The Wrong Stuff

Zipp Codwin looked at the shrinking form of Mr. Gordons. "So it's like he's crushing the Virgil in one of those car compressors they have at junkyards?"

Graham nodded tightly. He was staring in rapt attention at the amazing transformation taking place before them.

It was obvious now what Gordons was doing. The shape had begun to grow familiar. Arms, legs. The head still remained as a command unit above the newly re-formed torso.

When Mr. Gordons stood a moment later, he was completely remade. Circuits blinked at strategic points around the metal frame. Clusters of multicolored wires were visible at all the major joints. But in spite of the high-tech gloss, the form he had taken on was clearly recognizable.

"My God," Clark Beemer murmured.

"Dang if he don't look human," Zipp breathed.

"Thank you," Mr. Gordons replied. "It is the optimum manner in which to conceal myself among you. According to my projections the human population should be well in excess of six billion by this time. This form will help me to blend in with greater success. In addition to this, my experience has taught me that my enemies have a lower degree of success recognizing me when I have assumed the human form."

When he was through talking, he brought up his arms.

The metallic hands seemed to shudder. And before their eyes, the fingers on each of the android's hands compressed into single units. The new hands flattened and lengthened until they had grown into familiar shapes.

"There was an element of my program that once allowed for the incorporation of organic material," Mr. Gordons explained. "That has been damaged irreparably."

Pete Graham liked the sound of that. Especially given the fact that Mr. Gordons now seemed to have two long, curving knives in place of hands.

Near the stacks of money was a sofa. The android turned his attention to it now.

It was an old leather number that had been kicking around the lab for years. When he had first taken over this NASA lab, it reminded Pete Graham of the couch he'd had back at his dorm at MIT. He had fought off multiple attempts by the staff to remove it.

Mr. Gordons leaned into the sofa with his hands. The blades became blurs. Slicing turned to tearing, and before Pete knew what had happened his old sofa had been stripped of every last bit of leather. It sat on the floor like a skinned fish, all stuffing and springs.

When he stood, Mr. Gordons's hands had resumed their human shape. In them were clasped the strips of leather.

As the three men watched, Gordons folded his hands over his chest, pressing the upholstery to his body. With a soft hiss the leather disappeared.

Just like that. Disappeared. Absorbed into the metal frame like water into a paper towel.

"What the ding-dang?" Zipp said. "How did he-?"

Before he could complete the thought, the leather reappeared.

It showed up first on the forearms. Bleeding up from below the metal surface. Digested and assimilated, it was softer now. A perfect carbon copy of human skin. It had lost its faded brown, resurfacing in a bland baby pink.

Rapidly, the thighs and torso were covered. The rest of the arms, legs, hands and feet followed. Last was the head.

When the metamorphosis was complete, Mr. Gordons stood before the three NASA men, naked and whole.

"Oh my..." whispered Clark Beemer.

Zipp Codwin's mouth hung open wide. "How-how does he have hair?" he asked Pete Graham.

Mr. Gordons answered for the scientist. "Threads contained within the sofa material provided adequate source material." A mechanical facsimile of a human hand brushed back the sandy blond hair. "It is quite lifelike. I require clothing to complete my disguise. Yours will suffice."

He pointed at Clark Beemer. The public-relations man didn't even argue. Terrified eyes focused squarely on the man before him, he began stripping off his clothes. He handed them to the android. Gordons put them on.

"I am now fully functional," Mr. Gordons said once he was dressed. "It is time."

There was a long pause during which none of the men said a thing. It was Zipp Codwin who finally realized that Gordons expected something of them.

"Um, time for what?" he asked. He had grown strangely comfortable talking to Gordons in his spider form. This human thing was going to take some getting used to.

"To implement your plan," Gordons said in his smooth, mechanical voice.

Zipp glanced at Beemer and Graham. "My, um, plan?"

"Please do not tell me that you have not developed a plan of attack I might use against my enemies," Mr. Gordons said. "I do not wish to have to rip your medulla oblongata from your skull as an example." His lips were parted in something that was almost but not quite a smile.

"Whoa, there, son," Zipp said, hastily throwing up his hands. "I gotcha. Wrong wavelength before. Plan. You want the plan I've come up with for you. Well, about that. See, I haven't had the time to fully flesh it out."

"You have had six days, eight hours and twelve minutes in which to complete your task," Mr. Gordons said. "In the meantime I have done all that you wish. I have stolen one million, thirty-four thousand, seven hundred eighty-seven dollars and thirty-three cents for you to use as you wish."

"For science," Zipp stressed, lest anyone get the impression that he was in this for personal gain.

"How you make use of it is irrelevant. I have held up my end of our bargain. It is time for you to reciprocate."

Zipp shot a look at Graham. "Help me out here," he whispered sharply.

Graham jumped. "Me? Oh, ah, well..." His eyes darted around the room as he tried to come up with an answer Mr. Gordons would find acceptable. "Maybe you don't have to face these enemies at all. You're just looking for safety. To survive. We could, um, send you to someplace where you're sure to be safe. You-that is, the Virgil probe-are designed to survive in an inhospitable alien climate. If we send you to Mars or a Jovian moon you'd be safe."

"Are you out of your mind?" Zipp Codwin snapped, smacking Graham on the back of the head. "I need him."

"Negative," Mr. Gordons said to Graham. "Mars will likely be inhabited by humans within the next three hundred years. It is possible that the descendants of my enemies will come there. While colonization of Jupiter's moons is unlikely, they are not suitable to my needs. I am a mechanical being. Were I damaged somehow, the parts to repair me would not be available on an uninhabited world. Even if replacement parts were sent with me, they would not last long enough, since it is not possible at the present time to ship supplies from this planet on such a vast scale. Remember, my life span is far greater than that of humans."

"Life span?" Beemer asked. He was shivering in his underwear.

"I am self-aware," Gordons said. "Therefore I live." His mechanical voice turned even more cold as he looked back to Zipp Codwin. "What is your plan?"

Zipp gulped. "It's such a good plan, I don't want to ruin it by blurting it out too soon," he dodged. "Gimme another day to think. Just one more. Is that good for you?"

Gordons's blue eyes were ice.

"You had better think fast," he warned. "During each of the robberies you have involved me in I left a small piece of the Virgil probe. When discovered, the fragments will be traceable back to NASA. As a result of my very creative plan you will soon have enemies like mine. In your case it will be the authorities. If you do not aid me, I will leave you and this agency you revere at their mercy."

Zipp Codwin felt as if he'd been kicked in the gut. The room spun around him. "Not NASA!" he gasped. If it was possible for an android to display smugness, Mr. Gordons did so now.

"I calculated an eighty-three percent probability that the agency for which you work was more important to you than your own life," Gordons said. "I am pleased to know that I was correct."

"You were correct, dammit," Zipp snapped. "Okay, okay. These enemies you keep blabbing about. Who are they and where are they?"

"Some of my memory degraded while I was inactive. I do not know where they are located, but their names are Remo and Chiun. They are practitioners of an ancient martial art that, as far as I have been able to ascertain, predates and surpasses all others. These two men are unlike any I have ever encountered and have caused me to cease functioning at full capacity six times before. I would further caution you that they will most likely be alerted to the participation of the Virgil probe in your illegal activities not long after the normal civilian authorities uncover the clues I have left. This, Administrator Zipp Codwin of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, makes it all the more imperative that you help me sooner rather than later. That is, assuming you wish to keep this agency from being dismantled by the United States government piece by piece."

And with that, Mr. Gordons turned on his heel and walked from the room.

The way he moved was unnerving. There was a deliberate, gliding slowness to his newly formed feet. No uncertainty, no experimentation. He just slid forward and was gone.

When the door closed gently behind Mr. Gordons, a shell-shocked Colonel Codwin turned to Beemer and Graham.

"Cold, calculating son of a bitch," Zipp muttered. "Hate to say it, but he's a man after my own damn heart."

"What do we do?" Clark Beemer asked nervously. Zipp shook himself from his trance. He looked at Beemer.

"First thing, go and get some pants on," he said to the half-naked PR man. "For God's sake man, this is NASA." He took a deep breath, crossing his arms. "Second, we figure out how to help our friend Gordons kill those two pals of his. All in the name of good old-fashioned American interplanetary exploration, of course."

Chapter 15

Remo found a hotel near City Point, fifteen miles south of Yuletide. After calling Smith to give him the number, he and Chiun settled down in front of the TV.

Smith had been right. The cable news outlets seemed to have put the footage of the creature's attack on the SecureCo armored car on an endless loop of tape. The sequence repeated ceaselessly as somberfaced newscasters commented on it in deeply serious voices.

The head of the armored-car company was interviewed. Various law-enforcement officials and entomologists were on hand to offer their perspectives. Even the governor of Florida was questioned about the spider at a statehouse press conference.

One cable station even hauled out a pair of Hollywood producers who a few years before had made a film about a giant mutated lizard that destroyed New York City.

Everyone seemed to be interviewing everyone else and, from what Remo could see as day bled into the dark hours of night, no one knew anything.

He hit the mute button.

Remo didn't need to hear what they were saying. The footage-what there was of it-spoke for itself. For the twentieth time Remo watched as the massive spider scampered along the side of the SecureCo truck. As it worked to tear open the back door, its long legs were shielded by its body.

The results of its efforts were evident soon enough. The door wrenched apart, and the huge arachnid scurried into the back through the wide opening.

After this, the now out-of-focus camera bounced rapidly, following the path of the abandoned van. The van bounced off the jersey barrier and rolled out into the oncoming lanes of traffic. Just as the first speeding car crashed into it, the image cut out.

Quietly, Remo clicked off the TV.

Seated on the floor next to him, the Master of Sinanju had been studying the screen carefully. He seemed to be absorbing every movement of the creature as it crawled around the outside of the armored car.

"It moves funny," Chiun pronounced as the picture faded to black.

"Nothing funny about that," Remo said grimly. His expression was dark as he shook his head. "And did you happen to notice how that van looked like the one the Rocket Revengers blew up? They must be tied in somehow."

A leathery hand waved away any interest in the crashed vehicle. "The men are irrelevant," Chiun said. "It is the beast that is troublesome."

"Gotta go with you on that one," Remo agreed. "I have to admit I'm not thrilled at the idea of having to tussle with a bug that big. What do we do, have one of us pin it down while the other one squashes it?"

Chiun's brow was furrowed. "Whatever else this creature might be, it is new to Sinanju," he intoned seriously. "Without the wisdom of the past to guide us, we should learn all we can about it before we race off to engage it. Perhaps even leave it to a later Master to exterminate."

Remo was surprised by his teacher's reluctance. It was an attitude he did not share.

"Nah," he dismissed. "We've gone up against worse. As long as we don't wind up snagged in its web like Vincent Price, we'll be golden."

"Did you see a web?" Chiun challenged.

Remo was surprised at his scolding tone. Impatience sparked the depths of the old Korean's eyes. "I was just kidding, Chiun," Remo said.

The Master of Sinanju closed his eyes patiently. An intense world-weariness descended on the dry skin around his creased lids. "Please, Remo, make an effort to involve your brain, as well as your mouth, when you are thinking. I will not be here forever to guide you."

The fatherly care with which his words were spoken made Remo feel suddenly very small. And concerned.

"Are you all right, Little Father?" he asked, worry tripping his voice. He thought of the week's worth of near silence he'd been subjected to by the old man.

Chiun's eyes opened. Though the skin around them crinkled like old parchment, they remained youthful. "Of course I am all right," he retorted. "But I will not always be so. Anyone can see that my days have long grown short."

Remo fidgeted uncomfortably. "There's nothing wrong with you," he dismissed.

"Now," Chiun said, shaking his head. "But not forever." An awkward silence momentarily descended. "Have you forgotten your visitations from your brother?" the old Korean asked quietly.

Remo felt a chill in the hotel room that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning.

The old Asian was referring to Remo's ghostly visitor from the previous year. The small Korean child had foretold that the coming years would be difficult for Remo Williams.

The little boy had appeared a half-dozen times to Remo, and it was only after he was long gone the last time that Remo found out who he was. The boy who had haunted his days was Chiun's natural son, Song, who had died in a training accident before Remo was even born. Since Remo was Chiun's spiritually adopted son, the old Korean considered him brother to the biological son he had lost years ago.

"Of course I haven't forgotten," Remo said softly. "I just don't like to think about it that much."

A fleeting sternness touched the Master of Sinanju's wrinkled visage. "Is that so?" he asked. "Can I assume you were not thinking about it when you slew the homicidal ballfooter but a stone's throw from Fortress Folcroft, knowing that it would upset Emperor Smith? Have you not been thinking about it when you've used every opportunity to antagonize the Prince Regent? Was it far from your thoughts when you watched our home burn to the ground?"

Remo's shoulders sagged. "Okay, so it's passed through my mind from time to time." He raised a warning finger. "But I'm bugging Howard on my own time," he stressed.

"So you say," Chiun replied thinly. "In any case you were warned that these times preceded your ascension to Reigning Masterhood. You must understand that when that time comes, your responsibilities will be far different than they are now." The old man's tone was serious.

Remo was now reasonably certain why Chiun had been so quiet after their talk in the Folcroft hallway. He, more than even Remo, understood the truth behind Remo's hastily spoken words.

Remo knew that there was nothing more sacred to his teacher than his duties as Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju. And even though it pained him to even consider a time when Chiun would not be Master, Remo understood that one of the most weighty tasks as Master was to choose a successor who understood all the great burdens his station entailed. Burying the sadness he dared not reveal, the younger man nodded. "I understand, Little Father," Remo said softly.

At his pupil's gentle tone, the harder lines of the old man's face softened. "You are a good pupil, Remo, as well as a good son," he said. "And despite what I and others have told you over the years, you have a good brain, too. It merely lacks focus."

Remo's smile bloomed with childlike pride. "You really think so?" he asked.

Chiun rolled his eyes. "Of course not," he droned. "When I first met you I considered wadding up cotton in your ears at night to keep the mice out. I was merely saying so to boost your self-esteem."

A cloud formed on Remo's brow. "Mission accomplished," he grumbled, folding his arms.

Chiun turned his attention back to the blank TV screen. "I saw no web from this spider-that-is-not-a-true-spider that moves funny," the old man said. "And if it is different in this one way, it could be different in others."

"Like being as big as a Buick, for one," Remo suggested thinly.

"Yes," Chiun replied without irony. "If we are to meet this creature about which you know nothing, do not let its resemblance to a thing you know confuse your reactions to it."

Remo understood the Master of Sinanju's concerns.

Yet they seemed unwarranted. "Not a problem," he said.

As he spoke, the room phone jangled to life. Floating to his feet, Remo scooped up the receiver from the nightstand next to the bed.

"Yello," he said.

"Remo, Smith," announced the CURE director's breathless voice. "The creature has been spotted again."

Remo was instantly alert. "Where?"

Smith couldn't keep the troubled anxiety from his voice. "Ten miles from your location," he said. "A bar called the Roadkill Tavern. Local authorities were just alerted. As far as anyone knows, it's still there."

The older man quickly spit out directions. With a final caution to be careful, the CURE director broke the connection.

Remo slammed down the receiver. When he spun toward the Master of Sinanju, Chiun was already rising to his feet, a serious expression on his aged face. "You heard," Remo said quickly.

"Yes," Chiun said seriously as he swept to the door. "I only hope that you did, as well."

And in a flurry of green-and-red silk, he was gone. The old man's concern was infectious. Feeling a pang of unaccustomed disquiet, Remo raced out into the night after the elderly Korean.

Chapter 16

The girl had gotten into the Roadkill Tavern with fake ID. Had to have. There was absolutely no way she was the legal limit. Fake ID and maybe a pretty smile had gotten her through the door.

She was seventeen at best. Maybe a year or two younger. No amount of booze or makeup could hide the truth from the eyes of the shadowy figure who sat in the corner booth. After all, he was an expert.

A warm beer sat on the table before him. Not too stale that the waitress would get annoyed at him for taking up valuable real estate. He knew how to pace his drinking while remaining inconspicuous. Afterward, when the police started asking the inevitable questions, people might remember there was someone sitting there for a few hours-maybe even come up with a vague physical description-but they wouldn't be able to pin down any specifics.

It was a talent honed from years of experience. As he sat alone watching the girl at the bar, he tapped a single index finger on the dirty tabletop. A smile above a halter top. Maybe she had a face, maybe not. It didn't really matter. He'd known it the moment she stepped through the door. She would be the next.

Click-click-click.

The metal pad recessed in his fingertip drummed a relentless staccato on the table.

He alone heard the noise. The jukebox was so loud no one else could hear the sound of Elizu Roote's tapping finger.

A faint reddish blush of anticipation brushed the flesh of his otherwise pale cheeks as he watched the boozy young face of the girl he intended to murder tonight.

IN THE PARKING LOT outside the Roadkill, Clark Beemer hunched behind the steering wheel of the black NASA van. He was trying desperately not to be noticed.

When someone passed by the van, Beemer's eyes grew wide behind his dark sunglasses. He fumbled with the radio, tugged at the upturned collar of his trench coat-anything to distract, to give the appearance that he belonged here.

This wasn't fair. Just because he happened to be in on the big, bad secret at NASA, why did he get tapped to chauffeur around the scary robot?

Clark had been standing right there when Zipp Codwin asked Mr. Gordons to drum up some more operating capital. Even after the thing had turned himself into something that looked human. Even after Gordons had threatened Codwin and all of NASA. One thing about Zipp-he had guts.

Codwin's earlier argument held true. NASA needed the money, and Gordons had needed NASA for repairs in the past. But now there was the additional problem that Gordons had created. With the clues he had left behind, the authorities might already be zeroing in on the space agency.

"Safer from a survival standpoint for you to minimize your time here, son," Zipp had insisted. "Let the brains like me and Graham figure out how to solve your problem. Ol' Clark here'll take you on your rounds tonight."

So that was it. Clark Beemer wasn't the brains. While the only other men with knowledge of who and what Mr. Gordons was stayed back in the wellguarded safety of the Kennedy Space Center, Clark was forced to take to the road with that creepy, emotionless tin can.

