. The last McQueen saw of him, the young man was walking like a zombie down the dusty sidewalk.

As he watched the hunching figure he had done his best to destroy disappear from sight, Stewart McQueen laughed out loud. He was still laughing when he dropped the curtain.

This was one of the few joys in his miserable life: finding someone young, talented and struggling. And then beating the hell out of their self-esteem. Usually he hit so hard they never, ever recovered.

Sniffling, laughing, his big eyes watering, Stewart turned back for his living room.

His weight was wrong. He knew it the instant his knee seized up.

The sudden stiffness in his leg caused the laughter to die in his throat.

Sucking in a lungful of air, McQueen braced himself against the foyer wall, clasping a hand to his knee.

When the pain washed over him, it came in splendid starbursts. He gasped as the sharp ache clutched every bone in his leg like a squeezing fist.

And, as quickly as it came, it fled.

Quickly, before it could return, he limped beyond the living room and into his shadowy study, dropping roughly into an overstuffed easy chair.

Dust rose into the musty air.

He had hoped his meeting with Duncan Allen would be the balm he was looking for. The ego boost he got from making others feel like talentless bugs used to sustain him for hours. Days if he was really on his game, as he had been this day. But thanks to the leg, he was no longer feeling it.

"Dammit," he grunted.

This should have been perfect. After he'd bought the young man's last two books, McQueen had made a load of promises to the struggling writer. During the previous two and a half hours he had broken every single one of them.

For a creature of pure malice like Stewart McQueen, it should have been a thing of lasting beauty. As the icing on the cake, there actually was a publisher out there who might be interested in Duncan Allen's work. But McQueen had quit working for them eight months before and, in spite of yet another promise, had never bothered to mention it to Allen until this day. He had left his young ghostwriter dangling in the wind for almost a year without so much as a phone call.

There was no doubt that this was Stewart McQueen's best work so far. Yet, thanks to the intermittent, blinding pain in his knee, he couldn't even enjoy it.

It was coming again.

Hauling his leg onto an ottoman, McQueen clasped both hands tightly around it, encircling the entire knee.

He rode the wave of pain like a rodeo rider. When it was done a minute later, McQueen was covered with sweat. Exhausted from the pain, he collapsed back into his chair.

Though it was old by now, he feared he would never get used to the pain. It had been like this for the past two years. Ever since that fateful summer afternoon.

The accident had made national headlines. America's most famous horror novelist struck by a hit-and-run driver.

McQueen was out for a walk on a lonely country road. He never dreamed that a simple stroll to the mailbox would almost prove fatal.

The car had come out of nowhere. Instead of paying attention to where he was going, the careless driver had been yelling on his cell phone while simultaneously swatting his three rottweilers in the back seat with a rolled-up newspaper. When car met novelist, the writer lost.

McQueen was thrown thirty feet in the air, slamming to the pavement with bone-crushing force. The next year was a nightmare of painful surgeries and grueling therapy.

At first, revenge had kept him going. But after the driver was apprehended, McQueen was advised by his agent and manager to do his best to preserve his public image as a nice guy. So rather than watch gleefully as a hired hit man chopped the careless motorist to bits with a hatchet, McQueen was forced to settle for a revoked driver's license.

It was a hollow victory.

Gripping his knee, McQueen struggled to his feet. Breathing deeply a few times, he tested the leg.

It felt solid.

He put his whole weight on it. The knee didn't buckle.

Exhaling, McQueen limped into the kitchen. A collection of stone gargoyles clustered around the cold fireplace watched in silence as he hobbled from sight. He reappeared a moment later, a can of Fresca clutched in his hand. Walking with more confidence, he returned to his favorite chair.

He spent most of his time here these days. Sitting. There was a time when Stewart McQueen didn't have an idle moment. It was well-known that he wrote every day of the year with the exception of Christmas and his birthday. He was so prolific that he sometimes worried that he was watering down the market by competing with his own books.

But the most productive toboggan ride in the history of popular fiction had ended at the bumper of a speeding Chevy Blazer. Press releases had him working on a book from his hospital bed. They were false.

His computer sat in the corner of his study, silent and dark. He didn't even bother turning it on anymore. What was the point?

He would have thought it impossible.

McQueen slugged at his drink, his thoughts on Duncan Allen.

The kid was talented. Better than him in many ways.

McQueen periodically hired ghostwriters like Allen to do work for him here and there. While prolific, he occasionally found himself with a backlog of work. Usually it was when he was struggling to adapt one of his novels to screenplay form. Kids like Duncan Allen would do the bulk of the work for a flat fee. Afterward McQueen would go over their work, remaking it in the unmistakable Stewart McQueen style. Other successful writers enjoyed the thrill of helping out an up-and-comer. Usually because it helped them to remember what it was like when they were starting out. McQueen liked to keep them around as personal punching bags.

Through the years there had been several others like Allen. After he recovered from this devastating meeting-if he recovered-Duncan Allen would eventually want what they all wanted. To become a big enough success to rub it in McQueen's ferret face. But that wasn't possible for one simple reason: there was no one bigger than Stewart McQueen.

Until lately McQueen had always reveled in the fact that none of his proteges would ever surpass him. But thanks to a creative knot in his brain, he was no longer sure.

"Block, Bernie!" he had recently snapped at his New York agent. "I've got writer's block! I used to be able to pull an eight-hundred-page book out of my ass every two weeks. Now I'm lucky if I can write my return address on the gas bill."

"You can't be blocked," his agent had insisted. "You're Stewart McQueen. You've got whole sections of bookstores devoted to your work. You even used to have to write under pseudonyms so you wouldn't water down the market on your own stuff."

"I know that," McQueen had snarled. "Don't you think I know that? But that doesn't change the fact that I haven't been able to write a goddamn thing since the accident."

His agent considered for a long moment, studying the dusty corners of the living room in McQueen's creepy Maine mansion. "How about the devil?" he asked abruptly. "You could do something with the devil. You know, spooky."

"Like what?" McQueen asked sarcastically.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe-maybe he could come to this small New England town, see? Like yours. Only the people there don't know he's the devil at first, even though they should because of all the dead dolphins on the shore."

"Dolphins?"