He heard a shuffling in the rear of the van.

Since that afternoon at NASA, Mr. Gordons had retained his human form. Like a regular person, he had ridden to the bar in the front of the van with Clark. Once Beemer had parked at the very distant edge of the lot, the android had gotten up and slipped into the back of the van.

More shuffling. A soft grinding of metal.

"Why didn't they let you go alone?" Clark muttered to himself as he sank further into his own shoulders.

A cool mechanical voice answered his question. "There is a fifty-six percent probability that Administrator Codwin did not want you in his vicinity. That, coupled with the eighty-five percent probability of his not wanting me there, either, made his decision to send you with me a reasonable one."

When Clark turned a peeved eye to Gordons, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

The android had reverted to his spider form. This time the not quite smiling face that jutted from the body of the creature was flesh colored.

"Why do you look like that again?" Clark asked, panting with sudden fright. One hand was pressed to his chest to steady his rapidly beating heart.

"In order to mask my true features," Mr. Gordons said. The flatness of his tone never varied. "Necessity forced me to maintain the shape of the Virgil probe throughout the assimilation process. Even though I am now operating at one hundred percent efficiency, I have found that this shape is effective as camouflage. Humans who might otherwise be curious about me are frightened into submission when they see me in this guise. I believe this is due to the fact that most human beings harbor a visceral fear of insects in general and arachnids in particular, would you not agree?"

Not waiting for a response, the Gordons spider scurried around on clattering metal feet. Displaying its furry rear end, the massive creature rapidly crawled to the rear of the van. It popped the door.

Clark felt the van rise on its shocks as the heavy android slipped down to the parking lot.

There was a skittering of feet that seemed to fade in the distance. Clark allowed himself a relieved exhale that lasted only until the huge creature sprang up beside his open window. Gordons leaned his face in close.

"Do not leave," the android instructed. "I'll be back."

With that he sank back onto his metal legs and began scurrying to the bar. Clark watched Gordons crawl quickly through the shadows between the many parked cars. He disappeared around the side of the building.

Clark didn't even realize that he had placed his hand back over his thudding heart.

"I don't know what visceral means," Clark whispered, "but you sure as hell got the fear thing down cold."

Pulling his trench coat collar higher, he hunched farther behind the wheel.

THE FLIGHT Stewart McQueen had taken from Maine to Florida had been as pleasant as it could be for the most famous novelist in America. Only ten people in the first-class cabin approached him to say they were interested in becoming writers, too. A miraculously small number considering how many usually pestered him.

It never failed to amaze McQueen. Young, old, educated, morons. Everyone he ever met swore that they could be writers just because they knew a few English words and could-when pressed-actually spell some of them. None of them realized that few professional writers stumbled into the job as a lark or a second career. Writing was an obsession that started young and, more than likely, never panned out.

On his way off the plane, the pilot bounded from the cockpit to pitch him an idea. McQueen brushed him off. The same went for three hopeful flight attendants.

As he walked through the airport, McQueen pulled his Red Sox baseball cap low over his eyes. Even so a handful of people spied him as he made his way through the terminal. Some asked him questions about agents and publishers. Most were autograph seekers who shoved dog-eared copies of some of his own thick paperbacks under his sharp nose.

McQueen dodged them all and hightailed it outside. The woman who rented him his car made him autograph her copy of The Gas Mileage, a terrifying sixteen-part serial thriller he'd written a few years before. It was all about prison inmates, supernatural powers and an evil cadre of killer cars that got only eight miles to the gallon.

In the farthest airport parking lot, McQueen stopped his rental car. Fishing in his luggage, he pulled out a police scanner he'd brought from home. Hooking it up, he latched it to the dashboard with a pair of roach clips.

Most of the sightings of the creature had taken place east of Orlando. He struck off in that direction. By the time he began prowling the streets, night had long taken hold of the Florida peninsula.

McQueen didn't believe in God. Satan, however, was another story. Given the content of his books, the Prince of Darkness buttered his daily bread.

As he rode along through the enveloping black night, eyes peeled for signs of strange movement, ears alert to the staticky squawk of the scanner, Stewart McQueen found himself uttering a soft prayer to the king of all that was unholy.

"Dear Angel of the Bottomless Pit, your Satanic Majesty and Father of Lies. Hi. It's me again. I know there's not much left of my eternal soul, but whatever's there is yours. Just give an old pal a break here, would you?"

Hoping that would be enough to kick start Old Bendy into lending a scaly hand in ending his current bout of writer's block, McQueen raised his penitent head. The instant he did so, a horrifying thought suddenly occurred to him.

His head snapped back down so fast, he smacked it off the steering wheel.

"But when I finally do die, just don't stick me in the same pit as John Grisham," he pleaded. "I know he has to have the same deal with you as me. Hail Satan, and amen."

THROUGH THE SLIDING peephole in the storage room behind the bar, Juan Jiminez peered at the shadowy figure.

The stranger had picked the darkest booth in the Roadkill. According to the bartender, he'd been there for more than two hours. Just sitting and staring.

As he studied the mysterious figure, Juan felt a puff of hot breath on his neck.

"You think he's a cop?" an anxious voice whispered.

Juan pulled his eyes away from the peephole. Ronnie Marzano was standing on his tiptoes trying to see through the opening. His black-rimmed eyes were worried.

"I don't know what he is, but he ain't no cop," Juan said with snide confidence. Without another glance out into the bar, he slid the cardboard shutter back over the opening.

Ronnie blinked hard as he turned his anxious gaze back to the storage room. "Yeah?" he said. "I hope you're right. I got a lot riding on this."

At that, Juan snorted. "You do?" he mocked. There were five more men arranged around the room. Each joined in the derisive laughter.

Ronnie felt like the odd man out. The other five were Cubans, like Jiminez. All six had come to the U.S. ten years ago, floating on a waterlogged boat made from rotted wooden planks lashed to four rusty oil drums.

There was a camaraderie derived from shared hardship among those six that Ronnie could never be a part of. Not that their friendship was anything he really needed. All Ronnie really wanted out of this deal was some free blow and a couple of bucks for his trouble.

A stack of corrugated cardboard boxes lined one wall of the big storage room. Each box was filled with two dozen tightly wrapped plastic bundles. More than a million dollars' worth of cocaine, smuggled by Juan Jiminez into the United States from South America. Ronnie had done his part by setting up the meeting between Jiminez and a local distributor out of Miami.

As Jiminez walked back across the room and plopped into a wooden office chair, Ronnie tracked him with his eyes.

"I'm the one who sets up the meetings here," Ronnie reminded the Cuban. "I'm the one whose neck's on the line."

He left out the fact that his brother-in-law owned the bar. Ronnie also neglected to mention that the heat had been threatening to turn up on the Roadkill lately. Word had begun to filter out into the surrounding neighborhood about what was really going on at the dingy little bar.

Ronnie rubbed his tired, bloodshot eyes. "I gotta go to the can," he mumbled.

Leaving the group of armed Cuban expatriates, he ducked through an ancient door that led into a short hallway. Down at one end was the main bar area. In the other direction were the rest rooms and an emergency exit.

Ronnie headed for the bathrooms. He was pushing open the men's-room door when he noticed that the exit at the end of the hall was open a crack. Through the opening bugs flitted around a tired parking-lot light.

"Someone skipped out on their tab," he muttered as he walked over to close the door.

An ancient cloakroom was next to the door. As he passed by the deep alcove, Ronnie saw a hint of movement from the shadowy interior.

Suddenly cautious, he stopped before the room. "Who's in there?" Ronnie asked.

It was quiet for a moment. So quiet that Ronnie thought he had imagined the movement. He was ready to chalk it all up to jangled nerves when a face appeared from the darkness.

The man was short. Had to be, since the face was only about five feet off the floor. The rest of his body remained obscured in shadow.

"Where is the money?" the stranger asked. His voice was flat, without any intonation at all. Almost mechanical.

"Huh?" Ronnie asked, his brow furrowing.

And in the moment he uttered that single, confused syllable, the rest of the man appeared.

Ronnie sucked in a shocked gasp.

The human head was grafted onto the most frightening creature Ronnie Marzano had ever seen. Spiky black hair covered the bulbous body. Four of eight legs had carried the beast out into the hallway. The rest were still hidden somewhere in the shadows beyond. The monster had to be huge.

Ronnie had seen the news reports of the giant spider on TV all day. Until now he'd assumed it was a hoax.

He wanted to run. Fear kept him from fleeing. Ronnie fell dumbly back against the wall.

"I have been sent to collect money," the spider said. "According to the human who sent me here, this drinking establishment is utilized as a secret exchange by elements of the subculture that traffics in illegal narcotics. Yet, despite this fact I am unable to detect particulates in the air that would indicate a large quantity of cash. Therefore, I ask again, where is the money?"

Ronnie gulped. It was hard to breathe. "Not here," he managed to say.

"This is unacceptable," the spider said, its voice cold.

The flesh-colored face looked down the hall.

"I detect slight airborne concentrations of an addictive drug derived from the leaves of the coca plant," Mr. Gordons said. "This drug generates money." The flesh-colored face turned accusingly to Ronnie. The tiny curls at the corners of the human mouth seemed to mock the drug dealer.

"It's n-not here yet," Ronnie stammered.

"How soon will it arrive?"

"I'm not sure exactly. Soon," he promised.

Gordons considered the information. "Very well," he said all at once. "Do not move."

Ronnie wasn't about to disobey. He remained stock-still against the wall as the spider skittered backward into the shadows of the cloakroom. There came a strange scraping of metal from out the darkness. When it was over seconds later, a man emerged calmly from the shadows. Ronnie was horrified to see that he wore the same face as the spider.

"Take me to where the money will be," Mr. Gordons said.

Ronnie dared not refuse. His legs felt as if they were dragging lead weights as he brought the manwho a moment before had been a giant spider-to the back room.

The Cubans looked up as the door squeaked shut. "Who the hell is this?" Juan Jiminez demanded. The man with Ronnie Marzano looked harmless in a bland sort of way. His blue suit was a little too perfectly tailored, his face too smooth.

"Hello is all right," Mr. Gordons said. "I would be able to offer you a drink, as this is an establishment that specializes in the selling of fermented-grain beverages, but unfortunately I am without the funds to do so."

Juan's brown eyes were clenched with tight suspicion. "Who you bring back here, Marzano?" he asked Ronnie very, very slowly. "This some kind of cop?"

Already the rest of the men were fanning out. With guns drawn, they surrounded the stiff-looking stranger.

"I am not a police officer," Mr. Gordons answered. "And I must ask that you cease your current course of action, as it could be perceived as a threat to my survival."

"Bet your ass it's a threat," Juan snarled. "And you're going down with him," he said to Ronnie. Ronnie Marzano was standing next to Gordons near the door.

"Please, Juan," he begged, shaking his head.

But it was already too late. The moment Jiminez threatened to endanger the survival of the man standing next to Ronnie, the drug dealer's fate was sealed.

Mr. Gordons moved his arms out to either side of his body, the fingertips angled toward the floor.

As Juan watched, the man's arms were suddenly very long. Much longer than human arms should be. There was something shiny at the ends of them. And when the stranger bent his arms at the elbows, the shiny something of his left hand was flying very quickly in Juan's direction.

The steel knife blade of the android's hand thunked deep into Juan Jiminez's forehead, splitting apart the hemispheres of his dead brain. At the same instant, a second blade shot through the skull of another Cuban drug dealer.

There was a moment of shock during which their leader's lifeless body slid from the gleaming silver appendage of the intruder. But it lasted only an instant.

As one, the remaining four men whipped up submachine guns. Shocked fingers clenching triggers, they opened fire.

The first barrage sliced Ronnie Marzano to ribbons. He slid to the floor in a bloody tangle.

The same bullets should have transformed the intruder into hamburger. They didn't.

Though they fired point-blank, the men were stunned to find their target still standing. Hot lead pounded into the man's chest. Still, he showed no visible reaction.

Bullet holes peppered the wall behind him. Already screams were audible from the bar beyond. Standing in front of the barrage, Mr. Gordons didn't flinch. While the men fired, he calmly raised his hands, still in the shapes of twin daggers.

The nearest drug dealer was only a few feet away. Like giant scissors, the blades snapped together. Unfortunately for the man, his neck was between them.

As the decapitated head thudded to the floor, the intense burst of gunfire burped to silence. The remaining three men quickly gauged the situation. Flinging down their guns, they ran screaming out into the bar.

Gordons followed.

He caught the last man just outside the door.

The blades that were Gordons's hands slashed right and left. The drug dealer surrendered arms and legs.

The other two men had already raced out the door, along with the other bar patrons. Gordons didn't pursue them.

It was unlikely now that the humans negotiating the purchase of the drugs would arrive with their currency. There was also a nearly hundred percent probability that the authorities would be arriving soon. Mr. Gordons had failed in his mission.

Feeling no disappointment, the android turned from the main bar floor back to the rear hallway.

He found a human blocking his way.

"You ruined my night," the man drawled. "Only fair I get to ruin yours, too."

The young man who stood before Gordons was exceptionally pale. The flesh around his soft cheeks was so white it was almost blue. A shock of white hair sprang up from his scalp. It had been short during a stint in the military. Much longer now, it jutted up like curling, demented horns.

Elizu Roote raised his hands shoulder high, his palms directed toward Mr. Gordons.

At first, the android ignored Roote. Knife blades shuddering as they re-formed into hands, he continued to stride back toward the exit. But when Roote's hands opened, revealing the tarnished gold pads that were buried at the tips of his fingers, the android stopped dead.

He tipped his head. "Are you biomechanical in nature?" Mr. Gordons asked with childlike curiosity. The question had barely passed his lips before an audible hum filled the air. The android's optical sensors detected ten distinct flashes at each of the young man's fingertips. Jumping forward, they formed a single white bolt. With a crackle the electrical arc surged across the space that separated Elizu Roote from Mr. Gordons.

The shock pounded the android hard in the chest. There was no way Gordons could avoid it. Indeed, his metallic frame made him a lightning rod. Gordons stumbled back into the bar, his face contorting into a parody of human shock. And as his joints seized and his body stiffened, a soft smile of demonic satisfaction kissed the pale white lips of Elizu Roote.

STEWART MCQUEEN was driving aimlessly through the streets of City Point when his police scanner squawked to life with news of the commotion at the Roadkill.

He had a street map taped to his dashboard. At a glance he saw he was only two blocks away. Thanking his lord and master the Prince of Darkness for his guidance, the world-famous novelist pressed down hard on the gas, tearing off in the direction of the bar.

CLARK BEEMER WATCHED With a sinking feeling as the people flooded out the front door of the Roadkill. Clark started the NASA van's engine, his weak eyes trained on the back door of the bar.

When Gordons failed to materialize, Beemer grew even more anxious. But when he heard the sound of approaching sirens, he panicked.

Knocking the van into drive, he twisted the wheel, flying across the lot. Frightened people scattered from his path as he goosed it out into the street.

Bouncing off the curb, Clark Beemer raced away from the bar. As the PR man tore off into the night, he hoped that Florida's famously strict laws were muddy on the punishment for being accessory to a killer mechanical space spider.

STEWART MCQUEEN ARRIVED at the Roadkill moments before the police. He screeched to a halt in front of the bar and bounded for the entrance.

The novelist didn't know what to expect when he flung open the battered door. In spite of all the strange, paranormal events he'd written about in his long career, he was ill prepared for what he found.

Toward the back of the dimly lit saloon a ghostly white young man appeared to be firing bolts of lightning from his fingertips. The arcing current was pounding against a figure that was sprawled back against the bar.

Despite the apparent amazing abilities of the first man, it was the second figure that shocked McQueen more.

The thing appeared to be half man, half spider. Twisted arachnid legs jutted from a sparking torso, thrashing as if in pain with every surging burst of power.

When Roote attacked, Gordons had tried to assume a shape that would frighten the man into retreat. With his circuits overloading, the transformation hadn't been fully successful.

As McQueen watched, the powerful hum that seemed to rise up from Roote slowed.

Confusion marred Elizu Roote's pale face.

His power charge was weakening. Cutting the juice, he wheeled from Gordons. Staggering slightly, the thin young man disappeared down the shadowy hallway and was gone.

Mr. Gordons reeled away from the bar. His face showed no emotion as his spider legs flailed in space. Pitching forward, he fell against a chair.

Extra furry arms kept him from falling. He pushed himself back to his feet, staggering for the door. Near the entrance to the Roadkill, Stewart McQueen shook his head, snapping himself from his trance. Racing over, he grabbed Gordons up under his human set of arms. The writer was relieved when he received no shock.

A soft word croaked up from the belly of the android.

"...survive, survive, survive, survive..."

Gordons didn't seem to be aware of where he even was.

Stewart McQueen nodded tightly, struggling to support the android. He was amazed by how heavy Gordons was.

"I can help you to survive," McQueen promised. "Just remember, one hand washes the other."

He hurried the android outside, dumping him into the back of his rental car. McQueen tumbled in behind the steering wheel.

With fresh images of New York Times bestsellerdom dancing in his head for the first time in months, Stewart McQueen thanked the prince of all that was unholy before tearing off into the night.

Chapter 17

Remo had to swerve a dozen times to avoid fleeing cars. They were barreling up the middle of the road away from the Roadkill Tavern and into oncoming traffic.

One of the vehicles in particular headed straight for him up the double yellow line. Twisting the wheel to one side, Remo scraped sparks from the sides of three parked cars. The menacing black shape tore past them.

"Wasn't that another one of those boohawdle vans?" Remo growled as he pulled back onto the road.

Chiun was carefully scrutinizing the escaping van in the side mirror. "One ugly American vehicle looks the same as the next to me."

Given what they had seen already, Remo was reluctant to let the van get away. Hoping that their giant spider wasn't caged inside it, he continued down the road to the bar.

When they pulled into the parking lot a minute later, the police had just arrived. Remo waved his FBI ID under as many noses as was necessary to gain them admittance.