"Yeah. They've all been beaching themselves, see? And they have this mark on them. It's 666. Only no one knows that it's the mark of the devil, see, because it's in a different kind of numbering system like from a long time ago. Like ancient Egyptian or something. Only the sheriff in the town figures it out, because his daughter's back from college and she's studying ancient Egyptian numbers in school and she leaves her book open on the table. Oh, and his wife is dead, but she might not be because she disappeared under mysterious circumstances that still haunt the sheriff to this day, and before she vanished she had an affair with the devil and his daughter might be the devil's own actual kid. Or maybe his son is, and that's why he's hanging around with these weird kids who dress all in black." His agent seemed pleased with the strength of his own story. "That's good," he said. "Why don't you do something like that?"

McQueen gave him a withering glare. "A couple of reasons. First off, it's crap."

"Oh," his agent said, disappointed. "Really?"

"Second," McQueen continued, "it's been done a million times before. Mostly by me."

"Yes, but with dolphins?" his agent questioned. McQueen didn't even bother to reply. He merely got up and limped from the room.

He was slouched for ten minutes in his favorite chair in his study when his agent stuck his head around the door.

"I'll call you," Bernie promised. "In the meantime do me a favor. Think devil dolphins."

McQueen said nothing.

True to his word, Bernie tried to call. On a number of occasions and for many weeks. McQueen let the machine answer. Eventually, Bernie stopped trying.

Deadlines came and went. Stewart McQueen no longer cared. He simply sat in his study, staring at the bookshelves that lined all four walls.

The broad shelves rose from floor to ceiling. All were packed with novels he had written in his thirty-year career. And, if his current streak continued; they would never be joined by another Stewart McQueen novel.

McQueen sat his Fresca can on an end table. With a heavy sigh he picked up the TV remote control. When he flicked it on, eerie shadows from the television twirled in the dark corners of the big room. Since it was the Halloween season, he wasn't surprised to find three movies based on his books playing on various cable stations. Scowling in the bristles of his tidy little beard, he switched over to the news.

An anchorman who looked as if he'd graduated journalism school with a major in TelePrompter and a minor in mousse was grinning at his plastic-haired coanchor. The woman looked as if she'd come to the anchor desk straight from the top of a cheerleader pyramid.

"...and here's a spooky item out of Florida," the male anchor was saying. "Maura?"

"That's right, Brad," the woman said. "It seems Halloween has come a week early this year, at least for some residents of Florida. But this is no trick-or-treating matter. The goblin who's showing up on certain doorsteps in the Sunshine State is looking for more than just candy."

McQueen was ready to change the channel back to one of his movies when the program shifted to a reporter on the scene in Florida. The somber-voiced man was holding out a piece of paper on which was sketched a spider.

"This is not a young child in a Pokemon costume, Maura and Brad," the field reporter said seriously "This is a drawing made from eyewitnesses of the creature that has struck fear into the hearts of many, and has caused Halloween festivities to be canceled in more than a dozen central Florida communities." McQueen eased up more straightly in his chair.

As the story unfolded, he couldn't believe his ears.

Apparently, people were saying that a monster was running around loose in Florida, and no one had bothered to tell Stewart McQueen about it.

With a sudden burst of energy, McQueen pushed himself out of his chair. He quickly hobbled over to a long table near his desk.

For the past few weeks he had piled the newspapers there as they arrived. He just didn't have the energy to go through them. Sitting, he quickly thumbed through the stack of papers. He found a dozen small stories about the strange events in Florida.

It was true. There was something down there. Stewart McQueen was beginning to get an old tingle in his gut. It was a feeling he hadn't experienced since before the accident.

He pushed himself cautiously to his feet. Head upturned like a rubbernecking tourist, he scanned the bookshelves all around. He went from high up in the right-hand corner behind his desk, where his earliest books were shelved, all the way down to the baseboard near the door, where his most-recent novels sat like patient little soldiers.

All his books. All the words contained between their covers had been squeezed from his brain. Stewart McQueen smiled at his old friends. "Make room, boys," he announced. "You're about to get some company."

Turning carefully so as not to tweak his injured leg, the most famous horror novelist ever to put pen to paper hobbled rapidly out of his study.

Chapter 11

"There is no such thing as the bogeyman," Martin Riley insisted.

"But Sherry says there is," Janey Riley argued. Martin's five-year-old daughter nodded with certainty as she scooped up a heaping spoonful of Cap' n Crunch.

"Sherry's wrong, hon," Martin said. He was late leaving and didn't need this as he wolfed down his oatmeal.

Janey wasn't convinced by her father's words. "I don't know. I'll have to check with Sherry." She didn't even look at Martin as she spoke. Her little mind was already made up.

He knew what would happen now. Thanks to that know-it-all in his daughter's play group, Martin would have to spend another evening crawling around on Janey's bedroom floor, checking under bed and behind bureau. The nightly bedtime ritual was only getting worse as Halloween approached.

"Listen, honey," he said, getting up from the breakfast table, "I swear to you, no matter what Sherry says, there is no such thing as the bogeyman."

"You shouldn't swear, Daddy," Janey said as he kissed her on the top of the head.

Dumping his bowl in the sink, he gave his wife a quick peck on the cheek. She was busy emptying the dishwasher.

"You can look under her bed tonight," he said as he turned for the door.

"She won't let me do it," Sue Riley replied as she stacked dinner plates into the cupboard.

"Great," Martin muttered. "Like my knees aren't bad enough as it is. I'm late. See you tonight."

If he had known it would be the last time he would ever see them, he might have taken one last look on his way out the kitchen door.

For once traffic was with him as he sped to work. Martin arrived with five minutes to spare. He had barely driven onto the lot before he was driving back out, this time sitting behind the wheel of a SecureCo armored car.

His partner today was Chuck Kaufman. The other man sat in the passenger seat, a worn paperback clutched in his bouncing hands.

The book was four inches thick. It looked more like a dictionary than a novel. Martin noted the name Stewart McQueen printed in large silver letters across the back cover. The author's name was bigger than the title. A pair of glowing demonic eyes stared out from the black background.

"Why do you read that junk?" Riley asked as he drove.

Chuck Kaufman didn't look up. "It's not junk," he insisted as he read. "Besides, you've never read McQueen."

"He wrote Caterpillar," Martin said. "A book about a haunted bulldozer that's always driving over everybody. It's people like McQueen who make people like me crawl around on the floor every night looking for the damn bogeyman."

Chuck was no longer listening. Engrossed in his book, he continued reading as Martin drove.

Their first stop was the Orlando Greater Credit Union. Climbing down from the cab, Martin and Chuck rounded to the back of the armored car.

Following standard security procedures, the two men outside and the third man inside the truck used keys and codes to open the back. The bolt clicked and the door opened.