Inside, the two Masters of Sinanju noted the fresh black burn marks on the floor. There were two of them. Side by side, they traced the approximate oval shape of a pair of shoe soles.

Remo and Chiun exchanged a quick glance. They had seen similar marks before.

It was Remo who shook his head dismissively. "Can't be," he insisted. "He's dead. Besides, look at this." He indicated the severed limbs lying on the floor near the bar. The rest of the drug dealer's corpse lay in a bloody heap nearby. "This is something different."

Chiun nodded sharply.

There was greater police activity in a room behind the bar. When Remo and Chiun stepped through the door, they found an even grislier scene. One man's head looked as if it had been sliced off by a portable guillotine.

As Remo examined the corpse, he glanced at the Master of Sinanju. "If I didn't know better, I'd think this was your handiwork, Little Father," he commented.

Chiun shook his head. "This butchery was done with an implement," he said, his face registering disgust.

Remo nodded. "Not a single blade, either," he said. He noted the slight irregularity on either side of the neck. "Looks almost like a big pair of scissors."

As he stepped around the body, he felt something under the heel of his loafer. Turning, he scuffed his foot across the floor. Chiun's gaze tracked the movement of his pupil.

On the floor were tiny black flecks, so small they would have been invisible to the average naked eye. Crouching, Remo gathered a bit of the residue on one finger, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. His fingertips barely registered the presence of the frictionless material.

"More spider poop," he pronounced, dusting the thin black powder from his hands. "And just what the hell kind of spider sheds metal anyway?"

Tipping his head low, he found a few larger fragments scattered beneath a desk and chairs that sat back against the wall. Judging by the many bullet holes in the wall, they had apparently been blown off the creature.

Remo rose, fragments in hand and a dark cloud on his face. "Dammit, we should have followed that van. You get a look at the driver?"

"Of course," Chiun sniffed.

"And?" Remo asked after a brief moment of silence during which the old man said nothing. Chiun shrugged. "He had a big nose, big hands and big feet. I would say he was a typical white."

Remo's lips thinned. "He wasn't driving with his feet, Chiun," he said.

"I merely extrapolated from that which I could see," the wizened Korean replied. Eyes growing conspiratorial, he pitched his voice low. "Although I have toiled in this land lo these many years, Remo, it remains a mystery to me to this day how you people are able to tell each other apart."

"Yeah, our lives are just one wacky Patty Duke Show episode after another," Remo said. "Guess we're screwed."

He found a plain white envelope on the desk and dumped the black fragments into it, stuffing the envelope deep in his pocket. Hands clenching, he turned back to survey the macabre scene.

He was thinking about how hard it would be to track an eight-legged opponent. Did eight legs mean it could run four times faster than a man?

"Of course," Chiun observed all at once, "there are always those numbers to differentiate one of you from the next."

"What numbers?" Remo asked, turning slowly. "The identifying numbers on the back of the vehicle that drove directly at us," Chiun replied. "You know, Remo, the numbers that you failed to note since you were preoccupied with the task of not even glancing at the driver."

"You got the license-plate number?" Remo asked.

"Of course," Chiun said. A knowing sadness touched his weathered face. "And need I point out yet again that my eyes will not always be here to see for you?"

The dark lines of Remo's face grew firm. "Nope," he said, shaking his head. "You're not sucking me in with that now, Little Father, so you can just save the morbid stuff for another day. I've had enough lemonade making lately. For the moment my life's gonna be about the here and now-not some far-off time when everything's supposed to come crashing down around my big white ears. And right now I've got a bug to squash."

Face resolute, he went off in search of a phone. Behind him Chiun considered his pupil's words. Remo hadn't spoken in anger, merely with determination. And in his heart of hearts, the Master of Sinanju knew that his son's resolve was correct. The future would come in its time and would be whatever it would be.

Nodding silent agreement, the old man padded off after his pupil.

THE MIDMORNING SUN BURNED fiery hot over Cape Canaveral. The sunlight dragged across the halfopened venetian blinds, slicing perfect yellow lines across the hard-edged face of Administrator Zipp Codwin.

Zipp sat behind his sparkling white desk, his sharply angled chin braced on one bare-knuckled fist. His free hand drummed the desk's surface.

This kind of waiting was more than tedious to an old flyboy like himself. It was made all the worse by the A #1 screw-up of them all, that PR flak, Clark Beemer.

Not that everything had been going swimmingly.

In truth at first the NASA administrator and Pete Graham had made little progress on their plan to defeat Mr. Gordons's enemies. The thing that made it most difficult was the fact that Gordons himself seemed so unstoppable. If he couldn't kill the two guys he feared, how could Zipp hope to?

At least, that had been his thinking at the outset. Of course, he had abandoned such thoughts early on. He was Zipp Codwin, after all. He was a larger-than-life hero from another age who had truly gone where no man had gone before.

As the night hours had crept toward dawn, a plan had begun to take shape. It wasn't perfect, and it might not work. But it was an old-fashioned NASA-style plan.

Of course, Gordons might not approve. Zipp was bracing himself to bear the terrible wrath of the android when something far worse than being throttled by a pissed-off robot happened. That idiot Clark Beemer had returned to Canaveral. Alone.

Something had gone wrong with the latest robbery, and the public-relations asshole had beat a hasty retreat, abandoning Gordons at the scene. Zipp didn't even have time to wring the little coward's neck, so desperate was he to get to a TV.

The news coverage about the latest spider sighting was bland and uninformative. No mention of Gordons being captured and, most important of all, no mention of NASA.

Zipp breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

The agency was safe. At least for now. But the most valuable asset he'd had in his corner since assuming the top spot at America's space organization was MIA.

Without Gordons he was dead in the water. He couldn't go forward with his plans to refinance NASA, and he couldn't help eliminate the android's enemies.

His problems were held in stasis for a few hours, postdawn. They had worsened a few short minutes before.

He had just been informed that a pair of FBI agents was on the base. Fearing the worst, Zipp refused to allow anyone else to speak with them. He ordered the men brought to his office.

He was sitting in the smothering sunlight at his desk when a sharp rap sounded at his office door. "Come!" Zipp called.

His secretary peeked her head inside the room. "Those men you wanted to see are here, Colonel," she said.

"Yes, yes," Zipp waved impatiently. "Let 'em in."

When the two men entered his office, Colonel Codwin was sure someone somewhere had gotten their wires crossed. There was no way these two could be FBI.

The first one was a skinny young guy in a T-shirt. The other was a wrinkled Asian in a kimono who looked older than the man in the moon. When they got to the desk, the young one flashed his laminated FBI identification at Codwin.

As Zipp carefully inspected it, the contents of the NASA administrator's desk caught the eye of the Master of Sinanju.

The desk was an ultramodern teardrop shape. Arranged before the blotter were dozens of model rockets. They seemed poised to launch an invasion of some tiny plastic planet.

His eyes trained with laserlike focus on the display, Chiun pushed his way past Remo. Slender fingers scooped up one of the small models.

The toy was divided into three stages. When Chiun pulled at it, two of the stages separated. When he pushed them together, they clicked back into a single unit.

Behind the desk, Zipp finally turned his nose away from Remo's ID, nodding acceptance.

"Welcome to NASA, gentlemen," he said. Standing, Zipp extended his hand. He offered a smile so strained it looked as if his underwear was six sizes too small.

Chiun ignored the administrator. He was too busy studying the rocket in his hand.

"Yeah, yeah," Remo said, interested in neither Zipp nor his offered hand. "Where do you keep your vans?"

There was a flicker at the far edges of Zipp's painful smile. "Vans?" he asked. "I think you're mistaking us for General Motors, son. We're your space agency. We don't do vans, we do shuttles, rockets and satellites."

"Look, Flash Gordon," Remo said to Codwin, "I saw the size of this joint on the way in. Unless you pinheads zoom around here in portable jetpacks, you've got to use cars to get around. Where are they, and are there any missing?"

Zipp bristled at his words. "You sure you're FBI?" he questioned suspiciously.

"We're from the less tactful branch," Remo explained. "We're the part that uses toy rockets for suppositories when we don't get the answers we want."

Zipp glanced at the Master of Sinanju. The old man had just removed the nose cone of his rocket. Chiun blew on the module, simulating wind, as he lowered the capsule for splashdown in an invisible sea.

"You gentlemen are making it difficult for me to be polite," Codwin warned.

"Look, I've met three of your vans so far," Remo said. "One blew up on me, one caused that highway pileup yesterday and the third one almost ran me off the road as it left a multiple-murder scene last night. We tracked its plate to here. Polite went out the window the minute those loons in the first van tried to barbecue me. Now what's the deal?"

Zipp's smile collapsed. "I was afraid of this," he said in somber tones as he sat back in his chair. He steepled his fingers under his razor-sharp nose. "A couple of our vehicles have turned up missing recently. I ordered an investigation. At the faster, better, cheaper NASA we do not tolerate any wastefulness when it comes to taxpayer dollars."

When Remo snorted at that, Zipp bit his tongue. "No matter what anyone might think," Codwin said, barely containing the acid in his tone, "NASA has undergone some severe belt tightening these past two decades. These days Congress is so cheap when it comes to our budget we can't afford to lose any equipment at all. Even vans."

Beside Remo, Chiun let out a whooshing sound. Guided by a sure hand, his rocket strafed the armada that was arranged for launch on Zipp's immaculate white desk. Most of the other toy models failed to survive the attack. As those few that remained upright teetered like wobbly bowling pins, the NASA administrator jumped across the desk, sweeping up the rolling rockets in both arms. A few clunked to the floor.

"I keep those here as souvenirs," he snarled at the Master of Sinanju. "Why don't you just take that one."

"They are free?" Chiun asked craftily.

"Sure," Zipp barked. "Take it."

Bending at the waist, the old Asian snatched up two of the rockets that had fallen to the floor. These disappeared inside the folds of his kimono. The first remained clutched in his hand. Spinning from the desk, he began flying it around the room. It attacked the fronds of a potted plant that sagged near a bookcase in the corner.

"You sure he's with the FBI, too?" Zipp asked.

As he spoke, another rocket tipped out of the pile in his arms, dropping to the gray carpet.

"He meets the Bureau's quota for odd-couple pairing." Remo nodded. "I had my choice between him, the superskeptical female doctor who never believes my crazy theories or the black guy who's always two weeks from retirement."

"Huh," Codwin grunted. His eyes still trained on Chiun, he drew the models across the desk, dumping most of them into a half-empty drawer. "If that's all, I have work to do. Space doesn't explore itself, you know."

"Actually, there's something else," Remo said. He dug in his pocket, removing the envelope he'd picked up at the Roadkill. Taking out one of the larger black fragments, he dropped it in Zipp's callused palm. "You have any idea what this could be?" he asked.

Codwin studied the jagged object carefully. When he touched the surface with an exploratory finger, a gunmetal-gray eyebrow rose on his lined forehead. "Where did you get this?" Zipp asked.

Remo hesitated. Even after the previous day's news reports, he was uncomfortable admitting his mission. "It was left at a crime scene," he said.

"Hmm," Zipp said, handing the fragment back to Remo. "We're not exactly a forensics lab here, but we're not lacking in brilliant scientists. I think I've got someone here who might be able to help you." He stabbed a finger on his intercom. "Mitzi, I'm bringing my guests down to see Dr. Graham. Tell him they've got some stuff they've collected from a crime scene they'd like to have examined."

When he looked up at Remo there was a glint of something new in his pale blue eyes. A kind of knowing smugness. His tightly smiling mouth displayed a line of barracuda teeth.

"Come with me," the NASA head offered.

Chapter 18

"By the way, Zipp Codwin's the name."

They had crossed the broad expanse of a tarmac to enter another big building on the Canaveral grounds. The NASA head let his famous name hang heavy in the air between them.

As they walked, Remo was supremely disinterested. "Blame your parents," he said, not looking Zipp's way.

The eyes beneath the steel-gray hair darkened. "Zipp Codwin," Zipp Codwin pressed. He pointed at his own chest. "The Zipp Codwin."

Remo glanced at Chiun. The Master of Sinanju was keeping pace with both men.

"Don't look at me," the old man said, his eyes downcast. He was studying a tiny window in his plastic rocket. "I do not even know what a Dipp Codpiece is."

"You ain't alone," Remo muttered.

"You don't remember me," Codwin growled, his painful smile collapsing to a more comfortable scowl. "Damn that whole shuttle program. Kids around the country remember the name of some blown-up schoolteacher who wasn't anything more than a piece of glorified luggage, but they don't know the names of the real pioneers who built the whole damn program."

"Okay, Piss-" Remo began.

"That's Zipp," Zipp interrupted coldly.

"Whatever," Remo said dismissively. "I get the drift. You were some kind of astronaut when the moon was still in diapers. Now let's just aim your rocket boosters into the current century where you can help the nice men who don't give a crap in a hat what your life story is."

Zipp's scowl grew so tight it threatened to cave in on itself like a collapsing dwarf star.

"Son, there used to be a time when folks'd go ass over knickers at the chance to meet a bona fide spaceman."

"We're thrilled," Remo said, deadpan. "Aren't we, Little Father?"

Chiun wasn't even listening. Plastic rocket in hand, he was soaring skyward. "Whoosh," the elderly Korean said.

"I suppose I shouldn't keep getting ticked that folks don't remember me," Zipp muttered. "It's been thirty damn years since we've done anything significant around here." He instantly regretted speaking the words aloud. "Not that we're not still important," he quickly amended. "It's just that our purpose has changed over the years."

"I'll say," Remo agreed. "You've changed from an extravagant waste of money that used to do stuff once in a while to an extravagant waste of money that doesn't do anything at all ever. NASA's just a black hole the government shovels tax dollars into."

"That isn't true," Codwin insisted hotly. "NASA is a vital and, I might add, underfunded agency. And thanks to me, you can be certain that your tax dollars are wisely spent."

"Not mine," Remo said as they walked. "Don't pay 'em."

"Hear! Hear!" Chiun sniffed at his elbow. As they continued down the long, sterile hallway, his rocket flew parallel to the floor.

Codwin's steely eyes narrowed. "Are you telling me that neither of you pays taxes?"

One hand still flying the model, Chiun used the other to stroke his thread of beard thoughtfully. "A tax collector visited my village once when I was a boy"

"Uh-oh," Remo said. "You never told me that. What'd those money-grubbing villagers do, boil him in a pot?"

"Of course not," Chiun frowned. "We are not barbarians. My father allowed him to leave in peace. He merely kept his purse." He tipped his head. "And his hands. I believe he had them bronzed and sent them along to Pyongyang. We weren't bothered by another tax collector as long as my father lived." There was a tear of pride in the corner of one hazel eye as he resumed flying his rocket.

"Even so," Zipp droned flatly, suspicious eyes trained on the old man, "taxes are our lifeblood. Without money this agency couldn't function."

Remo snorted. "Said the head of the agency that can't even land a Tinkertoy on Mars."

Zipp's face clouded. "The media likes to dwell on the negatives," he said through tightly clenched teeth, "but the truth is we've had many great successes lately. There was the ice that might or might not be on the surface of the moon that we almost found, some close-up pictures of a big rock in space and a new generation of space plane that could be off the drawing board by the year 2332. And don't forget, we even sent Senator Glenn back into space."

"Yeah, but then you had to ruin it by bringing him back down," Remo said. "And we're not here for the sales pitch."

Nostrils flaring, Codwin only grunted.

They took an elevator to a lower level, exiting into an antiseptic hallway. Down the corridor and around the corner, Zipp led them through a door marked Special Project Director, Virgil Climatic Explorer, Dr. Peter Graham.

The man inside, a twitchy twenty-something with shaggy hair and pasty skin, was perched on a lab stool. Graham's tired eyes jumped to the door when the three men entered.

"Pete, these men are with the FBI," Zipp announced. "They have something they want you to examine for them."

"Yes," Graham said, his eyes shifting back and forth from Remo to Chiun. His nervous voice cracked. "Some crime-scene evidence?"

Remo handed the scientist the envelope. "You know what this stuff is?" he asked.

"Nope," Graham insisted with absolute certainty. "You wanna try looking inside the envelope first?" Remo suggested.

"Oh." Pete Graham dumped a few of the black fragments into his hand. "Nope," he stated once more.

Beside the seated scientist, Zipp Codwin's lips thinned disapprovingly. "Pete here's the best in the business," he said tightly. "If he says nope, I gotta believe it's nope."

One of the benefits of Remo's Sinanju training was the ability to detect when someone was lying. Heart rate, perspiration, subtle mannerisms-all helped determine if a subject was being untruthful. It was clear to him that these two men were lying about something. Given what he'd seen of their operation, he was willing to chalk it up to the lies men told to cover up rank incompetence.

He was about to press further when a muted electronic beep issued from the pocket of Zipp's jacket. When the NASA head answered his cell phone, his angled face grew puzzled.

"It's for you," Codwin said, handing the phone to Remo.

"Hello?" Remo asked with a frown.

"Remo, Mark," Howard's familiar voice said excitedly. "Someone thinks they saw the spider. She saw someone helping it into the back of a car. Weird thing is, she says it looked like a man, but with a bunch of arms like a spider."

Chiun had grown bored with his toy. At Howard's words, the plastic spaceship vanished inside his robes. His face serious, he listened in on Remo's call. "Where's Smith?" Remo complained.

"He asked me to call," Howard said. "Remo, I know this woman's story sounds kind of out there-"

"No, Zitt Hatpin is kind of out there. You're lightyears past him. Let me talk to Smith."

"Hush, Remo," Chiun admonished.

"Whatever it was, she swore she knew the guy who helped it get away," Howard pressed. "It was Stewart McQueen."

A shadow formed on Remo's brow. "Stewart McQueen? Isn't he the guy who writes all those crackpot horror books about killer clowns and possessed farm equipment?"

"He used to," Howard said. "Until he got hit by a car. I heard on TV he's got writer's block. Anyway, because of the stuff he writes and the fact it's almost Halloween, the cops didn't believe her story. Didn't hurt she was at a bar. But I had a hunch so I did some digging. Turns out a car was rented down there last night under one of McQueen's pseudonyms. He's already turned it back in. And he bought an extra ticket for the plane ride home."

"You think he managed to sneak a giant spider into first class?" Remo said doubtfully.

"He snuck something on," Howard insisted. "He's back at his home in Bay Cove, Maine, by now. Dr. Smith wants you to check him out."

Remo felt someone pressing in close behind him. Hot breath whistled from pinched nostrils.

Zipp Codwin was leaning in, straining to listen to what was being said. Beyond him, Pete Graham cowered in the corner, chewing nervously on his ragged fingernails.

Remo turned a withering eye on the NASA head. "How'd you like a trip back to the moon?"

Zipp hitched up his belt with both hands. "Well," he said proudly, "technically I was never on the moo- Oh."

Crossing his arms huffily, the NASA administrator turned away from his visitor.

"Is there a problem?" Mark Howard asked.

"No," Remo grumbled. "Tell Smitty we're on our way."

"I'll have the tickets waiting for you at the airport," Howard promised. He cut the connection.

Remo handed the phone back to Codwin. "Looks like you clowns are off the hook," he said. "You and the rest of NASA can go back to pretending to work while the rest of us have to do the real thing."

Turning from Codwin and Graham, Remo and Chiun quickly left the lab.

When the ping of the elevator doors closing issued from far down the hallway, Pete Graham finally worked up the nerve to speak.

"Did I do okay?" he asked weakly.

Zipp responded by cuffing the scientist in the back of the head.

"You're as big an idiot as that Beemer," the NASA head growled. "Not that it matters. Thanks to those two, we know where Gordons is now. The capsule's splashed down. We just have to go retrieve it."

"But the FBI's involved," Graham argued. "How are you going to get by them?"

For the first time, Dr. Pete Graham saw something that approached a genuine smile on the face of Zipp Codwin. It was like some demonic grinning ice sculpture come to life.

"NASA has resources that you don't know about," Codwin said malevolently. "And dang-blast it to all high heaven, it's not like they don't deserve it. I mean, they don't pay taxes." His voice was flirting with the quivering edges of outrage. "I mean-Lord God Jeebus Almighty-tax cheats. At NASA there's nothing lower. No wonder Gordons wants them dead. Well, that tin can's about to get his wish."

Spinning sharply on one hard heel, Colonel Zipp Codwin marched boldly from the research lab.

Chapter 19

Stewart McQueen knew that it was the intervention of Old Scratch and all of his hellish minions of evil that brought him safely back home to Maine. The front door accepted the writer's key, and the security system-which was wired around the entire mansion-yielded to his special access code.

His gimpy leg ached. Limping under the weight of his precious bundle, the novelist steered his mutant spider-man into the living room.

Mr. Gordons had fallen silent during the plane ride up from Florida. Good thing, too. It was hard enough to hide all those extra furry legs under an overcoat, but McQueen doubted he could have avoided extra attention if the creature had continued to mutter "survive, survive" over and over again as he had on the car ride to the airport.

Once on the ground in Maine, McQueen had been startled when he started to help his monster up from his first-class seat and discovered that the spider legs had disappeared at some point during the flight. All that was left were the two human appendages. When McQueen looked closely, he could still see the slices in the blue fabric of the jacket through which the extra legs had jutted.

He was home now, and his creature still had but two arms as Stewart McQueen dumped Mr. Gordons into his old living-room chair. A thick cloud of white dust escaped into the air as the heavy bundle settled into the cushions.

Coughing and limping, McQueen collapsed exhausted to the high-backed Victorian-era sofa.

"We made it," the novelist gasped to himself. He blinked away the sharp pain that suddenly gripped his knee.

As if in response, a noise sounded deep within the chest of his guest. It was as if he was trying to speak, but the words wouldn't come. Even his lips failed to move.

Stewart strained to hear what he was saying. It came slowly, as if echoing up from the depths of a dark well. The same word, repeated over and over.

"...survive, survive, survive, survive..."

McQueen's shoulders slumped. "Not again," he sighed.

"...survive, survive, survive..."

The word grew louder. He had been quiescent during the flight, but it now seemed almost as if the spider creature had been recharging its batteries.

All at once Mr. Gordons snapped alert. His eyes opened wide, as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. His head twisted to one side.

On a stand next to the chair was a television remote control. As the word survive cut out, Gordons lifted his right hand and dropped it on the sleek black device.

There was a crack of plastic.

When he took his hand away a moment later, all that remained was the shattered casing and two crushed batteries. The guts of the remote had been absorbed into Gordons' s hand.

His head twisted again, right then left. He seemed to be absorbing every minute detail of the room he was in. At last he turned his flat gaze on Stewart McQueen.

"I am not home," Gordons pronounced.

"Home?" McQueen asked, still amazed by what his monster had done to the remote control. Gordons resumed scanning his surroundings. Artificial cobwebs hung from beamed ceilings. Above the black stone fireplace, a pair of carved gargoyles stared back at him.

"This is not NASA," Gordons stated. "It is an environment unfamiliar to me. Where am I?"

"You're at my home," McQueen explained. "In Maine. I rescued you from that bar. You were pretty beat up."

Gordons seemed to be remembering, accessing those parts of his stored memory not damaged after his deadly confrontation at the Roadkill Tavern.

"I encountered an entity of a nature unknown to me," he said. "From what I was able to ascertain before and during his attack, he was a cybernetic being."

"Yeah," McQueen nodded. "He seemed to pack a real wallop." A hopeful glint sparked in his eyes. "You wouldn't happen to have his address, would you?"

"No."

"Too bad," McQueen said. "That guy had inspiration written all over him. Just like you."

Standing, the android examined his arms and hands. "There are no words inscribed on my body," he disagreed. "Nor would the presence of such a disfigurement be effective camouflage. As for the cybernetic man I encountered, he is irrelevant. I do not have the time to engage another enemy. My primary targets remain the same."

"Targets? What targets? Hey, that's my computer."

Gordons was at the desk in the corner. "I require components to complete repairs."

Placing his palms firmly on either side of McQueen's PC, the android's hands began to shudder. As the writer watched, fascinated, the hands seemed to melt through the chassis, disappearing inside the machine. They rested that way for a moment, bare wrists fused to metal. A few crunches and whirs later, the hands reappeared, apparently as good as new.

The same couldn't be said for McQueen's computer. The device now sported two perfectly round holes in each side.

"Hey, the first drafts of my next fifteen books were stored on that thing," the novelist complained. "I wrote them before I got hit by that car. That's three weeks' worth of work you just ruined."

Gordons didn't seem to care about the great loss to modem literature. Bringing one hand back, he rabbit-punched forward, shattering the computer screen. He began rooting around inside the monitor for parts.

"It's okay," McQueen quickly declared. "Take whatever you want. I can always type up a couple more books. Usually takes me about two days to do three hundred pages anyway." He bit his lip with his rodentlike incisors. "Although lately it's been a little harder than it used to. That's why I went to find you. A real live monster could maybe help to shake things up for me. Um, you are a monster, aren't you?"

"I am an android," Mr. Gordons explained.

He ripped two green motherboards from the interior of the shattered monitor. When he turned to face the novelist, McQueen saw that a wide gash had opened in the being's stomach. The computer components disappeared in the freshly created slot. After they were accepted inside, the wound sealed back up behind them. So, too, Stewart McQueen noted, did the creature's dress shirt.

"Android, huh?" McQueen said, trying to hide his disappointment. "I don't know about that. Kind of sci-fi, you know what I mean? The readers might complain if I start shoving robots into my books."

"I must go," Gordons announced abruptly.

Without another word he started across the room. "Whoa, there, Charlie," McQueen blurted, jumping to his feet. His leg nearly buckled beneath him in his dash to get out in front of the departing android.

"My name is Mr. Gordons, not Charlie. And if you do not step from my path, I will assume that you are an enemy to my survival, as well."

"I'm not an enemy," McQueen argued. "I saved you. And I can help you with whatever you need. I'm loaded. You want computers? I can feed them to you three squares a day. You want sanctuary? You got it here. This is still a small town. No one knows I brought you here."

"Even if that is true now, it will not remain so," Gordons disagreed. "My enemies have the resources to locate me if they so desire."

"Then let me help you stop them," McQueen pleaded.

He dropped to his knees. Tears immediately welled up in his eyes. Most from the buzz-saw pain in his injured leg.

Gordons seemed to consider his words. "The resources of NASA are far greater than yours. It is unlikely that you will be able to assist me. However, the information I have absorbed from your computer's hard drive indicates to me that you are a creative individual. This is a trait that I lack. Perhaps it would be wiser from a tactical standpoint to accept your offer. If you fail, I will always have my fallback position with Colonel Codwin and NASA. Two lines of attack are always preferable to one."

"Sure," Stewart McQueen agreed. He had no idea what the hell the screwy robot was talking about. Probably had a few gears loose in the old noggin.

As the novelist dragged himself back to his feet, Mr. Gordons crossed back into the room, walking over to the TV.

Bringing his arm up, he punched his hand through the top of the television. The set flickered on. McQueen was standing upright now, grasping the door frame. "Just 'cause you broke the remote, there's still a control panel on the front of that thing," he panted.

A grainy image appeared on the screen. It seemed to have been recorded on a very old videotape. Ghosts of other images played in the foreground and background.

"Given time, I could resolve the picture quality," the android said. "This is an old image, taken by me just prior to an earlier encounter with my enemies. I am translating it from partially damaged files into a video context that is comprehensible to your limited ocular system."

"It's fine," McQueen said.

The pain in his leg was nearly forgotten. He hobbled forward, amazed by the android's abilities.

On the TV screen were two men. Despite the ghosts and the grainy grayness of the picture, they appeared to exist almost three-dimensionally. One was a young white; the other was a very old Asian. They were strolling through what appeared to be some sort of amusement park.

"That thing you do," McQueen mused thoughtfully as he stared at the picture, "where you take the parts of stuff and incorporate them into you...?"

"My ability to assimilate," Gordons suggested.

"Yeah, that," McQueen said. "I have an idea that might knock your pals off their game. How big an object can you assimilate?"

There was no bravado in the android's voice. "How big an object do you wish me to assimilate?" McQueen flashed a ferretlike smile. He glanced around at the gloomy Gothic surroundings of his dusty mansion. There was an evil twinkle in his eye. "How about a haunted house?" asked the world-famous horror novelist.

FOR SECRECY'S SAKE, Mark Howard had driven across the New York border to Milford, Connecticut, mailing the small metal fragment Remo had collected in Florida from there. The package had been picked up and was well on its way to a laboratory for analysis by the time Mark made his way back inside his Folcroft office.

He noted the small envelope that sat on the edge of his desk as soon as he opened the door.

The morning had been so hectic that he hadn't even bothered to open the second envelope Remo had addressed to him. There was a note scrawled on the outside. With a frown, Howard reread it: "Nothing to do with what we're working on, Prince. Just leave this in my room. R."

Mark collected the envelope. It was fat but soft. Envelope in hand, Mark headed down to Remo and Chiun's quarters. He unlocked the door with his Folcroft passkey.

The common room was tidy. Probably Chiun's doing. Remo didn't strike Mark as a neat freak.

He crossed over to Remo's bedroom door. Fumbling around the corner, he flipped on the light. He was halfway to the bureau when he stopped dead. Jaw dropping, Mark swung his head slowly around. All four walls were covered with scraps of paper. Mark couldn't believe his eyes.

B. O. Anson Dead!

B.O. KO'd By Runaway Golfball. FORE!

LAPD Denies Involvement.

The headlines blared from every corner. Since Anson's death, Remo had to have collected every newspaper and magazine article he could find. On many of the articles, pictures of Anson's grinning face and dead eyes stared out at the room.

Mark couldn't believe what he was seeing. Four walls dedicated to the death of B. O. Anson. A shrine to Anson's murder. He realized with a sinking feeling that this was precisely the sort of thing a serial killer would do.

All at once he remembered the envelope in his hands. With anxious fingers, Mark tore open the bulging envelope.

More articles on Anson's death spilled out, these ones from Florida papers.

Mark glanced up once more. Jaw clenching, he shook his head in disbelief.

This was worse than stupid. It was dangerous. Remo had crossed a line far worse than before. Going over to the nearest wall, Howard began the laborious task of pulling down the many clippings.

Chapter 20

"It is time," the Master of Sinanju announced abruptly.

They were on the flight to Maine.

Remo glanced around the cabin, a concerned expression on his face. He assumed that Chiun had seen another passenger of Vietnamese descent and was about to embark on a fresh round of candy-corn-inspired ethnic cleansing. When Remo saw no Asian faces, he didn't know whether he should be relieved or even more worried.

"Time for what?" he asked cautiously.

"Time for you to listen," Chiun said. "For I am going to tell you the dark tale of Master Shiko and the truth behind the infamous yeti of the Himalayas."

"Oh. You sure you don't want to assault any of the other passengers?" Remo asked hopefully. "I think I smelled a Frenchman back in coach." He rose halfway to his feet.

With one bony hand the Master of Sinanju drew him back down into his seat.

"Now, this did take place but a few scant centuries ago," Chiun began. His singsong voice took on the familiar cadence of storyteller. "It was during that period of time after which Master Shiko had already trained a Master to succeed him, but before his time of ritual seclusion. Since his heir had not yet chosen a pupil of his own to pass on the ways of Sinanju, Master Shiko had not yet relinquished the title of Reigning Master, even though he had already ceded most of his responsibilities to his young protege."

In the seat beside Chiun, Remo shifted uneasily. His teacher's words were a reminder of something he didn't want to think about right now.

If Chiun sensed his pupil's discomfort, he didn't show it. He continued with his story.

"Even though Shiko was in but the waning days of his first full century and still technically true claimant of the title Master, his health was not as it had once been. His infirmity was not the result of age alone," Chiun quickly pointed out, "but was due to an encounter several years before with a cult of fireworshiping Ghebers in Persia."

"Gabors?" Remo asked. "Like Zsa Zsa and Eva?"

Chiun's papery lips pursed. "There are medications, Remo, for children with wandering minds. I will ask Emperor Smith to write you a prescription." Not desiring another intrusion, he continued. "The Ghebers were a once-powerful sect of Zoroastrians, thought extinct by Sinanju."

This triggered something from far back in Remo's memory. "Those Zeroequestrians were astrologers, weren't they?" he asked. "I remember Sister Irene saying that that's what the three Wise Men were way back in grade-school religion class."

Chiun shook his head impatiently. "As usual the carpenter's maidens have dropped in a single fact to float in the pool of their fictions. Yes, some were that. Others were much, much more. And that they were Zoroastrians is irrelevant. That they were from Persia is what matters." He continued his story. "In the sunset of his life Master Shiko was summoned to perform a minor service for a Persian emir. The emir wished the Master to remove a band of cutthroats that was terrorizing the lowlands of his kingdom.

"Now, under ordinary circumstances, though still Reigning Master, Shiko would have remained in Sinanju to mend the nets and watch the children play, allowing his pupil, whose name was Hya-Tee, to go in his stead. However, since Persia was the place where he had met great hardship, Shiko did not wish to risk endangering his pupil so early in his life, Hya-Tee having seen a mere forty-five summers. And so in his age and infirmity did Master Shiko take up his bundle and travel to the distant land of the Persian emirs."

Remo shook his head. "If Shiko was in such crummy shape, shouldn't Hya-Tee have insisted that he go instead?"

"There are Apprentice Reigning Masters and there are Reigning Masters," Chiun replied evenly. "In your experience, Remo, which one has the last word?"

At this Remo couldn't argue.

Satisfied, Chiun resumed his tale. "Now, it should be known that, although in failing health by Sinanju standards, Shiko was still better than any mere man. His bones were old, his sight was poor and some have said that his mind was beginning to precede his body into the Void, yet all of this mattered not when it came to the task he was to perform. In Persia he did impress the court of this lesser emir with his displays of speed and skill. And this was as it should be, for in his youth Shiko was as able as any Master who had come before, save only the greatest of the line. Verily did Shiko slay the murderous highwayman and, receiving payment in full, did he begin the long trek overland back to Sinanju.

"It was during his journey home that Master Shiko did make a most grave mistake. Flush with his success and the accolades he had received at court, Shiko did see himself for what he once was. In the clouding mind that sometimes comes with the sicknesses of age he once more became the man of his youth. Rather than take the longer, safer path that he had used for his earlier journey to Persia, he did take the less certain route he had employed several times as a young man.

"And lo did Shiko abandon the wisdom of age and travel did he up the treacherous route through the Himalayas. His path did bring him to Nepal and past the rude buildings that would one day rise up to become what is now the famed Tengpoche Monastery, which sits in the shadow of Chomolunga, the highest mountain in all the world."

In spite of himself, Remo had found that he was being drawn into the story. But at this, he had to interrupt.

"Wait," he said. "If it's in the Himalayas, that's gotta be Mount Everest, not Chumbawumba."

Chiun raised an annoyed eyebrow. "The civilized half of the world doesn't recognize that new name," he said frostily.

"Okay, but it is Mount Everest we're talking about?" Remo asked. "I just want to be clear."

"I am talking about Chomolunga," Chiun sniffed. "What filters through to your brain is of no consequence to me."

"Okay," Remo said, satisfied that they were indeed talking about Mount Everest. He settled back down.

Chiun didn't even have a chance to pull in another breath before Remo was interrupting again.

"Wait a sec, I thought K2 was tallest now."

Chiun's face puckered. "What is that?"

"A mountain. I think it's in India somewhere."

"If it is in India, then that ugly thing is not its true name. No doubt the white who first saw it laid claim to it and replaced the good Indian name with that K9 appellation."

"K9's a dog, Little Father," Remo said. "But you're right. The Indians wouldn't have named it after something that'd be confused with a dog. Cow's more their speed." His face brightened. "Say, you know if there's a Mount Bossie anywhere in India?"

"No," Chiun said dryly. "Are you quite finished?"

"Yeah, I'm done," Remo nodded.

The Korean's narrowed eyes seemed not to believe his pupil. Nonetheless, he forged ahead.