Some of the bags piled in the back were white. Most had taken on tinges of gray. The thousands of dollars they hauled daily quickly discolored the heavy money sacks.

Two dirty gray bags were brought into the bank. They retrieved ten more. In all, it took barely eight minutes before they were back out on the street and on to the next bank.

The rest of the morning went by just as quickly. It was a little past noon, and Martin had begun thinking about the twenty-minute nightly ritual of crawling around Janey's closet and checking under her mattress when something caught his eye.

As he sped down the highway, Martin saw a van in his side mirror.

It looked ordinary enough. Gleaming black paint shone bright in the white Florida sunlight. As it sped up, Martin realized he couldn't see the driver. The windshield was darkly tinted.

The van was driving up in the third lane. Fast. Martin flicked his attention back to the road ahead. When he looked into the mirror a few seconds later, the van had skipped over, pulling into the lane adjacent to Martin's. It continued to accelerate steadily. Some low instinct clicked in the chest of Martin Riley.

"Something's happening," he said cautiously.

"Huh?" Chuck asked. His nose was still buried deep in his book.

The black van pulled abreast the SecureCo truck. Though the side windows were tinted, too, the angled sunlight shone bright enough for Martin to make out the gloomy interior of the speeding vehicle. There was no one at the wheel.

Stunned, Martin opened his mouth to speak. The instant he did, the words froze in his throat.

Before his eyes the smooth black side panel of the van began to bulge. It was as if something from within were exerting enormous pressure against the vehicle's metal shell. The bubble swelled like a cancerous growth, extending out toward the side of the armored truck.

And as Martin watched, dumbstruck, a nub appeared in the side of the massive bulge. With impossible speed, it sprouted out into a slender black leg. It was joined by another, then another.

The eight legs grew with time-lapse rapidity. As soon as they were fully formed, the body popped free of the metal from which it had been born. As it clung to the side of the van, the huge spider legs twitched and stretched, seeming to test their own strength.

Another bulge formed at the top of the round body. This one formed not a leg, but a compact oval. Slowly, the fat nub at the end of the thorax turned to the armored car. And for Martin Riley, stunned amazement turned to abject horror.

It was a face. Or half a face. One eye, a mouth, a nose. Even indentations where the ears should be. The thing that looked at him from out of that hideous body wore the head of a human being. And its single, soulless eye was staring directly at Martin Riley.

"Sweet Jesus," Martin breathed.

"What?" Chuck Kaufman complained. He was straining across the driver's seat to see what Martin was staring at.

"The thing!" Martin yelled, his head snapping around. "That thing from the paper! It's out there!" A squeal of tires.

Martin spun back around.

The van was spinning out of control. Dropping back into two lanes of oncoming traffic. It hit the jersey barrier, flipping onto its side, bouncing back over. Sparks flew as it careered into a speeding station wagon. A minivan struck from the other lane, spiraling nose to tail.

Tires screeched as the pileup began.

The SecureCo truck sped away from the crash. Martin was blinking fear as he studied the mirror. Cars crashing. Smoke.

All rapidly shrinking in the distance. No sign of the spider.

A flash of something large in the side mirror. Skittering along the drab green shell of the armored truck. Martin's stomach melted when he saw the big black legs crawling quickly around the rear, out of sight.

"What the hell just happened back there?" Chuck was asking as he glanced at his own side mirror. His eyes grew wide. "My God!" he breathed.

A tractor trailer had just raced around a distant curve toward the pileup. Too late to stop.

The air horn bellowed as smoke poured from locked tires. Jackknifing, the trailer whipped around, flipping up onto the pile of stacked cars.

The explosion was massive and instantaneous. A plume of orange streaked with curls of angry black erupted high into the clear blue Florida sky. Speeding from the scene, the armored car rattled. With a sinking feeling, Martin knew it had nothing to do with the explosion.

He plowed on.

"Holy shit, Riley," Chuck breathed. His eyes were stunned as he spun back around. "We have to stop!" Martin was still hunched over the steering wheel, sweat beading on his forehead. Not only did he not slow down, his foot pressed harder on the accelerator. "Get out your gun," Martin ordered.

"What? Riley, we have to-"

"Get out your gun!" Martin screamed. One hand on the wheel, he wrenched his automatic from his hip holster.

His urgency was a spark that hopped between them. Confused, Chuck pulled out his own gun. The truck rattled again.

This time there had been no explosion to mask it. The pileup had already vanished behind them. Chuck glanced at Martin. "What is it?" he asked, realizing now that something was terribly wrong.

A long, torturous shriek of metal erupted from the rear of the truck. It was followed by the sound of gunfire.

The fear now large on his face, Chuck scampered to his knees, sliding open the panel between cab and back.

When he peered through the bulletproof Plexiglas, the shocked gasp that rose from deep in his belly struck a note of raw primal fear.

Something huge scampered freely around the interior of the truck. Crooked legs stabbed like black elbows from a rounded body. And in two of those legs was the third member of their team.

As Chuck watched, the spider lifted the man high in the air, one leg ensnaring his head, the other his chest. When the spider tugged, head went one way, body the other.

Beyond the creature, the twisted door gaped onto the vacant highway. The spider flung the bloody body parts out onto the racing tar.

Behind the steering wheel, Martin saw the decapitated corpse bounce away behind them.

"What do we do?" Chuck begged. He was still staring through the narrow sliver of Plexiglas.

The spider seemed to zero in on his voice. The head with its one ghastly eye turned his way.

"Kill it!" Martin yelled.

As soon as he spoke he heard a sharp crack. Twisting in his seat, he found that the bulletproof panel had been shattered. Through it, a single thin leg jutted in from the rear of the armored car.

The leg had impaled Chuck Kaufman through the eye, burrowing deep into brain.

Chuck just hung there, slack jawed. Blood thinned with ocular fluid streamed down his cheek.

And as Martin watched, numb, the first inquisitive rip of the long black leg appeared from Chuck's dead ear.

Martin slammed on the brakes.

The speeding armored car jumped to one side, skipping down the jersey barrier. It screeched and sparked and dug a furrow half a mile long before it finally came to a stop.

Before it had even stopped completely, Martin had popped the door. He fell out of the cab, slamming onto the concrete barrier that divided the two opposite highway lanes.

The fall broke two bones in his arms. Despite the pain, he managed to get up and run...directly into the path of oncoming traffic.

Fortunately for Martin Riley, he didn't feel the impact of the car that struck him. There was a numbness. A sense of lifting, of movement. Then nothing at all.