"Now, it was here in the shadow of Chomolunga where Master Shiko did come upon a gathering of Sherpa monks. They had heard that the Master of Sinanju was approaching their pathetic excuse for a monastery and had come out to greet him. And on the slippery path to Kathmandu, they did beg him stop. Surrounded were these monks by men of the new squalid Sherpa settlements, and the look of fright was full on all their ugly flat Sherpa faces. However, Shiko could see only the faces of those nearest, for his eyes were weak by now. But heard he the trembling fear in their voices.

"And these monks did speak in quavering voices, and they did tell of a terrible beast that had been attacking their settlements. They claimed that this creature did live in the forested regions near the snow line and did only venture down to prey on them. The beast was of great size with fearsome large hands and feet. The color of snow was this terrible creature, and was thus nearly invisible to the eye until it was too late. Many had died, they said.

"'Why does this beast attack you, O quivering Sherpas?'" the aged Master Shiko did ask.

"'He fears our nearness, great Master of Sinanju,' the monks did reply. 'For until our arrival these mountains were his home and his alone. At unsuspecting moments he does leap from concealment, casting our people from the mountainside to the rocks of the ravines far below. We fear he will kill us all, thus reclaiming that which he sees as his.'"

At this, Remo broke in once more. "You're saying they were new to the mountain, right?" he asked.

"That is correct," Chiun replied.

"Hmm," Remo said. "Maybe there was no abominable snowman," he suggested. "Maybe they were just slipping on the snow and falling over the side of the mountain."

In an earlier day Chiun would have been annoyed at yet another interruption. However, this time a thin smile slithered across the old man's parchment lips.

"That is partly true," he admitted, nodding wisely. "These first Sherpas had only recently migrated from the eastern Tibetan province of Khams to settle in this mountainous region. If Shiko's mind was as clear as that of the young Master he was pretending to be, he would have realized that these clumsy clods were not used to living on mountains and were merely slipping and cracking open their own thick Sherpa heads. But, alas, this did not occur to Master Shiko. He did have mind enough to know, however, that Sinanju had met many things known to quail the human heart. Some have been real-like dragons, minotaurs and gorgons."

"Gorgons?" Remo asked skeptically. "Aren't those the snake-haired chicks that turn you into rock?"

"There are limits to my patience, Remo," Chiun warned.

"Sorry," Remo sighed.

"So some monsters have been real while many more have been false things, created by man to explain or excuse his own weaknesses. In the age during which Shiko lived, there were few real monsters left. And though he had spent much time on these paths as a young man, in both winter and summer months, never once hearing of such a fantastic creature, Shiko was nevertheless intrigued by this tale, for he was still in the blush of false youth following his success in Persia. Throwing wisdom to the wind, he agreed to undertake the task of hunting this new beast. The Sherpa monks did pay him in gold and, after ritualistically sprinkling the ground around his feet with holy water and flowers, they did send him off on the hunt.

"Ordinarily, a Master would have embarked on such an expedition alone, but even in his delusional state Shiko realized that he would need someone to carry the tribute paid him by the monks. In addition to this, a fierce winter had late descended on the Himalayas. Men were needed to carry his supplies, and so it was decided that a group of young Sherpas would accompany him on his journey.

"They traveled on mountain paths, around Solu Khumba and up toward Kala Patter, which lay in peaceful slumber beneath the watchful gaze of mounts Lhotse and Nuptse. The trails were treacherous, and many were the times that Master Shiko's swift hand saved one or another of his retinue from falling to their deaths. They had trekked far, and Shiko was beginning to lose hope that they would ever find the creature they sought. But on the first day of the third week, they spied the beast's tracks."

In the seat next to the old Korean, Remo's face grew intent. The sounds of the plane engines and the general passenger sounds faded as he listened to Shiko's tale.

"Giant were these prints in the snow," Chiun continued. "Five times larger than any man's. They followed the trail to the thinning edge of the trees. And at dusk on the very day on which they discovered the tracks did they spy the creature." The old Korean tipped his head sadly. "Such was it recorded by Shiko, Remo," he said, his voice low. "However, in point of fact it was the Sherpas who claimed to see the beast. Shiko's eyes being what they were, he could not see to where they pointed. Yet he followed. For months they did follow a jagged course, up mountains and down. The beast remained before them, ever out of reach. And during this time Shiko failed to notice that the men with him-men who had at first fallen with nearly every other step-had slowly become more surefooted." Chiun paused momentarily, eyeing his pupil.

Remo said not a word. He didn't have to. A knowing look had settled on his face.

Chiun nodded. "You understand what Shiko did not," he intoned. "For although the deceitful monks claimed to be in search of a monster, what they really wanted was a way to keep their clumsy fellow Sherpas from falling off their silly mountains. And so it was that by the time Shiko's party had finished scouring the hills around Pokhara valley, the Sherpas had become the most skilled mountain climbers in the world outside of Sinanju. Even so, Shiko in his foolishness did not know the truth. Eventually, his health failed him and he was carried back to the Tengpoche Monastery, there to die."

"Bastards," muttered Remo, who understood that the skills of the Master of Sinanju sustained the village. "They took advantage of an old man. Everybody's out looking for a freebie. I'm surprised Shiko's student what's-his-name, Hat-Trick, didn't kack every last one of them."

At this, Chiun nodded. "Back home in Sinanju, Hya-Tee heard of his teacher's sickness. He did undertake the long journey to Chomolunga, there to find his Master in his final hours of life. On his trip up to the monastery, Hya-Tee did note the ease with which the Sherpa people journeyed about the mountainside. At the bedside of his Master, Shiko in his dying breath told Hya-Tee of the beast that he had been hired to kill. At that moment did Hya-Tee understand the truth."

"I'm confused," Remo said. "If Hya-Tee knew what happened, why didn't he wipe out the Sherpas then and there? I mean obviously he didn't, 'cause they're still good at climbing mountains today."

"Alas, it would have been an easy enough thing if it were but a matter of removing the men who had accompanied Shiko on his fruitless quest," Chiun explained. "But upon returning to their villages, they did instruct their females and children the proper way to tread on mountain snow and ice. The people of other settlements were taught, as well. By the time Hya-Tee arrived there, the skill had been passed to every Sherpa. Still, Hya-Tee could not allow such thievery to pass unpunished. He learned the names of the men who had been with Master Shiko on his pointless hunt, and for a time after the death of his old Master, Hya-Tee became the embodiment of that false creature Shiko had sought. He prowled the night, invisible in the snow, casting to their deaths the original thieves who did steal from Sinanju."

"Good." Remo nodded, crossing his arms in satisfaction.

"It was more than good-it was right," Chiun said. "At first the Sherpas knew fear. But over time, fear became respect. Eventually all did realize the debt they owed to Sinanju. When the last thief had met his just end, Hya-Tee did show himself. And said he, 'Thieving Sherpas, you have stolen from foolish Master Shiko and thus from Sinanju. To steal from us is to steal the food from the mouths of our children, for it is the work of the Master that sustains the village. Therefore, on this day and every time this season comes again for as long as you live in these mountains, Sinanju demands payment. The skills you have stolen will not be shared with outsiders, lest you incur the wrath of the shadowy beast of your own creation.'

"And thus it was agreed," Chiun said. "Every spring to this very day, the monks of Tengpoche do send a stipend to our village. Hya-Tee returned home to Sinanju, there to inter the body of his dead Master. As the years went by and this tale was passed down from one generation of Sherpas to the next, Hya-Tee's name became distorted. However, his legend is such that men around the world today speak his name."

Finished with his tale, he fussed at his robes. Beside him, Remo frowned. "Hya-Tee. I don't know-" The light dawned. "Yeti," he said, his eyes widening. "You're saying a Master of Sinanju is the abominable snowman?"

"I am saying that Hya-Tee exacted proper penance and is remembered for it," Chiun replied blandly.

"All right, so what's this got to do with the eightlegged bank robber we're after?"

"It is of particular relevance," Chiun said. "Remember, Master Shiko sought a monster that he could not see."

"It's not the same," Remo pointed out. "Everyone says they've seen a spider."

"And this is the lesson of Master Shiko," Chiun nodded wisely. "Just because many say they see a thing, that does not make that thing real. Trust your eyes not theirs."

"We've seen it," Remo suggested.

Chiun shook his head. "I have seen something," he replied, folding his arms. "What that something is I don't know. In any case, that television image was not clear. It is always wise to make no assumptions about what you think you know about your opponent until you've actually seen it with your own eyes. Such has it been since the time of Master Shiko." He pitched his voice low. "In point of fact, it was like this even before Shiko," he admitted. "Most Masters who came after him agree that we are fortunate the senile old fool didn't sell the entire village out from under us for a handful of magic beans."

The old Asian settled comfortably back in his seat, interwoven hands resting on his belly.

Remo bit his cheek thoughtfully. The sounds of the cabin seemed suddenly louder.

He had seen the image on the TV with his own eyes. It had certainly looked like a spider. But in truth the camera had been wobbly and the image had been fleeting.

When was a spider not a spider?

His face tight with somber reflection, he pondered Chiun's words for the rest of the flight to Maine.

Chapter 21

When they landed in Bangor, Remo called Smith for directions before renting a car at the airport. They drove east to Bay Cove. With a twice-delayed flight and a long drive, the late-afternoon shadows were already growing long.

It was the end of the autumn-foliage season in New England. Nature had painted the trees along the winding roads in vivid shades of red and yellow. By the time they arrived in the small seaside community Stewart McQueen called home, Chiun had his window rolled down. The old Korean sniffed the chilly October air with satisfaction.

"This place reminds me of my village," the Master of Sinanju said as they took the winding main road past quaint cottages decorated with lobster traps and sea-stained buoys.

"I don't smell shit," Remo said as he studied the road signs.

Chiun ignored him. "My quest for a new home still continues. I have seen many pictures. The Prince Regent has been most helpful."

"I think Smitty wants us out of Folcroft," Remo said. "The artist formerly known as Prince is just following orders."

He turned off the main drag onto a shaded side street.

"Yet you persist in your recalcitrance."

"I don't want to live in Maine, Chiun. It's colder than all hell. Besides, we've done the East Coast thing already. I'm putting winter behind me."

"We will see," Chiun said, settling back into his seat.

Remo followed Smith's directions, turning off the small lane and onto a tree-lined cul-de-sac. They looped around to the end. When he stopped before the gates of Stewart McQueen's mansion, his eyes grew flat.

"You gotta be kidding me," he said as he looked up at the unsightly Gothic mess that was Stewart McQueen's home.

The four-story structure slouched like an architectural bully at the end of the sparsely populated street. The round windows of the gabled attic rooms were like malevolent eyes of doom, staring out across the neighborhood. A widow's walk with rusted rail clung precariously to the slate roof. Gray shingled walls in desperate need of paint were adorned here and there with half-nailed shutters.

Around the property, autumn seemed to have come earlier than in the surrounding region, for any trace of leaves had been stripped from the handful of trees whose clawlike roots were fixed to soil. Bare black branches scraped the sky.

In the front seat beside Remo, the Master of Sinanju's button nose crinkled in distaste as he viewed the house.

"What is this place?" Chiun asked unhappily.

"I think the nuns would call it a living testament to the decline of American literature," Remo suggested. "Either that or it's the Munsters' summer house."

The two men got out of the car.

A pair of black metallic bats decorated the stone posts to which was fixed the rusting front gate. "Cameras in the bats' eyes," Remo pointed out as they strolled up to the gate. He had detected the soft clicks and whirs of delicate machinery.

"What manner of man lives in such a dwelling?" the Master of Sinanju asked. Standing on tiptoe, he was peering intently up at the bats.

The bats didn't look back. Remo and Chiun were now below their range. The dark, smoky eyes stared out across the deserted street.

"The guy's a superrich horror writer," Remo explained. "I saw on some tabloid show how he had his place done up to look like a haunted house." Hands on his hips, he peered through the bars of the gate at the house beyond. "Can't say it looks better in person than it did on TV."

With a soft harrumph of disapproval, Chiun dropped back to his soles. "The gate is electrified," he announced, tucking hands inside his kimono sleeves.

"Whole place is, judging by the hum I'm getting off it," Remo replied. "He must have a major security system. So what do you say, Little Father," he asked, turning to the Master of Sinanju, "through it or over it?"

Neither course proved necessary. As Remo and Chiun stood on the sidewalk before the gate, a gentle click sounded at the heavy bolt. The electrical charge that hummed through the fence powered down to silence. With a forlorn groan of rusted metal, the heavy steel gate rolled slowly open.

Remo glanced at Chiun. "This might be a good time to remember not to take any balloons from killer clowns who want to lure us into the woods," he said dryly.

Chiun's face was serious. "Stay alert," he warned. With that the old Korean slipped through the gates. Remo followed him inside.

As they walked away, high up on the gateposts behind them, the heads of the two bat sentries swung around.

The eyes of the metal creatures were directed at the backs of the two men as they made their way up the walk.

When Remo felt the telltale waves from the cameras on his back, he arched a curious eyebrow.

"I thought those things looked solid," he commented. "Didn't look to me like the necks could swivel."

He glanced over his shoulder. But when he did, the bats were once more facing the street, away from Remo and Chiun.

"What the hell?"

As a frown took shape on Remo's face, the front gate abruptly swung closed without so much as a creak. The hum from the electrified fence rose in the chilly air.

"Isn't this the part where Shemp sees the ghost, but Moe and Larry are too busy moving furniture to notice?" Remo asked the vacant air.

As if in response, a low moan rose from the house, painful and protracted.

As they headed up the flagstone walk, Chiun and Remo both saw the small speakers hidden under the lip of a narrow ledge just above the eaves. The protracted moan echoed to silence, replaced by the distant, desolate howl of a wolf.

A blanket of rotten leaves was spread across the dead brown grass. Thorn bushes and creeping ivy decorated the front of the house around the porch.

The front steps were bowed and rickety. Up close Remo could see that they were deliberately made to look old and battered. They seemed sturdy enough underfoot as the two men climbed up onto the broad front porch.

"Abracadabra," Remo said mysteriously, waving his hand as they approached the front door.

The instant he uttered the word, the door creaked open.

"I don't know what you think," Remo said, careful to keep his voice low enough that only Chiun could hear, "but I think we're about to get pounced on by an eight-hundred-pound spider."

"Caution," the Master of Sinanju warned in reply. Senses straining alertness, the old man breezed through the door. Remo followed.

If the spider was inside, it was not in the foyer. Nor, Remo judged, was it in any of the ground-floor rooms.

From what he could tell there were no detectable life signs. Just the constant thrum of electricity that powered Stewart McQueen's elaborate security system. The whole house seemed to vibrate with coursing energy.

The two men had taken only a few steps inside the house when they felt the rush of air at their backs. Spinning, they were just in time to see the front door slam shut.

To Remo's trained eyes, it moved faster than any mechanical device should have allowed. The entire house rumbled from attic to basement, such was the force with which the door cracked shut.

Remo bounded back over to the door, grabbing the handle. He expected to shatter the simple lock with ease, but when he took hold of the tarnished brass knob, a surprised look blossomed on his hard face. "There's no dead bolt," he said.

The Master of Sinanju frowned. Joining his pupil at the door, Chiun tapped the knob with a single slender finger while placing the flat of his palm on the door's veneer. His leathery face grew amazed.

"This is no longer a door," the Master of Sinanju said as the solid vibrations returned to his bony hand. It was as if upon closing, the entire door had merged with the frame around it, becoming one with the wall itself. They formed a single, solid unit.

"It's altogether ookey," Remo suggested. "Wanna take the whole wall down?"

Chiun shook his head. A look of strange puzzlement had taken root on his face. His ears were trained on the rooms around them as they walked out into the big foyer.

Though only an anteroom, the foyer was larger than an average living room. A warped wooden rail stretched to the second-floor landing, balusters missing at irregular points. A big vase filled with dead flowers sat on an old oak stand thick with dust. The lace doily that hung in tatters from beneath the vase was yellow with age. A ratty Oriental runner stretched across the floor from the sealed front door to the hallway that lay adjacent to the main foyer.

They had barely reached the staircase when they felt the surge of displaced air above their heads. Their senses tripping alert, instinct took over. Remo jumped left, Chiun leaped right.

They had barely bounded to safety before the big crystal chandelier that had been hanging from the foyer's vaulted ceiling crashed to the floor.

The heavy weight tore through the lower section of the bannister, ripping wood to pulp and screaming into the bottom steps. Glass cracked and scattered into dank corners.

A cloud of dust rose into the musty air.

As the sound was swallowed up by the darkest reaches of the big old house, Remo turned a level eye on the Master of Sinanju. "Now, that was not right," he said evenly.

By the look on Chiun's face, the old man agreed. Ordinarily, Remo and Chum would have detected the faint grinding of mechanical parts that would have warned them a trigger or release had been activated. But in this case there was no such sign. It was as if the chandelier itself had made a decision entirely on its own to drop on their heads.

"Do not become distracted," Chiun cautioned. "All is not as it appears here."

"If you're saying it's not looking and acting like a creepy haunted house, then I've gotta disagree," Remo said. He looked down at the twisted chandelier. It blocked the route to the staircase. "Looks like someone doesn't want us going upstairs."

"Or else that is precisely where they wish us to go," the old Korean pointed out.

Remo considered his words. Given what they'd seen so far, it was possible that the house was using reverse psychology on them.

"I don't know about you," Remo grumbled, annoyed, "but I'm not about to start trying to figure out what some wrecking ball reject wants me to do."

And curling his toes he launched himself up over the broken chandelier.

Chiun followed suit. The two men landed lightly, side by side on the fifth broad step.

Ever cautious, they began climbing the stairs.

To their right as they ascended, portraits lined the broad, curving staircase. Though not antiques, they had been carefully treated to look as old as the house itself. Each was of a single man made out to look like a famous character from horror fiction. There was the Wolfman, the Mummy, Frankenstein's monster and a dozen more that Remo didn't recognize. He noted that the face on each of the paintings looked the same. When they reached the Dracula painting at the first landing, it finally struck him.