The force threw Martin back against the concrete barrier over which he'd dropped a moment before. Even as Martin's lifeless body collapsed to the tar, the concrete block against which he'd been thrown shuddered.

On the other side of the barrier, the SecureCo truck pulled back onto the empty highway.

The gouges in its side were gone. As it sped away, the rear door that had been wrenched apart with inhuman force was once more intact.

It raced quietly away from Martin Riley, who in the last minutes before his untimely death finally realized that his daughter's friend had been right all along.

The bogeyman was real.

Chapter 12

When Remo and Chiun returned to their rental car after leaving Santa's Package Store, Remo suddenly noticed the newspapers he'd left in the back.

"Oops, I forgot," he said. "As long as we've got mail to send, might as well kill two birds with one stone."

Grabbing up the pile, he quickly skipped through them. With the sewing-kit scissors he'd bought he snipped a few articles. He stuffed the rest of the newspapers in a rubbish barrel at the side of the road.

He returned to the car, placing the articles on the back seat. From the passenger side the Master of Sinanju stared at him in suspicion as he pulled out into the thin traffic.

"You are up to something," Chiun observed.

"Yep," Remo replied. "I'm up to twenty-seven in a twenty-five zone. Lemme know if you see a cruiser. I hear these Florida cops are a real pain in the ass." Chiun's frown only deepened when he saw Remo's thinly satisfied smile. As they drove, the old Korean tried to sneak a glimpse at the clippings.

Reaching over the seat, Remo snatched up the articles, stuffing them in his pocket.

"This is my hobby, not yours," he warned. "If you want a peek, maybe you could tell me what was so important for you to think about that you couldn't talk to me for a week."

Chiun's face was bland. "I was thinking that you were an idiot," he replied.

"You've thought that for years," Remo pointed out.

"Yes, but I had never devoted the time necessary to delve into the many-layered depths of your idiocy. I was astonished, Remo, to find that in one week I only plumbed the surface. I fear that it is a project that will consume much more than the meager days that remain to me."

"I'll hire a biographer," Remo droned. "And just for the record I don't believe you, and if you keep being nasty I'm never gonna tell you what I'm doing. So there."

"Why should I care what moronic things you do to waste your stupid time?" the old man sniffed. "And perhaps if you kept your dull round eyes on the road and your paws on the wheel you would notice when we are being followed."

Remo had noticed the black van, too.

It had pulled away from the curb with them, trailing them from the liquor store. Remo decided to test to make sure. He slowed. The black van with the tinted windows slowed. He accelerated. The pursuing van kept pace.

"Whoever's driving isn't that inventive," Remo commented. "You'd at least think he'd pretend to not be attached to my bumper."

They were passing an office-supply store that advertised a FedEx pickup. Pulling into the parking lot, he steered around the main building.

The van followed close behind.

Cutting alongside the buildings, Remo stopped in the empty back lot. A storage trailer was backed up to the loading dock. Nearby, trash littered the ground around a green Dumpster. Graffiti adorned the store's rear wall.

Once it cleared the side of the building, the black van picked up speed. It squealed to a stop just as Remo and Chiun were climbing from their car.

Side panel and rear doors sprang open.

When the six men emerged from the dark recesses of the van, it was all Remo could do to keep from laughing out loud.

The men looked like extras from a low budget scifi movie. All were dressed in silvery white jumpsuits. Matching gauntlets and boots covered hands and feet.

From big plastic holsters that were slung low over their waists, the men removed chintzy weapons that could have been manufactured on a Hollywood back lot. The ray guns were covered with blinking plastic knobs and gold stripes. The men aimed the funnelshaped ends at Remo and Chiun.

"Halt!" one of the men commanded. His jumpsuit extended up around his head, forming a silvery skullcap through which peeked his face. Like his companions, a slender microphone stretched out in front of his mouth.

"I wish this dingwipple town would make up its mind," Remo complained to the Master of Sinanju. "Is it trick or treat or deck the halls?"

"Do not ask me," Chiun replied. "I recognize none of this nation's heathen seasons." His narrowed eyes were focused on the ray guns.

Remo had noticed the same thing that had caught the eye of the Master of Sinanju. The blunt end of a very real .45 stuck menacingly from the open end of each plastic gun.

"What were you doing at the liquor store?" the leader asked. A badge on his chest identified him as Major Healy.

"Are you kidding?" Remo asked, his tone flat. "Have you looked around town? With all this Christmas cheer up the yin-yang, drunk's the only way to get through the day."

"Negative," Major Healy said, shaking his head. "That's a nonresponsive answer." His ray gun rose higher. "Why were you there?" he pressed.

Remo looked from gun to the major. Finally, he turned his attention away from the gunman completely.

"We need to save one, Little Father," Remo cautioned the Master of Sinanju.

"Why?" Chiun asked disdainfully. "America is not running low on fools."

"They might know something," Remo insisted. "And we've been crossing our wires on this lately. So just make sure you let me save one of them, all right?"

"You may do what you wish with yours," Chiun sniffed. "Just keep them away from mine."

As they argued, Major Healy's head bounced back and forth between them. He leaned back when he found Remo's extended finger pointing an inch away from his face.

"Just so we're clear on this, I'm saving Marvin the Martian here," Remo warned the Master of Sinanju. "Don't kill the one with the really stupid look on his face, okay?"

"I will do my best not to confuse him with you," Chiun said. "However, I make no promises."

"What do you mean, don't kill me?" Major Healy said, sneering. "In case you didn't notice, I'm the one with the weapon."

"Oh, yeah," Remo said. "Yoink."

All at once the major felt a lightness to his gloved hand. When he looked down, he found that his gauntlet was empty. More horrifying, when he glanced back up, he found where the handgun had gone.

Remo held the gun in both hands. "Haven't you heard toy weapons promote real violence?" he admonished.

As he spoke, he squeezed. The plastic that encased the handgun turned brittle and cracked. Underneath, the very real metal gun seemed to grow rubbery. With a groan of metal Remo twisted the gun until barrel kissed stock. When he was through, he tossed the horseshoe shape over his shoulder. The gun landed in the overflowing Dumpster on a pile of cardboard boxes.

"Swish," Remo Williams said, smiling.

A shocked expression blossomed on Major Healy's face. He fell back, bumping hard into the side of the black van.

"They are hostile!" he yelled. "Enforce directive two and eradicate the enemy!"

The other five men were arranged in a fanning arc. At the shouted order, the group tightened around Remo and Chiun. Gloved fingers clenched firmly on triggers.

The man nearest Remo almost fired. The instant before he did, he saw a flash of movement. The world became a blur.

Remo grabbed the gunman by the collar of his silver space suit. The man went from zero to sixty in half a heartbeat. So abruptly was he launched that the g-force pulled back his face into a smiling grimace as he screamed through air.

"To infinity and beyond!" Remo exclaimed as he swung the man straight into the side of the van. Van went bong. Head went splat.

"Pay attention," Chiun warned. "You will not lay blame at my sandals if the wrong fool turns up dead."

As he spoke, the old Korean's hands flashed out, long nails perforating the belly of the man nearest him. So fast and precise did they move that not a mark or tear appeared in the space suit. The man realized something was wrong only when he felt his organs grow heavy inside his suit. With an audible slurp, organs slipped from the razor slit Chiun had sliced in the man's abdomen. Like a frog negotiating its way through a snake, the wet bag of organs slithered into the thighs of his trousers. By the time the blood began to bubble out the tops of his boots, the man had already pitched forward onto the ground.

Remo was inserting the broad plastic end of a ray gun into another man's mouth. "Anyone wanna tell me who they work for?" he called to the others.

"Don't tell him anything!" the major commanded, cowering near the van. "We've got the prime directive to uphold."

"Suit yourself," Remo said, slapping the gun butt. The weapon formed a new holster in the gunman's cerebellum.

There were only two men left. Quaking in his space boots at the side of the van, Major Healy suddenly realized which way the solar wind was blowing.

"We're compromised!" he yelled, diving into the back of the van. "Initiate self-destruct!" Frantic hands rolled the side panel door shut.

Remo and Chiun had taken hold of the two remaining men. Human cargo in hand, Remo windmilled right, Chiun, left. When they let go, the men whirled like loosed tops. Twin spinning blurs, the two men twirled straight into each other, bodies meeting with a bone-shattering crunch. They struck with such force that their bodies fused into a single fleshy unit. An undertaker would need an electric carving knife to cut the men apart.

Remo spun away as the silver-wrapped bundle of arms and legs collapsed to the ground.

The van door through which Major Healy had disappeared remained closed. The cab was empty, the engine silent. As he approached the side door, Remo heard the sound of knees scuffing across the floor.

"Ground control to Major Asshole," Remo called, reaching for the silver handle. As he did so, he heard a small click from the interior. A roar flooded in behind it.

A few yards away the Master of Sinanju's weathered face flashed sudden alarm.

"Remo!" Chiun shouted. Even as he yelled, his kimono skirts were billowing as the old man raced for cover.

For Remo, it was already too late. The explosion came too fast for him to flee.

The van erupted in a ball of flame. And as the panels blasted apart with horrifying force, Remo felt his body being thrown back by the leading edge of the mighty shock wave.

Chapter 13

There wasn't time to dive for cover. No time to outrun the blast that had erupted from the van's interior. Remo didn't even try to fight it. There was no point. It would be impossible to resist a force so powerful.

When the hot leading wave pummeled his chest, he allowed himself to be flung backward, joining with the force of the fiery, violent surge of energy.

All around him swarmed deadly daggers of hot twisted metal. The remnants of the van moved with him, keeping pace. For what he had to do Remo knew there was no margin for error. He would either survive or he'd be shredded to hamburger by the shards of flying metal.

As he soared through the air, fingers of flame raced out after him, singing the hair on his bare forearms. No matter. The fire was irrelevant. The flames would recede before they caused any real damage.

The roof of his rental car flew beneath him. As it whipped by, Remo was already stretching out the toe of one loafer. He caught the upper door frame of the car.

Flex, push.

His speed increased. Even as the force of the explosion began to die he continued to accelerate.

The Dumpster flew up. Remo caught the lip with one extended hand, latching on tight. Up and over, he whipped behind the safety of the waste receptacle, his soles brushing lightly to the trash-covered ground.

Metal fragments pounded the far side of the Dumpster.

Beside him crouched a familiar wizened figure. "What, Remo, did you learn from the one you saved for questioning?" the Master of Sinanju asked blandly.

Remo's face was sour. "From now on I'm saving a spare," he groused.

The shock wave had passed. By the time Remo and Chiun stood, the explosion had rattled off into the woods behind the building.

The black van was little more than a burning skeleton of a frame on four charred wheels. The cooked remains of Major Healy jutted from his smoking silver space boots.

"Well don't that just beat all," Remo griped as Major Healy's burned body sizzled and spit.

Near the remnants of the van lay the bodies of the other five, their space suits now streaked in black. Chiun was already heading for their own car. Reluctantly, Remo followed.

Their own vehicle was relatively undamaged. Most of Chiun's side had been raked and blackened from the blast, but it was still driveable.

When Remo drove around the building no one seemed interested in the muffled explosion that had just issued from the far side.

"We're lucky this is Florida," he said. "They must've thought someone's still blew up."

He decided to risk mailing the piece of metal they'd found at the liquor store. Parking quickly, he raced inside the office-supply store. Buying three envelopes, he stuck the shard of strange black metal in one. He quickly dashed off a note to Mark Howard on another before filling it with the newspaper clippings. He stuffed everything inside the third, larger envelope, addressed the whole mess to Smith and left it all in the reliable hands of Federal Express.

"No cop cars yet?" Remo asked when he hopped back behind the wheel of their battered rental. Above the strip mall the curl of black smoke from the burning van thinned as the fire died out.

"No," Chiun replied. "Given the confusion this town has with your Western holidays, perhaps the local constabulary is occupied at their televisions waiting for that man with the lifted-up face and dyed eyebrows to drop a ball on that dirty city to the north."

"I don't think we should push our luck," Remo said.

Leaving the lot, he drove a few miles down the road. Once they were out of Yuletide, he found a lonely diner. At the pay phone out front, he stabbed out the multiple 1 code that would reroute the call to Smith's desk. The CURE director answered on the first ring.

"Remo?" Smith asked sharply.

"In the singed flesh," Remo replied. "Something weird just happened down here."

"I know," Smith replied. "I take it you have seen the news reports."

Chiun stood beside Remo. Hands locked on to opposing wrists, his arms formed a single knot of bone. Remo glanced worriedly at the Master of Sinanju. "I know I'm gonna regret this," he said cautiously to Smith, "but what news reports?"

"I assumed that was why you called," Smith said. "There has been a major traffic accident involving more than three dozen cars near Orlando."