"That's the guy, Little Father," he said, snapping his fingers. "Stewart McQueen. I'd know those teeth anywhere."

Pausing, Chiun glanced at the Dracula painting with thin disgust. "I do not know why you in the West revere this Walachian so," he said unhappily. "He was a stingy tyrant and not even a true vampire. It was a happy day when Sultan Mehmed hired Master Foo to remove his miserly head."

"You talking McQueen or Dracula?"

"He was known as Vlad the Impaler," Chiun said dryly. "And before you ask, I am not a walking history lesson. If you are interested, look it up in the scrolls yourself."

He spun on his heel.

As Remo was turning from the painting, something suddenly caught his attention. A flash of movement. When he snapped his head back around, he saw that the black eyes of the Walachian ruler had twitched to one side.

Remo took a startled step back. The movement came as a shock to his highly trained senses, for he had not perceived any living thing behind the wall.

He wheeled to the Master of Sinanju, stabbing a finger at the portrait. "Chiun, did you see what I-" He didn't get a chance to finish his question. The old man's face was a mirror of his own shock. As he jumped forward, the Master of Sinanju's long nails unfurled like deadly knives of vengeance. Slashing left then right, he reduced Dracula's face to a mass of canvas tatters.

Behind was nothing more than an oak-paneled wall.

No. More than that. As Remo listened, he heard the distinct creaking of floorboards. The sound seemed to be coming from a hollow behind the wall.

A secret passage.

"Okay, Remo's had enough fun at the wacky shack," Remo muttered angrily.

Grabbing the portrait, he flung it to the stairs. Pulverizing fists shot into hard wood. It cracked and splintered. Grabbing at the edges of the new formed hole, Remo yanked. An entire panel tore away.

Beyond was a narrow hallway, just wide enough for a man to walk along. Without a glance at his teacher, Remo slipped through the two-foot-wide opening. The Master of Sinanju came in behind.

The passage was illuminated by a few bare bulbs. It appeared to loop around the second story of the house. The far ends disappeared around sharp corners in both directions.

"You get a sense of which way he went?" Remo asked.

"He who?" the Master of Sinanju said thinly. "I sensed no life signs from this chamber."

"Yeah, but you heard the floor creak," Remo pointed out. He glanced around. The electrical hum was stronger in here. He felt the short hairs rise on the back of his neck. "Maybe all this electric junk is some sort of force field or something. Could have kept us from getting a bead on him."

"Or it," Chiun cautioned.

"No bogeyman living here, Little Father," Remo said firmly. "Just some nutcase writer. Let's try this way."

He struck off to the right.

Unlike whoever had preceded them through here, neither man made a sound on the warped boards as they slid stealthily down the long corridor.

They had traveled only a few yards along the passage when the strange electrical charge that filled the dank air around them abruptly grew in pitch.

Remo stopped dead.

"Maybe this wasn't such a hot idea after all," he said, his voice thick with foreboding. "What say we amscray?"

His answer was a shocked intake of air, then nothing.

And in the moment of that single gasping breath, the distinctive beat of the Master of Sinanju's heart vanished.

Remo wheeled around. Chiun was gone.

He was vaguely aware of a panel closing in the floor. But even his supersensitive eyes had difficulty adjusting to the speed with which it snapped shut.

His heart knotting in his chest, Remo fell to his knees, attacking the floor.

He soon discovered that this wood was not like the paneling he had just broken through. Each pummeling fist was absorbed by the floor. Although the wood appeared solid, it was like punching marshmallow. Though his hand fired down with punishing force, he failed to make a single dent.

Worse than that, there was no longer any hint of a trapdoor. As though one had never existed.

The first hint of panic began to ring in Remo's ears. As concern for his teacher grew, he was vaguely aware that his hands were slick with some wet substance. At the same time Remo heard a soft gurgle in either direction.

He snapped his head left.

The walls were excreting some slippery liquid. At first glance it looked like blood. But the smell was wrong.

It was oil. It seeped out invisible pores above the trapdoor.

Somehow the house had known that Chiun would attempt to grab on to something when the passage opened beneath him. It had prevented him from doing so by greasing everything within reach.

Remo hopped to his feet. Thoughts only on Chiun, he raced for the opening they had used to enter the passage.

He'd start his search on the first floor and move to the basement if necessary. To find Chiun, he would tear the entire house down brick by brick.

When he reached the spot where the opening had been, Remo froze.

It was gone. Somehow the jagged hole he'd torn in the paneling had healed itself.

And on either side of the narrow passage, the walls began to thrum, as if with a pulsing life force all their own.

Whatever was happening, it wasn't good. Remo slashed out a hand at the wood. It absorbed the blow.

He tried again. Still nothing. The paneling that had shattered so easily two minutes before now seemed impervious to his attacks.

A click and a whir behind him, followed by a low rumble.

Remo didn't turn. He didn't need to look to know that the walls were closing in.

There wasn't a sense of hydraulics. Just the inexorable move of the wall toward his back.

And as the passage constricted, threatening to crush Remo to paste, a single camera winked on at the far end of the corridor, its somber lens focused on the dramatic final moments of life of the younger Master of Sinanju.

Chapter 22

At first he had an impossible time orienting himself. All around him the world was shaded in black.

But after a time, shapes began to form. Angled shadows rose right or left, indicating where walls and ceiling were.

Mark Howard was at Folcroft. As usual. That much he knew. But he couldn't quite place exactly where. He started walking.

As he headed down the long hallway, each footfall was thunder only he could hear.

When he felt the first kiss from the icy rush of air, he knew what it preceded.

Come for me....

The disembodied voice echoed forlornly off the shadowy walls. It seemed to be inside his head, as well.

He had heard the voice before. In this same place. But as far as he knew, it wasn't a voice he recognized. The hallway grew longer with each step. He passed a window. In the tree beyond, an owl blinked inquisitively, its eyes washed in purple from the strangely deformed moon.

Release me....

A door. Mark had seen it before. Each time he visited this hallway, he managed to get this far. With growing dread he knew that it would soon be over.

It was a patient's door. Crisscrossing wires were buried in the small Plexiglas rectangle.

Mark crept forward. The thudding of his shoes faded, overwhelmed by the pounding of his own heart.

The door was solid, unbreakable.

He touched the handle. As usual, no sense of cold or warmth. For a moment he considered turning it. Some unexplainable inner dread held him back. He released the knob.

The instant he let go, there issued a timid scratching from inside, as from a dying animal. Whatever it was, it gave the sense that captivity was sapping its vitality.

Holding his breath, Mark moved to the window. Though it was dark inside, he could still glimpse a few familiar shapes. A bed. A dresser.

The rustle of movement.

He leaned in close, his heart beating a chorus in his ears.

Movement no more. For an instant he thought it might have been imagined.

And in that moment of doubt, it sprang at him. When it shot up from the shadows, Mark fell back. It pounded the window, cracking the reinforced mesh. "Release me!" the beast shrieked.

The features were feral. Not human, not animal. It was all hatred and rage.

Howard skittered back on all fours, slamming the wall. He blinked. The instant he did, the darkness turned to gray, quickly fading up to white. And even as the light returned, the beast continued to slam the door, demanding release.

Pounding, pounding, pounding...

KNOCK, knock knock.

Mark opened his eyes.

It took him a moment to realize where he was. Four walls. Close enough to touch.

Folcroft. This was where he worked now. A dream. The dream. Again.

He rubbed his head where he had bumped it against the wall. His office was so small that his chair barely fit behind his desk. During his first month here, he had hit his head against the wall at least twice every day.

Knock, knock knock.

"Mr. Howard?" a timid voice called from the hall. Okay. He was back. The dream was rapidly becoming nothing more than a disturbing memory.

In the battered oaken desk before him was a raised computer screen. Howard felt near his knee, depressing a hidden stud beneath the desk. The monitor whirred obediently down below the surface.

"Come in," he called, clearing the gravelly sleep from his throat.

The wide face of Eileen Mikulka, Harold Smith's secretary, peeked into the small room. "Good evening, Mr. Howard," she said cheerily. "I was just passing by on my way home and I thought I'd remind you about your meeting with Dr. Smith."

Mark smiled. "I know. Thanks, Mrs. M."

She warmed to the familiarity. Assistant Director Howard was such a nice young man. Not that her employer, Dr. Smith, didn't have his good qualities. It was just that it was nice to have such a pleasant young fellow at Folcroft.

"He's a stickler for punctuality," she said. "Which isn't a bad thing. It's just the way he is. Anyway, I wouldn't want you to get in trouble."

"You're a little late for that," Mark said quietly, sitting up. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Standing in the doorway, Smith's secretary smiled.

"You'll do fine here," Mrs. Mikulka promised. She cast a glance at Howard's desk. "It seems funny to see that again after all these years," she commented. "That was Dr. Smith's desk for such a long time. I was surprised when he had me send workers to bring it up from the cellar for you. I didn't know he'd kept it. It isn't like Dr. Smith to be sentimental over something like a dirty old desk. I guess it just shows that you can never know everything there is to know about a person. Good night, Mr. Howard." She backed from the small office and shut the door. After she was gone, Mark Howard nodded silent agreement.

"Not if you want to live to tell about it," he said softly.

Shaking the cobwebs from his brain, Mark got to his feet, struggling around the desk that was far too big for the cramped room.

THE SUN HAD SET over Folcroft. Outside the sanitarium windows it was almost dark as Mark made his way through the administrative wing of the building. He met only one other employee, an elderly janitor with a bucket and a mop.

As far as staff was concerned, night wasn't much different than day. Dr. Smith limited the staff in this wing of the facility to a skeleton crew. The fewer eyes to see what was going on, the better.

The way Smith told it, either he or his secretary could handle Folcroft's affairs virtually alone. When he had mentioned this fact to Howard, it was the only time Mark had seen the old man express real pride in his work.

So while the doctors and nurses and orderlies worked in the medical wing, Mark Howard generally walked alone through the empty second-floor hallways.

This night, the emptiness was unnerving.

As he made his way up the hall, he tried to soften his own footfalls in an attempt to keep from reminding himself of his disturbing recurring dream. He was grateful for the muffling effect of Smith's drab reception-room carpeting.

On his way to the office door, Mark glanced at his wristwatch.

"Uh-oh," he said when he saw that it was four minutes after six.

Expecting to be chewed out for his tardiness, he rapped a gentle knuckle on the door even as he pushed it open.

As usual Smith sat behind his broad desk. Through the one-way picture window behind the CURE director, the thinning black trees of Folcroft's back lawn surrendered their burden of dark leaves to dusk. Beyond the trees the choppy waves of Long Island Sound were gray and cold. At the same time in a few short days, the end of daylight savings time would bring nightfall an hour sooner.

Smith's face was stern.

"I'm sorry I'm late," Mark said as he clicked the door shut. "It won't happen again."

He was surprised when Smith did not so much as raise a disapproving eyebrow. His hard expression never wavering, the CURE director beckoned the young man forward.

"Is something wrong?" Mark asked as he slipped into his usual straight-backed chair.

"The report you got this afternoon on the metal fragment Remo found in Florida," Smith said, not answering the question. "The results were conclusive?"

It was an odd question. They had discussed the lab report only an hour before. Afterward Smith had said that he was going to do some research. By the sounds of it, he had found something that was not to his liking.

"Yes," Mark replied. "It was a special alloy created to be virtually impervious to intense heat and chemical abrasion." He shook his head, confused. "Is everything all right, Dr. Smith? I sent it by courier to one of your approved labs. If you want it retested, I can send it to one of the others."

"The lab is not the problem," Smith said darkly. He sank back in his chair, a dim shadow in his gloomy office.

Howard detected something in the older man's tone he had never heard before. It was deep concern. Bordering on fear.

"I have been doing some digging," Smith said somberly. "There are few applications for such an alloy. Since one is space exploration, proximity obviously dictated that I should start with NASA. I have concluded that this is indeed the likeliest source."

"Remo said they couldn't identify it," Howard frowned.

Smith was not dissuaded. "That is unlikely," he said. "Look at this." He pulled his chair in tight to his desk. The old man looked down over his monitor like a modern sorcerer searching for augers in the realm of cyberspace.

Curious, Mark circled around the desk.

On the monitor was a picture Smith had found at a science magazine's Web site.

The subject of the photograph was a giant robotic spider. Underneath the picture a caption identified it as the Virgil probe, part of a new generation of NASA space-exploration technology. Technical data filled the screen all around the picture. Small images of Neptune and Venus had been plugged in around Virgil, red arrows detailing atmospheric and climatic information.

Knuckles leaning on the lip of the desk, Howard glanced down at Smith.

"I don't think that's what we're after, Dr. Smith," Mark cautioned slowly.

"You are correct," Smith said gravely. "Our adversary is far more dangerous than any of us realized." He glanced up at Howard. "You have analyzed some of CURE's operations database. Have you reached the section on Mr. Gordons?"

Mark shook his head. "I don't think so," he admitted. "What's his first name?" he asked, hoping to jog his memory.

"He-or rather, it-doesn't have one," Smith explained. "Gordons is an artificially created entity built by the space program. He has the form of a man, but he is not human. He was meant to be utilized for interstellar exploration, but he escaped from his lab years ago and has been at large ever since. CURE has encountered him on numerous occasions over the course of the last two and a half decades."

As he stood beside Smith, Mark Howard's face was perfectly flat. Moving only his eyes, he looked from the picture of the Virgil probe to the CURE director's serious face.

"I'm not sure what to make of this, Dr. Smith," he ventured cautiously.

"I know it sounds absurd," Smith agreed, "but you need only review the material we have collected on Gordons to see that it is true. In point of fact, science has nearly caught up with his design in the years since his creation. There have been great advances in robotics, computer science, artificial intelligence and miniaturization. At the time of his creation he might have seemed like science fiction, but science fact is rapidly catching up with him."

Mark already knew from experience that CURE dealt with things that seemed somewhat out of the ordinary. And the truth was Mark Howard himself somewhat fit the mold of extranormal phenomena.

"All right," he offered. "I'll review the Gordons data. But if what you're saying is true, he'd technically be an android. A machine in human form. What does he have to do with this?" He nodded to the image on the computer.

"Gordons is more than just a simple android," Smith said, exhaling. "He was programmed to survive. It is a command that supersedes all others. In his quest to survive, he is able to assimilate all materials from his environment necessary to fulfill that function. During Remo and Chiun's last encounter with him six years ago, they disposed of Gordons's brain housing in a Mexican volcano. At the time I had hoped that his metallic components would melt in the magma. If not, it would not matter so much, for he was finally isolated. Left in a place where there was no hope of assimilating the material, he would need to remake himself."

In a flash Howard had a moment of intuitive clarity.

"The Virgil probe," the young man announced. "It's supposed to be used on hostile planets. They would have had to simulate an alien environment to see if it worked. NASA must have brought it to that volcano for testing." He nodded to himself, not waiting for a response. "They sent it down there and it found something it didn't expect. Whatever was left of your Mr. Gordons must have assimilated the probe."

"It appears that is the case," Smith agreed. "I have reviewed NASA's internal data. They brought Virgil to the Popocatepetl volcano late last week. It was only a few days after it was brought back to the United States that the first spider sighting took place in Florida. I am almost certain we are dealing with Gordons." He glanced up at Howard. "However, Remo and Chiun are unaware it is him."

The assistant CURE director's brow creased. "But they'll be safe, right?" he asked, his voice troubled. "I mean, they've beaten this thing before."

"Mr. Gordons is no ordinary foe. Yes, they have succeeded in neutralizing him in the past, but not without great difficulty. And I fear complacency might be their enemy this time. If they are certain in their belief that Gordons is dead, the risk to them increases."

Mark straightened, a determined cast to his soft jaw. "Then I'll fly to Maine and warn them."

"You would not reach them in time," Smith said. "They are already on the ground there."

Standing beside Smith's desk, Mark Howard felt a surge of impotent frustration. He clenched and unclenched his hands, unsure what to do.

Outside, night had taken firm hold. The grounds beyond Smith's one-way picture window had been swallowed up by an impenetrable cloak of blackness.

"There must be something we can do," Howard insisted.

Smith nodded. "Yes, there is," he said. Still seated, the older man looked up over the tops of his rimless glasses. "We will remain at Folcroft and use CURE's resources to uncover who at NASA is responsible for the events in Florida. Someone there has been directing Gordons in the guise of the Virgil probe. If Remo and Chiun succeed in Maine, we will send them back to Florida to deal with his accomplices."

"And if they fail?" Howard asked.

Smith didn't miss a beat. "Then CURE will be without its enforcement arm and you will have gotten your wish."

Turning from his subordinate, he began typing swiftly at his computer keyboard.

Smith's words were not said as a rebuke. Still, they stung. Mark was at a loss for words. He turned woodenly.

Feeling the weight of his own earlier suggestion on his broad shoulders, Mark Howard quietly left the office.

Chapter 23

The darkness through which he fell was complete. There wasn't so much as a trace of light for his eyes to absorb.

Slipping through this shaft of utter darkness, Chiun kept his arms bent slightly, his fingers extended.

He didn't know what to expect. When the trapdoor had opened beneath him in the secret passage upstairs, he couldn't move out of the way quickly enough. It was the same strange sense he and Remo had gotten from the falling chandelier. There had been no triggering of hinges or hasps. It was as if the trapdoor had made the decision to open up and swallow him entirely of its own volition.

As he rocketed through empty space, a sudden pressure against his eardrums told him something flat and solid was racing up toward his feet. The tube was sealed.

He expected to drop onto the invisible floor, but the instant before he hit, the ink-black tube through which he was plunging split like a yawning mouth. Dim light flooded the tunnel. Chiun caught a flash of a slick black wall as he was spit from the tube. Free, he plunged out into open air.

Chiun's kimono became a billowing parachute as he floated to the dirt floor. On landing, his sandal soles made not so much as a single scuff.

He quickly scanned his surroundings.

He had fallen into the basement. The high brick walls were ancient. Icicles of dry mortar hung from between the bricks.

The room in which he'd fallen appeared to be sealed. There was no sign of window or door.