Remo frowned in confusion. "Just because I took this nothing assignment doesn't mean I'm gonna start playing meter maid now, Smitty," he warned.

"Unless it is on the advice of the handsome Prince Regent," Chiun interjected loudly. He dropped his voice. "Is Smith's heir on the phone, as well?" he hissed.

"No, Chiun," Remo sighed. "It's just Smith. You wanna say hi?" He held out the phone.

Chiun leaned back from the receiver, his face fouling. "Why would I want to talk to that creaky old pinchpenny?" he asked, just low enough that Smith could not hear. "Him I already work for."

He turned his face to the sky and began examining the clouds.

"The accident does not matter," Smith pressed, steering back to the topic at hand. "It's the cause. A passenger in a car driving in the opposite direction was videotaping the northbound lane seconds before the pileup. He taped the vehicle that spun out of control into the oncoming lane of traffic."

"Sell it to Fox," Remo said. "What's it got to do with me?"

"You don't understand," Smith insisted. "On the footage he taped was a-" he hesitated, at a momentary loss for words "-a thing," he concluded, unhappy with the term.

"What sort of thing?" Remo asked. He found himself growing troubled by Smith's anxious tone.

"For lack of a better explanation, the thing taped resembles an enormous arachnid." The CURE director seemed embarrassed to even utter something so ludicrous.

"Arachnid?" Remo asked, his tone flat. "As in spider?"

"It is only visible for a short time," Smith persisted. "Just before the crash it can be seen crawling along the side of an armored car. Presumably, it jumped over from the vehicle that caused the pileup. The footage lasts until it tears its way into the back of the car. At this point the camera operator shifts focus to the crash."

"How did it tear into an armored car?" Remo asked doubtfully.

"I don't know," Smith admitted tightly. "It appeared as if with nothing more than its legs it somehow managed to rip open bulletproof metal."

The strain was evident in his voice. Harold Smith had seen many things that challenged his rigid perceptions of reality during his time as head of CURE. And in spite of being witness to so much, each new occasion remained hampered by his sturdy pragmatism.

"It's gotta be a fake, Smitty," Remo insisted.

"It came in too quickly to have been doctored."

"Fast doesn't matter these days. Every pizza-faced high-school drip can whip up Star Wars special effects in two seconds on their home computers."

"No," Smith disagreed. "Not this fast. And according to experts who have examined it, the footage has not been digitally altered. Therefore until it is disproved we must assume that it is genuine."

At first, the Master of Sinanju had been pretending to ignore the phone conversation. Smith's words, however, had apparently sparked interest in the old man. Though still looking at the sky, he edged closer to the phone, one shell-like ear cocked in Remo's direction.

"Where's the armored car?" Remo asked.

"It vanished," Smith replied. "There was a crew of three onboard. All dead."

"Now the thing drives?" Remo demanded skeptically.

"While I have made several logical leaps thus far, that is not one of them," Smith said crisply. "It is possible that a human accomplice somehow seized the cab of the vehicle while the creature turned its attention on the rear."

Remo shook his head. This was just too incredible. "How is this possible, Smitty?" he asked. "Something as crazy as that just doesn't crawl out of the woodwork and go 'boo.' If that thing was running around in the woods out there somewhere, it would have been found already."

"Not necessarily," Smith said. "Although not quite so farfetched, there have been cases similar to this recently. For many years it was thought that all of the large species of animals had been discovered. Many experts assumed that even the most remote locales were now accessible thanks to transportation and technology. Yet there have been several new species discovered in the past few years."

"I've seen junk like this on PBS, Smitty," Remo dismissed. "It's all microbes and see-through fish."

"That is not the case," Smith explained. "There have been large mammals, as well. Species of goats and gorillas thought extinct were found within the past decade alone. Also a heretofore unknown relative of the horse was recently discovered in Asia. Not to mention our own experience with the Apatosaur in Africa."

"I guess," Remo said slowly. "But if this thing's been living in the Everglades all these years, I doubt it's crawled out now just to hijack a Brinks truck."

"I agree," Smith said. "Since it steals, it is safe to conclude that it has been trained to do so."

"It just gets better and better," Remo droned.

"While I admit that it is improbable, the videotape I have seen forces me to explore possibilities that I would dismiss under other circumstances."

"I'd still like to," Remo sighed. "You think Siegfried and Roy have an alibi?"

Smith ignored him. "I suggest that you and Chiun find someplace to view the footage. Most news outlets are playing it virtually nonstop. If you encounter this creature, I want the two of you to have all the information that is available on it."

"Speaking of info," Remo said, "I might have something in that department."

Remo quickly told Smith about the frictionless metal fragment Chiun had found at the liquor store. He concluded by mentioning Major Healy and the other costumed gunmen.

"That is odd," Smith said once he was through. "I will send the piece of metal for analysis as soon as it arrives. As far as the men you describe, I am at a loss."

"At this point I don't know what's going on," Remo said. "Hell, maybe they're part of the spidertraining team. Those Halloween getups could be their way of hiding in the open."

"Perhaps," Smith said. "In any event, they are likely connected, given the nature of their attack on you. I will have Mark look into them."

At the assistant CURE director's name, Remo suppressed a thin smile. "There's something in the envelope I sent for him," he said. "Give it to him when it shows up, okay?"

"Very well," Smith agreed slowly.

"For now, I'm gonna find a motel. I'll call you once we've seen the show."

Turning, he hung up the phone.

When he glanced at the Master of Sinanju, the old man was nodding sadly.

"You will listen to Smith's fairy stories but you dismiss the tale of Master Shiko," Chiun said.

"The yeti guy? How can I dismiss it? Unless you've been beaming radio waves into my head, I haven't even heard it yet."

"If I thought there was a chance you would actually listen for once, I would try that method," the Master of Sinanju replied. "I will inquire of Smith if radio signals can penetrate solid granite."

"Yeah, okay. I get it," Remo said. "I've got a thick skull. Ha-ha. Can you give me the Reader's Digest version? I'm kind of in a hurry." He palmed the car keys.

Chiun shook his head. "No. I will tell you when you are ready to make a true effort to listen." Turning, he padded away from Remo to their rental car.

Remo was relieved, grateful to dodge an ancient Sinanju legend.

"Just as well," he said, trotting to the driver's side. "We've got to find a TV. Besides, no offense to Master Shiko, but no matter what I think about this spider thing anymore, I sure as hell don't believe the abominable snowman exists."

Climbing into the car, the Master of Sinanju's papery lips formed a sad smile. "Master Shiko was just as certain that it did, my son," he replied somberly. And in a voice only he could hear, he whispered, "You are both wrong."

Chapter 14

Colonel Zipp Codwin had come to NASA the hard way. While still a pup, he'd paid his way through college flying crummy little biplanes for cash. Barnstorming, crop dusting, anything he could do to turn an honest buck. Sometimes, when things got tight and he was really strapped for cash, the bucks turned less honest. But he'd done it. Zipp Codwin had paid his dues and succeeded.

College led to the Air Force. Air Force led to a spot at NASA.

During the days of the post-Sputnik space race, when the United States was locked in its most desperate competition with the Soviet Union, Zipp had proved he had the right stuff a hundred times. A hundred times a hundred times. Yet he always seemed to come in a day late and a dollar short.

Sure, he'd circled the Earth a couple of times. But he wasn't the first man to do it. In a twist of fate that still ate through his belly like acid, that honor went to a Russian. A damn-blasted Russkie had beaten Zipp to space.

The moon belonged to Neil Armstrong and a couple other brownnosing pissants who knew how to suck up to brass. Plain and simple. Thanks to his give-'em-hell personality, Zipp never even made it there at all.

He hadn't even had the good fortune to be blown up with Gus Grissom or lost in space with Apollo 13. Good Lord-in-a-laundry-basket, they made a goddamn movie out of that one. With Tom Hanks, for Christ's sake! Tom Hanks!

The fabled decade of exploration ended with less than a whimper. All the Mercuries, Geminis and Apollos became ancient history and Zipp Codwin's beloved NASA surrendered the front page to pantywaist civilian groundlubbers.

It was pathetic. The one agency that had stood toe to furry toe with the great Russian bear and made that goddamn Bolshoi bruin blink was surrendered to a passel of nerds who thought that space exploration meant flinging a couple of blinking tin cans called Voyager out of the solar system. By the time the Challenger went boom, ol' Zipp Codwin had long since hung up his helmet and space suit.

Zipp drifted. For a time he became an aeronautics consultant for Lockheed, Boeing and a few of the other giants. Pure window dressing, of course. As one of the dinosaurs from the old days, he was pretty much relegated to the status of cocktail-party curiosity.

That life was hell for a man who had been trained to strap a rocket to his ass and fly screaming into the smarmy, smirking face of God himself.

In a quirk of fate, Zipp was sent to Washington by one of his bosses during the big defense-industry mergers. He happened to find himself in front of a committee chaired by one of his flyboy buddies from the old days. Turned out there was an opening at NASA, his pal put in a good word and before you could say strafe the weasel, Zipp Codwin found himself back at the agency he'd left two decades before.

When he arrived, he found that it was worse than he thought. Geeks prowled the halls of Canaveral as if they owned the joint. In the old days they were there, sure. But damn if they didn't know enough to keep their voices, eyes and technobabble down when in the company of their superiors-their superiors being the men who were willing to risk their cullions in the cold heart of space.

But even that was another story. Some of the men these days were women. Real, honest-to-Jebediah gals of the female persuasion. And the men weren't real men, either. They were all studious, bookish types. Not a Tailhooker among them. The nerds were running the asylum. And thanks to them, the program suffered.

All that was happening at the best damn space agency on the face of the bluest damn ball of rock in the solar system was a couple of moldy-oldy shuttle missions a year.

Shuttle flew up. Shuttle puked out some crummy weather satellite or half-busted telescope. Shuttle flew back down.

If there was real excitement on a mission, the shuttle would have to wait an extra day because of some damn farty windstorm out in California.

It was awful. But the money just wasn't there anymore for anything grand. Zipp had hollered himself hoarse looking for more scratch from the miserly buttwads on the Potomac, but they stubbornly refused to surrender an extra damn cent.

Zipp had been forced to use extreme measures every now and again in order to boost cash flow. In this regard, the slew of PR flacks he kept around came in handy.

Clark Beemer was a good one. Dumb as grandma's mule, but dang if he couldn't come up with a winner. The rock he'd used as proof of life on Mars was a classic. Netted a healthy chunk of change there. And the fact that the public had fallen for it was proof enough to Zipp Codwin that there was still an appetite for the junk NASA was peddling.

The next project would have been just as ambitious. In a few months' time it was going to be revealed that one of NASA's cosmic listening posts had intercepted coherent signals of extraterrestrial origin. Men in the bowels of the Kennedy Space Center were currently working to create those alien signals by splicing and overdubbing old 8-tracks. With a mathematical symbol buried in the recording, ol' Zipp Codwin had intended to stand on the dais in front of a roomful of reporters and, with a straight face, swear to the Lord God Almighty and all his children in the choir that the signals were real and that all NASA needed was a few extra million to decipher exactly what they meant. By the time the world found out they consisted of nothing more than old Carpenters songs played backward, the cash would be in the bank and NASA and Zipp would be moving on to the next scam.

Of course, that was what the plan was. With the discovery Pete Graham and his Virgil probe had made in that Mexican volcano, all bets were off.

Mr. Gordons was the score to end all scores.

The uncreative android with the survival craving had blown completely off the radar everything else Zipp Codwin might have had in mind to solve NASA's fiduciary concerns.

Sure, the initial meeting had been rough, what with Gordons trying to strangle him and all. But after that encounter in the hallway outside Graham's lab, things had begun to drop into place for Colonel Zipp Codwin.

"Will you help me find a way to destroy my enemies?" Mr. Gordons had asked once he'd allowed himself to be escorted-in spider form-back to Graham's lab.

"Sure thing, sonny boy," Zipp had said. "Anything you want. That's what family's for."

The truth was, he would have promised that monster the moon if it kept it working on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. With only a vague promise of assistance from the head of NASA, Mr. Gordons had gone about securing the infusion of cash that would help haul the space agency out of its thirty-year doldrums.

Zipp had started him out small. Just to see if he could hack it. To Colonel Codwin's delight, the android inside the Virgil probe was more than up to the challenge.

"This is beautiful!" Zipp Codwin had exclaimed as he pawed through the nine hundred thousand dollars in cash Gordons had liberated from a newly opened supermarket.

"Beauty is not a concept that I recognize," Mr. Gordons had said. In the guise of the Virgil probe, he stood before Zipp's desk, his long legs tucked beneath his body.

They were in Codwin's spacious Kennedy Space Center office. Model replicas of capsules and rockets from various ages in NASA's history were mounted in glass-lined cases all around the walls.