The floor beneath his feet was level, but two yards off it began to slope rapidly downward into a separate alcove. Shadows drenched the farthest recesses of this pit.

There were no signs of life anywhere in the room. Still, his experiences thus far in this strange house were enough that he would not trust all to be as it should.

Senses straining alertness, Chiun turned to the nearest wall. He hadn't taken a single step toward it when he detected sudden movement behind him.

He wheeled around.

From the darkness of the alcove a long, low figure was slithering into view. Dark and menacing, it moved swiftly on short legs across the dirt floor.

A second creature emerged behind it, followed by a third. Elongated mouths smiled rows of viciously sharp teeth. As powerful jaws opened and closed experimentally, the darting beasts lashed the air with fat, pointed tails.

Chiun took a cautious step back from the familiar shapes.

The creatures advancing on him appeared to be crocodiles. But appearance alone was deceiving. That these were not ordinary crocodiles was apparent to the Master of Sinanju. For one thing there were no life signs emanating from them. And though they made a good pantomime of living motion, their movements nonetheless were more jerky than the real thing. Their squat legs shot into the floor like fired pistons, propelling them forward. There was not the grace natural to all living things.

Even as the animals crept toward him, Chiun demonstrated his contempt by tucking his hands inside his kimono sleeves.

Raising his wattled neck, he addressed the four walls.

"Fools," he spit, his voice dripping scorn. "Your mechanized beasts are no match for Sinanju."

His words brought an odd reaction from the crocs. All three animals stopped dead in their tracks. With agonizing slowness, the lead animal raised its head, looking up at him. Deep within its shiny dark eyes came a click and a whir. Chiun had no doubt that whoever was controlling the beasts was looking at him now.

Artificial eyes trained square on Chiun, the crocodile's mechanical mouth opened wide. The old Korean saw that the rows of white teeth were sharper than any knife blade.

Jaw locked open, the creature paused. For a moment Chiun thought that it might have broken down. But all at once a tinny sound issued from the black depths of its mouth, like a poorly reproduced recording of an old radio show.

"Hello is all right," said the crocodile. And far back along its powerful jaws, its mouth curved up toward its eyes in a parody of a human smile.

Standing above the beast, Chiun felt his very marrow freeze to solid ice. Hazel eyes opened wide in shock.

And in that moment of stunned amazement, the crocodile darted forward, its machine jaws clamping shut around Chiun's exposed ankle with the force of a snapping bear trap.

REMO GAVE UP trying to attack the walls. If he had more room to negotiate in the ever narrowing chamber, he might have been able to break through. As it was, the only dents he had succeeded in making had quickly healed themselves.

The rear wall of the secret passage continued to slowly close in behind him. He was now only a few seconds from being crushed. But a few seconds was all he needed.

Far down the corridor the red eye of the security camera continued to watch dispassionately.

On the floor around Remo's feet were a few of the chunks of paneling that were left after he'd forced his way inside the chamber. With the toe of his loafer, he drew the longest one toward him.

"First thing," Remo snarled. Leaning sideways, he scooped up the wooden fragments. "I don't like an audience."

His hand snapped out. The chunk of wood whistled down to the far end of the narrowing corridor.

The dart pierced the lens and the camera burst apart in a spray of white sparks.

Behind him the compressing wall creaked as if in response. He felt it begin to move in faster.

Remo released more breath, deflating his lungs. He'd have to work fast.

Whoever had designed this place might not have been very creative. They had gotten Chiun with the floor and they intended to get Remo with the walls, but it was possible they had left one avenue open.

Thrusting his hands straight up, Remo hopped off the floor, curling his fingers over the upper edge of the wall.

The dust on the two-by-four framing was thick. Feet dangling in space, he began shifting his weight from hand to hand, rocking his body from side to side. As the walls continued to close in, he quickly picked up momentum, his feet swinging toward the ceiling. It was tough to work in such a confined space. Even so, his toe had just brushed the cheap pine when he heard a fresh noise in the passage.

Somewhere distant, an intercom speaker clicked on. A tinny voice called out to him.

"What are you doing?"

It was thin and metallic. As he swung back and forth, Remo could not help but think he'd heard that voice before.

"Given our past relationship I had an understandable desire to witness your demise," the faceless speaker continued, "but you have impaired my ability to see you. Perhaps you are already dead. Given the nature of the very creative trap in which I have ensnared you, there is a high probability that this is the case."

Remo couldn't believe what he was hearing. It couldn't be. It wasn't possible.

Yet given the circumstances it offered the best, if not the least troubling, explanation.

"I will assume for now that you are not dead," suggested the voice. "I will continue to permit this passage to close in on itself, thereby insuring your demise."

With that the speaker clicked off.

As far as Remo was concerned, nothing more needed to be said. He had already heard enough. With a final wrench he flipped himself ceilingward, releasing his grip on the two-by-four.

His body was propelled up from the passage and into the tight space between two parallel floor beams. His speed was such that the entire length of his body became a punishing force against the brittle wood. The pine cracked obediently.

As dry kindling rained down inside the passage, Remo was already slipping up inside the dark crawl space. He burrowed through insulation and broke through underflooring, emerging-battered and dusty-in a third-story bedroom.

When he glanced back down through the hole he'd made in the oak floor, he saw nothing but blackness. The walls had closed in, sealing the corridor.

Another few seconds and he would have been dead. His thoughts flew to Chiun. The old man didn't know what they were truly facing. And with their opponent, a few short seconds was the difference between life and death.

Hoping that his teacher had fully embraced the lesson of Master Shiko, Remo raced from the bedroom.

THE CROCODILE HAD FIRED forward much faster than it should have. Chiun felt the rush of compressing air as the jaw snapped shut around his bony ankle.

In the instant before it bit through flesh and bone, he jumped. His pipe-stem legs cut sharp angles in the musty cellar air. He landed in a flurry of robes, twirling to face the mechanical crocodiles.

Bodies low to the ground, the animals were scurrying across the dirt floor after him.

Understanding who his true foe was now, he kept his entire being alert as the animals advanced.

"Your adopted son is dead," the lead crocodile said.

Chiun paid no heed to the words or the mouth from which they emanated. He had no reason yet to believe them.

As the lead crocodile and its companions crawled toward Chiun, the animal continued to speak.

"He has temporarily impeded my ability to see his body, yet I have calculated a near one hundred percent probability that my stratagem to kill him has succeeded. I tell you this now, for I find that in times of emotional loss humans are more likely to make mistakes. An error by you now would give me the advantage, thus assuring your demise, as well."

Chiun knew that the voice alone didn't necessarily mean that his enemy was here. While he could be hidden in one of the crocodiles, he was just as likely controlling them from some remote location.

The crocodile lunged forward, its jaws snapping shut.

Hopping over the savage champing mouth, Chiun's heel touched the back of the crocodile's head.

It seemed like the gentlest of nudges, yet the animal's face rocketed down into the hard-packed dirt. There was a twist and groan of metal. When it rose back up, the crocodile's snout was bent straight up in the air at an impossible angle, obscuring its eyes.

"I am curious to know if you are like other humans," the crocodile said around its twisted mouth. "Has the death of Remo, for whom you have an emotional attachment, made you more likely to make a fatal mistake?"

The disconcerting smile stretched up the long mouth of the crocodile. As it did, the jaw creaked slowly back down, re-forming into its original shape. With a satisfied thrashing of its fat tail, the croc shot forward again.

It nearly found its mark. Not because of its speed but because Chiun had become distracted by something else. Something at the far end of its whipping tail.

At the last moment the aged Korean bounded from between the clamping jaws. He landed square on the beast's back.

The crocodile twisted around after him. Even as it did so, the other two animals thrust their heads forward, all flashing jaws and razor teeth.

Chiun ignored them all. Hopping through two more sets of clamping jaws, he negotiated a path straight down the lead animal's spine. At the far end of its whipping tail he found what he was looking for.

A thick black cable ran out from the tail's nub. Snaking away across the floor, it vanished into the darkness of the pit from which the animals had come. Two more wires extended up into the room, connecting to the other crocs.

As the lead crocodile contorted its body to snap at its unwanted passenger, the old Asian leaned down. With one long fingernail he snicked the cable in two.

The animal immediately froze in place, its jaws open wide.

The other two crocodiles were scampering toward him. Flipping around behind them, Chiun used flashing nails to sever their cables, too. The crocs stopped in midlunge, collapsing to the floor in twin coughs of soft dust.

As soon as their umbilical connection was severed, the three cables that extended up out of the alcove began to thrash around the floor like fat black snakes. With desperate slaps they lashed the dirt in search of their severed ends.

Before the cords had a chance to reconnect, Chiun kicked two of the huge animals to the far side of the room, out of reach of the grasping cables.

He bent for the last crocodile. Swinging it by the tail, he brought it against the nearby wall.

Crashing metal pulverized brick and mortar. The wall to the sealed-off room collapsed out into the main cellar.

Tossing the broken shell of the big robot animal aside, the Master of Sinanju sprang through the hole. Thinking only of Remo's safety, he flew for the stairs.

Chapter 24

Stewart McQueen watched the action taking place inside his mansion from the safety of the tidy furnished loft apartment above his carriage house. As he studied the remote image on his TV screen, his lip was curled in nervous concentration, revealing sharp rodent's teeth.

Mr. Gordons had suggested that the writer remain hidden in the remodeled carriage house while he dealt with his enemies in the main house. Something about his enemies being able to detect human life signs.

At first McQueen wasn't sure he should believe the claims Gordons had made about the men who were after him, especially when he got a look at the pair who showed up at his front gates. But after watching them smash through his home, Stewart McQueen was starting to think he might not be safe even in this separate outbuilding.

Gordons had hooked the security system into the TV, allowing McQueen to see everything. He watched the men enter, climb the stairs and break into the booby-trapped secret passage. When the old one was dumped down into the crocodile pit and the walls began to close in on the young one, McQueen was certain they were both as good as dead.

But then things started to go wrong.

First the young one managed to break the camera that was trained on him. No small feat, considering he did it with a wood chip the size of a pencil thrown down a corridor thirty feet long and two feet wide.

The old one wouldn't be so lucky. He had survived a two-story fall, but there was no way he could last in the basement crocodile pit.

McQueen's confidence evaporated when he saw the old one leap over the head of his fiercest faux crocodile. The animal's camera eyes twisted around just in time to see the Asian riding the croc's tail like a surfer on a board-snip the wire that connected the animal to the rest of the house. After that, this image went dead, as well.

Sitting in his loft on the edge of a neatly made guest bed, McQueen chewed his nails nervously. "What's happening?" the novelist asked his TV.

"I am attempting to ascertain that now," said a voice from the television's speaker.

Mr. Gordons had wormed his way like a virus through the electrical system all over the grounds. "Are they dead?" McQueen asked anxiously. "I thought you'd know if they were dead."

"Visual inspection has failed," Gordons explained. "Although I am possessed with the ability to detect things such as heartbeats, perspiration and human odors, this is a function of my primary assembly that is not easily rerouted."

"So you're saying that the house becomes an extension of you, but that your body stays separate?" McQueen suggested. "Like an isolated control unit."

"Essentially, yes," Gordons said.

"Well, that's just great!" McQueen snapped, jumping to his feet. "Those guys are probably running around loose right now, and you don't even know where. What kind of good-for-nothing assimilating android are you?"

"I am the kind of assimilating android who does not accept failure," Gordons replied coldly. "You were supposed to deliver my enemies to me, yet it is possible that you have done the opposite. I need to determine which is the case. Since I am unable to rely on your security cameras, I require your assistance. You will come back to the main house and conduct a visual search for their bodies."

McQueen's eyes sprang wide.

"Me?" he mocked. He shook his head violently. "No way, Jose. If you're afraid of those guys, there's nothing you can do to get me back in that house."

The bulbs in three lamps around the bedroom simultaneously exploded.

"On the other hand-" McQueen began.

The voice of Mr. Gordons interrupted. "Wait," the android instructed.

An image appeared on the television screen. It was warped into the bowl shape of a pinhole security camera's transmission. There was no sound to accompany the black-and-white image.

As curls of black smoke rose from the bedroom lamps, Stewart McQueen sat woodenly back on the edge of the bed, his eyes trained with sick fascination on the TV screen.

REMO BOUNDED down the main staircase in two massive strides. He was hopping over the broken chandelier when he heard a painful crash of wood. When he spun for the source, relief flooded his tension-filled face.

The Master of Sinanju was whirling up into the foyer amid the shattered remnants of the basement door.

"You are safe," the old man cried.

"That's open to debate," Remo replied tightly. "That spider isn't a spider after all. It's Mr. Gordons."

Chiun nodded sharply. "He has insinuated himself into this entire dwelling."

Remo still felt the powerful electrical hum all around them. It now seemed even more menacing. "I think I know how to put a stop to that," Remo said. "But we have to make ourselves a door first." They found the front door still sealed shut. It reacted to their experimental blows as did the walls in the upstairs passageway. The surface became adaptable, accepting their fists rather than surrendering to them.

But for Remo, two things were different than they had been upstairs. Now he knew who his opponent was, and more importantly, Chiun was at his side.

Working together, the two Masters of Sinanju synchronized their attack. They treated the door like a living thing, setting up a counter-rhythm to the steady vibrations the door and wall were giving off.

In a moment the door began to buzz. An instant later it began to shriek. Soon after that the thick steel sheet buried at the center of the reinforced door shattered like an echoing wineglass. The wood collapsed around it, and Remo and Chiun slipped through the new-formed opening.

They bounded down the front steps to the walk. They had no sooner reached ground than Remo heard rustling from the scruffy bushes beside the steps. He had barely time to turn to the sound when he saw two small black figures dart into view. They were two feet tall and hideously ugly. When he saw them, Remo didn't know whether he should run or laugh.

The two metal bats that had watched Remo and Chiun's arrival from the stone pillars above the main gates had been given a new purpose as makeshift watchdogs. Metal mouths open wide, they scurried from the underbrush.

They came trailing thin wires. Remo saw that the cords ran back down the walk and up into the gateposts, connecting the metal creatures with the house security system.

"Oh, this is just too weird," Remo groused as one of the little bats tried to bite his ankle.

"I have discovered the secret of vanquishing these beasts," Chiun intoned. He was skipping back and forth to avoid his own bat. "Promise me that we will buy a home in this province, and I will share it with you."

"No dice," Remo said. "Besides, it's Gordons I'm worried about, not his wind-up dolls."

Leaning, he braced his hand against his bat's head, holding it to the ground. As it snapped and bit fruitlessly at empty air, he grabbed one of its extended wings. With a pained wrench of metal, he tore it loose.

With the curved tip of the wing, he sliced the bat's wires. The creature fell silent.

Seeing that his pupil had found the secret on his own, Chiun frowned unhappily. With an angry exhale of air, he snapped the wires on his own bat. With a sharp sandal, he toe-kicked it back into the bushes.

Wing in hand, Remo struck off across the lawn. Tucking hands inside his kimono sleeves, Chiun trailed Remo as the younger man circled the house.

On the west side Remo found what he was looking for. Thick power cables were strung from a pole out on the street to the corner of the house.

Raising his bat's wing over his shoulder, Remo let it sail. The heavy metal wing sang through the air like a misshapen boomerang, slicing up through the cables. With a snap of rubber and a tiny popping spark it ripped through the wires, burying itself deep in the side of Stewart McQueen's suddenly silent haunted house.

With the power cut, Remo and Chiun circled back to the front walk.

The electrical hum no longer rang in their ears. The looming house now seemed more pathetic than menacing.

And somewhere inside that house, Mr. Gordons was even now in the process of disentangling himself from the elaborate electrical system.

Remo looked over at Chiun, his eyes level. "You hold him down while I pull off seven of his legs," he suggested in a tone flat with menace. "He can run in circles till his battery runs out once and for all."

Without another word, the two men marched back up the porch stairs. When they disappeared inside, the broken front door remained open and silent on the cold Maine evening.

"HELLO! You in there?"

Stewart McQueen desperately slammed a flat palm against the top of his TV. With the other hand he fiddled with the front control panel, flipping from channel to channel.

Nothing. The TV had gone dead.

He had seen the two men march through the foyer. Since the camera didn't angle downward, he lost sight of them when they headed for the door. He realized they had gotten free as soon as the screen switched to an exterior view. From the child's-eye view of his hidden gate bats, he had seen the two of them descend the stairs.

The picture had bounced crazily for a few seconds. That hadn't lasted long. It was a few moments after the bat cameras died that the power went out.

No matter how hard McQueen struck the TV, Mr. Gordons stubbornly refused to respond. He was winding up to give it one last mighty swat when he heard a sound out front.

Squealing tires. The noise was rapidly followed by the sounds of car doors slamming shut.

The TV was forgotten. Limping on his injured leg, McQueen hurried over to the bay window.

From the carriage house he had an unobstructed view of the street.

A black van was parked at the curb. Two men were hurrying from the cab to the back. As McQueen watched, they popped the rear door. A dozen figures dressed in white marched down to the road with military precision. It was dark so McQueen couldn't be sure, but they appeared to be wearing some kind of domed helmets.

He lost the men behind some trees as they hurried up the sidewalk. They appeared again at the locked front gate.

He finally got a good look at them. The men were dressed in what looked like vintage NASA space suits.

In his eerily silent carriage house, Stewart McQueen distinctly heard the sound of a hacksaw.

He did some rapid calculations.

There was a gang of weird-suited spacemen at his gates, an angry android hiding out in his mansion and a pair of unstoppable assassins who could put fear into a metal heart skulking around his grounds.

This was all suddenly sounding more like one of his books than he'd bargained for.

His car was parked in a stall below his feet. A rear garage door opened on a private back road that wound through the woods and dumped out on a city access road behind his estate's high walls.

Writer's block, deadlines and The New York Times bestseller list be damned. This was now about survival.

The world-famous author spun from the window. Hobbling to beat the band, Stewart McQueen beat a hasty retreat down the back stairs of the darkened carriage house.

Chapter 25

The intense silence made it seem as if the dusty old mansion had been smothered in a ghostly fist. Although the thrumming electrical hum was gone, their eardrums still rang with the memory as Remo and Chiun crossed the threshold.