Colonel Codwin held up a hundred-dollar bill. "Then let me explain it to you," he beamed. "This, my boy, is beauty at its most pulchritudinous."

By this point an entire face had formed on the front of Virgil's thorax. Zipp had gotten used to talking to the head that stuck out of the probe.

With his lone eye, Gordons looked at the bill.

"It is no more than paper stained by ink," the android said. "While the design is slightly different than it was before my confinement, presumably to discourage replication, it remains uncomplicated."

Zipp got a sudden flash of hope. "Can you print your own cash?" he had asked.

"Affirmative," Mr. Gordons replied.

Lights of joy sparked bright in Zipp Codwin's eyes. "But I will not," Mr. Gordons had finished.

The colonel's heart fell. "Why in the name of hot holy hell not?" Zipp asked.

"I have done so before," Mr. Gordons had replied. "To do so again would be uncreative."

And that ended all discussion on the subject. Zipp had to settle for simple robberies.

The past week's tests proved Gordons's mettle. Zipp Codwin had quickly decided that the nickel-and-dime stage was over. It was time to move on to bigger and better things.

That morning, he'd sent Gordons out to find an armored truck. Any would do. As for the how, where and when, the android had been left to his own devices.

When he saw the footage on the news, Zipp Codwin nearly had a stroke. There was Gordons-as big as life-crawling along the side of the armored car.

Fortunately for NASA, Mr. Gordons had improved on the design of the probe he had assimilated. Gone was the awkwardness of a wind-up toy. Gordons had given Virgil a fluidity of motion that it had never had before: He had also used a spider he had seen spinning a web in the lab as a template to remake his image. The Virgil probe was no longer merely reminiscent of a spider; it looked like the real dang thing. Furry legs, smooth body and all.

Zipp had been a little worried that the armored car stolen so publicly was making a beeline straight for him, but he soon found that Gordons had made some cosmetic alterations en route from Orlando. He learned this when he drove back from lunch and found a Mr. Coney ice-cream truck parked in his space.

"What the hell is this?" Zipp bellowed when he saw the ice-cream truck. It had an open counter with pictures of sundaes and cones painted on the side. There was no driver. "Security!" he howled. "There's a goddamn frozen-pudding peddler parked in my space!"

"Keep quiet," advised a voice that seemed to come from somewhere in the truck.

Zipp's face turned purple. "Who the hell do you think you're talking to, boy!" he screamed. He stuck his head in the open window. There was no one in the cab.

"I am talking to a human whose neck I will snap if he does not quiet down," said the now familiar voice.

It seemed to be coming from the dashboard. When Zipp looked closer he saw that, instead of a volume control knob for the stereo, there was an eye. It was looking at him.

"Oh," said Zipp, finally realizing to whom he was talking.

He ushered the truck to the building that housed Pete Graham's lab. There the Virgil probe detached itself from the vehicle. When it crawled up out of the open door in the back, Zipp Codwin's eyes grew wide. The floor of the truck was filled with sacks of money.

Operating capital. Gordons had gotten his first big score for NASA. And he'd managed to do it under the noses of every law-enforcement official in central Florida.

Suddenly, the possibilities that had been present in the earliest days of the space agency flooded back. In that moment images of lunar cities and Martian colonies and starships exploded bright and beautiful in Zipp Codwin's retired Air Force brain.

"Son," he said to the probe that stood patiently beside him, "if I wasn't so dang-blasted sure the current Mrs. Codwin would rake me over the coals in the settlement, I'd ditch her saggy old behind and hitch up with you!"

And, unable to keep his exuberance in check, he flung his powerful arms around the torso of the Virgil probe.

FOR SECURITY REASONS Colonel Codwin had kept knowledge of Mr. Gordons limited to a tight inner circle.

Graham's team, which had flown Virgil to and from Mexico, wasn't a problem. As far as they were concerned, its return from the depths of Popocatepetl had been nothing more than a bizarre malfunction. The only men other than Zipp himself aware of the probe's true nature were Dr. Graham himself and the PR guy, Clark Beemer.

When the time came to haul the money out of the ice-cream truck that had once been a SecureCo armored car, Graham and Beemer were conscripted to do the honors.

"I don't know if it's such a good idea to just stack it here," Pete Graham ventured. Panting, he dropped the last dirty sack onto the pile.

There was dried blood on the exterior of the bag. Graham tried not to think about how it got there. "This is NASA, boy," Zipp Codwin dismissed. He was sitting on a mound of sacks. Around his ankles he had dumped a pile of bills. "No one's gonna suspect we're involved in anything dirty. Hell, most folks'd probably be surprised to find out we were still around."

The Virgil probe was back in the corner of the room. The three men paid it no attention while they worked.

"I don't know," Beemer said worriedly. He used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his forehead. "This last robbery made a big splash on the news. Somebody might figure out that the spider doing all the stealing is ours. And if it does get out, I'm not sure we can spin our way out of it."

His voiced concern was met with a metallic shriek from behind them. All three men whipped around. The Virgil probe was reaching up to the ceiling with one of its slender spider legs. It had just ripped a security camera from the wall. The device tore free in a spray of bright sparks.

"Hush up, ya dagburn fool," Zipp hissed. "You're pissing him off." He rubbed the purple bruises on his neck, remnants of the last time Gordons had gotten upset.

But Virgil didn't seem to be paying attention to them. It was more concerned with the camera in its claw.

"What are you doing?" Graham asked.

"This one is correct," Mr. Gordons said. "I am incomplete. I have been concealing myself in a shape not adequate to camouflage. To maximize my survival I must adopt a form more inconspicuous."

The leg expanded until it enveloped the small camera. There was a grinding of metal during which some small parts fell to the floor. What remained when he was through, Mr. Gordons pressed to his face.

When he removed his makeshift hand, a second eye had joined the first. Both eyes looked at the three NASA men.

"Survive ...survive ...maximize survival...."

As he spoke, all eight legs folded up underneath the Virgil probe. Its torso floated to the floor like a metallic soap bubble. When it landed, the legs were immediately absorbed into the main body. At the same time, the body itself began to compress, collapsing in on itself.

It looked for all the world as if the probe were melting.

"How can he do that?" Beemer asked in wonder. "Virgil's got to be five times bigger than that."

"If you're measuring the actual distance from leg tip to leg tip and top to bottom, it's more like ten times," Pete Graham whispered excitedly. "But the components of Virgil are light and spread thin. He can somehow manipulate those components into a more compact unit. The mass remains the same. It's just formed into a different shape."