Remo glanced up the stairs down which he'd come a few minutes before. "Big house," he commented. "He could be hiding anywhere."

Chiun shook his head firmly. "Where would you go?" the old man demanded.

Remo considered. "Probably the basement. The fuse box would be there. It'd be easier to connect there if he wanted to run the whole joint. But the way Gordons is, he could hook in at any point if he had to."

Chiun was already breezing past him. "He will be in the basement," he insisted.

"I was only saying that's where I'd go," Remo insisted as he trailed his teacher.

"And you are different from an uncreative, unthinking robot in what way?" Chiun asked blandly.

He whirled through the broken remnants of the basement door and ducked down the stairs.

"Don't go on the rag with me just 'cause I'm not moving to Maine," Remo grumbled, following. Emergency lights on battery backups lit their way. In the basement Remo didn't comment on the remnants of broken wall or the twisted mechanical crocodile that lay atop the pile of bricks.

They wound around the wooden stairs and headed past the idle furnace.

The cellar beneath the mansion was huge.

In one space off the main room, Remo saw what appeared to be Stewart McQueen's bedroom. There were bookcases, magazines, a TV and a small refrigerator.

A double-wide coffin lined with dirt and shaded by a frilly overhanging canopy was the room's centerpiece. Twin feather pillows rested against the granite gravestone headboard.

"Next time I think I should be reading more, remind me this is where my money goes," Remo said. Chiun didn't respond. His brow darkening, he held a slender finger to his papery lips. He cocked an ear forward.

Remo had heard the sound, too.

It was a soft metallic groan. The noise rose and fell, like a rusted bolt being unscrewed.

Rounding a corner, the two men found the fuse box. Connected to its face was a pair of fat furry legs. The body to which the legs were attached was not visible. They extended through the air and disappeared around a corner. The granite archway into which they vanished opened into a dirt-lined tunnel.

The legs had been spinning in order to unscrew from the fuse box. When Remo and Chiun rounded the corner, the appendages detached and flopped to the floor. Without seeming to be aware of the two Masters of Sinanju, they silently retracted, sliding back into the shadowed recesses of the loamy tunnel.

Remo and Chiun trailed them to the stone arch. The long black legs slithered around the corner and disappeared.

When Remo and Chiun stepped into the archway, the legs were already several yards away. They were being absorbed into the sides of a figure who stood at calm attention in the dark depths of the tunnel.

Over the years Mr. Gordons had assumed many different forms and faces. The face he wore now was the first one they had ever seen on him. He was tall with sandy blond hair and wore a perpetual smile that was not quite a smile. His blue eyes were unblinking.

When they appeared before him, the android didn't express a hint of surprise. As his long spider's legs rolled back into his human torso, he nodded to each man in turn.

"High probability Remo, high probability Chiun. I would offer you a drink, but as it is likely that you intend to cause me bodily harm I have calculated as negligible the odds that you would accept such an offer."

Remo's face was stone.

"You got it wrong, metalman," he said icily as he stepped into the tunnel.

A hint of something that, at least on a human face, might have passed for a frown touched Mr. Gordons's brow.

"That is improbable," the android said. "Unless you have deviated from your previous pattern, you will attack me."

"My son means that we do not intend to cause you mere bodily harm," Chiun explained, circling cautiously away from his pupil. Taking the cue, Remo moved the opposite way. "We intend to dismantle you piece by piece and bury your evil parts in the four corners of the Earth."

The tunnel was wide enough that Remo and Chiun could move to opposite walls as they advanced on Gordons.

With a final whirring snap, the android's spider arms stopped retracting. Each one of them five feet long, they remained jutting from beneath the armpits of his human arms.

"Your statement is incorrect," Gordons said. As they walked toward him, he made not a move. "The Earth is roughly spherical in shape-therefore it has no corners. What is more, it is not I but the two of you who will cease to function this day."

"Sez you," Remo challenged. "So how'd you get out of the volcano, tinman?"

"My family freed me," the android replied simply.

Remo had a mental image of a bunch of toasters and VCRs lowering a knotted bedsheet down into the Mexican volcano where they'd dumped Mr. Gordons.

They were now only a few yards from the android. Remo kept as far from Chiun as possible. Difficult to do in such a confining space. Gordons seemed to realize their problem.

"Your method of attack is flawed," Gordons pointed out. "By separating you think to divide my attentions. But this passage is not wide enough for your plan to succeed."

The words had not passed his lips before he attacked.

The two spider legs whizzed forward, re-forming as they came. By the time they reached Remo and Chiun, their furry tips had been transformed into metallic spearheads.

Remo dropped below the deadly spear. As it brushed over his shoulder, he grabbed onto the shaft with one hand, snapping down with the other. With the side of his palm he severed a two-foot-long section of rigid leg.

Ducking, Chiun mirrored his pupil's movements. When he shot back up he, too, had a spear in hand. Hissing sparks from their stumps, the injured legs curled back up to the android's chest.

Remo tried to gauge the heft of the weapon in his hand. It was awkward to do. The leg was apparently constructed of the same frictionless material Gordons had left at the scenes of his Florida crimes.

"Use caution, Remo," Chiun warned. Ever alert, he kept his voice low as he advanced with his makeshift weapon. "He is not as he was when last we met."

Remo, too, had noticed the speed. During their last encounter with Gordons, the android was a weakened version of his former self. But this seemed like the Gordons of old.

Although Chiun's words were soft enough that only Remo should have heard, it was Mr. Gordons who replied.

"The old one is correct," Mr. Gordons agreed. "With the introduction of supplementary data, my original program was altered over time. Due to the damage inflicted by the two of you I have decided to go back to my beginnings, reinstalling my original commands. What I once was, I am again."

"You were a tin-plated asswipe," Remo suggested, raising his spear.

Gordons flicked his metallic eyes to the younger Master of Sinanju. And in that sliver of a moment when his attention was diverted, Chiun let his missile fly.

The spear whistled through the dank air, sinking deep into the android's head. A spray of white sparks spit from his face, peppering the dirt floor around his feet.

Gordons reeled, spear jutting from between his eyes like a misshapen extra nose.

It was only when he staggered to one side that they saw the second set of spider legs. Curled tightly, they had been hidden behind the android's back. Imminent danger provoked action.

The spare legs shot out from his body. But rather than launch forward at Remo and Chiun, the spider legs plowed into the dirt walls of the tunnel, burrowing deep into earth.

There came a muffled snap of old timber breaking. When the legs retracted, the walls seemed to come with them.

With an ominous groan the tunnel began to collapse in on itself.

As stone and dirt rained down on all their heads, Mr. Gordons fell away, staggering up the far end of the tunnel.

"Remo, hurry!" Chiun insisted. Twirling, he bounded back toward the cellar, away from the dirt avalanche.

Remo hesitated. He clearly wanted to go after Gordons, but he could see that it was already too late. The center of the tunnel was filling in. With a rumble the ceiling began to cave in above him.

With a frustrated snap of his arm, Remo flung his spear through the collapsing wall of dirt. He wasn't sure if his aim was true, but he swore he saw the metal end sink into Gordons's fleeing back. And then the tunnel collapsed fully and the android vanished from sight.

Spinning, Remo leaped back through the stone archway in a cloud of exploding dust. Behind him the thick-packed earth of the tunnel continued to settle in on itself.

Once he saw that his pupil was safe, the Master of Sinanju became a flash of silk. Remo joined his teacher in a mad race for the cellar stairs.

Wherever Gordons was heading, he'd have to surface eventually. Both men intended to be there when the android came up for air.

When they burst into the foyer, Remo's tense face dropped into an angry scowl.

A dozen men were waiting for them, each decked out in the same white jumpsuits as their Florida attackers. Unlike the first group, these men wore round plastic helmets over their heads. Their toy ray guns with the very real .45 muzzles were aimed at Remo and Chiun as the two men appeared through the broken basement door.

Blue patches decorated with the nine planets of the solar system were fastened to their chests. In the center where the sun should be, the legend Space Cadets was stitched in ominous black letters.

"What in the ding-diddly crap?" Remo growled. He had barely uttered the words when the twelve men opened fire. As the two Masters of Sinanju dodged and weaved, bullets thumped thickly into the wall behind them.

"We don't have time for this," Remo warned Chiun.

"In that case, move quickly," Chiun advised.

The old man skittered right, taking up that line of attack. Reluctantly, Remo moved to the left.

The nearest shooter seemed frustrated by his inability to aim true. He fired madly as Remo waltzed up.

Remo grabbed a palmful of Plexiglas. "I'm in a hurry, Pez head," he said, steering the man's fishbowl into the nearest wall.

Something went crack, and it wasn't the space cadet's helmet. As the Plexiglas globe filled with dark red fluid, the man collapsed to the knees of his space suit.

On the opposite side of the foyer, the Master of Sinanju was using the bright blue patches of two space cadets as makeshift dartboards. He scored perfect bull's-eyes with a pair of extended fingernails.

Shocked gasps hissed from within their helmets. When Chiun drew his hands away, the tidy little solar systems of their patches were decorated at the center with expanding red nebulae. Clutching chests, the men collapsed like futuristic rag dolls to the floor. Remo had already moved up the line. Two flattened fingers pierced a domed head, sinking shards of plastic deep into the temple of its occupant. At the same time he launched a toe back in a deceptively gentle move. The rib cage of another attacker was reduced to jelly.

And as he and Chiun moved up their respective lines, the front door of the mansion-and the killer android who lurked somewhere beyond-inched closer.

TWISTED SIDEWAYS in the passenger's seat of the rented van, Clark Beemer was trying to get a good look at the front door of the spooky old house. As he peered into the darkness, he tapped his anxious fist on the dashboard.

Behind the steering wheel, Pete Graham scowled. "Will you stop doing that?" he complained, his youthful voice thick with tension. He, too, watched the door.

The space cadets had gone in a moment ago. With any luck they'd soon emerge in the company of his poor wayward Virgil probe.

Graham had been surprised when Zipp Codwin told him about the space cadets. They were an elite group of commandos hired secretly by the head of NASA with space-agency funds, to be deployed in emergency situations only.

"I'd intended to use them against the more stubborn budget-cutters in Washington," Colonel Codwin had told Graham back at Canaveral. "Maybe their wives, kids, pets. But, son, we have got a dagblummed emergency scenario that's almost as big as our budget woes shaping up here."

And so Graham and Clark Beemer had been sent to Maine with Zipp Codwin's private army to retrieve Mr. Gordons.

As the seconds ticked by and the space cadets remained within the building, Pete Graham's anxiety level continued to rise. By the time the first gunshots sounded, his tension was a palpable thing within the cab of the van.

Graham shot to attention, and Clark Beemer's head snapped up.

"What was that?" the PR man asked.

"Gunshots, I think," Graham said.

"You think the robot attacked them?" Beemer asked.

Graham shook his head. "I don't think so. Gordons is a survival machine. As long as they identified themselves to him like they were supposed to, he wouldn't see them as a threat."

"So that means there's something else in there," Beemer said, his voice laced with foreboding. Sick eyes were trained on the eerie Gothic mansion.

As soon as he finished speaking, something caught his attention beyond the wrought-iron gate that ran along the sidewalk next to the van. Since it was night, Beemer couldn't see clearly. But it appeared as if the side lawn of the estate had begun to bulge. There was a small hillock of bowed earth and dead grass where there wasn't one before.

Gasping, he clutched Pete Graham's wrist, steering the scientist's attention to the lawn.

When he tracked the path of Beemer's eyes, Graham's eyes opened wide in shock.

In the wash of pale moonlight it appeared as if the ground were slowly heaving up.

Clark Beemer had seen enough Stewart McQueen movies to know this was in no way good.

"Get us out of here," the PR man hissed.

Pete Graham hated to agree with Beemer, but as the earth continued to bubble the NASA scientist found himself fumbling with the ignition key. He hadn't a chance to turn the engine over when two slender black objects thrust up from the center of the earth-bulge.

The legs sought purchase beyond the mound. Another set appeared, breaking apart the thick clods of dirt. In an instant, Mr. Gordons stumbled up into view.

Standing in the fresh dirt of the newly plowed over lawn, the android seemed disoriented. When he weaved toward the street, Graham saw why.

A foot long tube extended from the android's face. One eye was hanging by sparking wires from its socket.

Gordons stumbled for a moment before falling face first to the lawn.

On the other side of the fence, Pete Graham's jaw flexed. With a look of fresh determination, he put the van in drive. Stomping down on the gas, he flew around the cul-de-sac. Back around in front of McQueen's house, he bounced over the curb and plowed straight through the fence.

A full section of wrought iron detached from its connecting stone columns, crashing down onto prickly shrubs.

Graham came to a stop next to the fallen android. "Get out!" Graham barked at Beemer.

Nodding woodenly, Beemer climbed down from the cab. Together, they helped Gordons to his feet. Graham noted that it was one of the android's own spider legs sticking out of his face. As they walked Gordons along, the metal of the misplaced leg began to shrink as the android absorbed it back into his system. With a whir and a click, his eye popped back into its socket.

Graham didn't have time to marvel at the complexity of the machine's design. He and Beemer brought Gordons around, dumping him in the back of the van.

As he climbed back behind the wheel, Graham noted that the gunfire in the house was dwindling. No matter. They had gotten what they'd come after. Stomping on the gas once more, Graham bounced over the lawn to the side driveway. By the time the shooting finally dwindled to a stop inside, he had plowed through the driveway gates and was hightailing it with his precious cargo back to the safer environs of NASA.

THE BATTLE within McQueen's house was dying down. With twin slaps Chiun merged two of the last space helmets into one. Looking like some alien being with but a single head to direct two distinct bodies, the pair of merged space cadets collapsed to the dusty foyer floor.

There was only one man left.

The last space cadet realized the battle was lost. Twisting his ray gun around, he aimed the barrel at his own domed head. When he squeezed the trigger he was surprised that he didn't hear a boom. It took him a moment to realize why. In order for a gun to go boom, one first needed to have a gun. Somehow his was no longer in his hand.

As his empty white glove clutched the air, an unhappy face appeared before his bowl-shaped visor. "I got some stars for you, Buck Rogers," Remo said.

He bounced the butt of the man's ray gun off the top of his helmet. The resulting gong penetrated through to the man's rattling brain stem. As his teeth jangled, Remo grabbed him up under the arms.

Chiun had whirled up beside Remo. "What are you doing with this one?" he demanded impatiently.

"I'm sick of going through this all the time," Remo said. "We keep one this time, just in case." A row of demonic heads was mounted like animal trophies on the wall. Remo hooked the collar of the space suit on the horn of a particularly ghastly creature. As the man squirmed on his hook, Remo and Chiun raced outside.

On the side lawn they found the mound of freshly turned earth and the tire marks that led across the yard from the toppled-down fence to the broken driveway gate.

"Looks like baby's been snatched," Remo said angrily.

Whoever had taken Gordons was long gone. Without hope of trailing the android, they returned to the house.

The lone surviving space cadet was still wiggling high up on the wall. When he saw Remo and Chiun approaching, his eyes grew wide with fear inside his helmet.

Remo pulled him down, popping off his fishbowl. "Okay, who do you work for?" Remo asked. "And if you say Ming the Merciless, I'm gonna stick this bowl in your mouth and plant petunias in it."

The space cadet couldn't answer fast enough. "Colonel Codwin!" the man gasped.

Remo's face grew dark. "That buzz-cut Ken doll from NASA sent you after us?"

"No," the man said. "We were sent to retrieve a package. But he did tell us to use extreme prejudice if anyone tried to stop us."

"Perfect," Remo grumbled. "A pack of you nits blew themselves up in Florida. He sent them after us, too?"

"That was Alpha Team," the man said, shaking his head. "They were strictly reconnaissance. Taking pictures, surveillance, that sort of thing. The colonel wanted to see who was interested in those giant spider robberies. I didn't know until today that it was a special NASA project."

Remo glanced at Chiun. "So Captain Codface has been pulling Gordons's strings all along."

The old man nodded. "If he so values Gordons, his minions would bring the evil machine back to him."

"Assuming Gordons lets them," Remo cautioned. "After all that's happened, he might not want to go back there."

The spaceman's eyes bounced from one man to the other. "Who's Gordons?" he asked finally.

"You don't even know who you came up here to get?" Remo said. "Is anyone at NASA earning his paycheck?" He shook his head. "So what were Zitt's orders?"

"Just to retrieve the Virgil probe-the spider thing that's been on the news-and bring it back to Canaveral. He said that Virgil had developed almost human intelligence and that to insure the solvency of the entire space program we had to get it back or die trying.

"Is that what this whole trip around the moon was for?" Remo asked. "Just to keep the cash flowing in to NASA?"

"I'm not privy to the colonel's private thoughts," the man said. "But he seemed to indicate that. Oh, and he said he had something planned for you if you came back."

Remo's expression hardened. "And I've got something for him. Here's a preview."

He delivered the spaceman's head into the mouth of the nearest convenient monster trophy. Although there was too much head to fit in so little mouth, Remo made it work.

When he was done, he turned from the dangling dead man.

"I better call Smith," he said grimly. "He'll want to know who we're up against."

Chapter 26

"The thing you are after is Mr. Gordons," Smith blurted the instant he heard Remo's voice. The blue contact phone was clutched tight in his arthritic hand. Anxiety filled his lemony voice.

"No kidding," Remo said. "Where were you half an hour ago when we could have used the heads-up?" Smith sat up more rigidly in his chair. Beside his desk, Mark Howard hovered anxiously.

"Have you already encountered him?" Smith pressed.

"We saw him, all right," Remo said. "And this isn't like the last couple times, either. He's back up to speed."

"Remo is correct, Emperor Smith," Chiun called from the nearby background. "The machine thing did seem rejuvenated. However, he still fears Sinanju."

"Please tell Master Chiun that he has managed to cause much damage over the years, despite that same fear," the CURE director warned. "We cannot take that as consolation."

"Amen to that, Smitty," Remo replied. "And to make matters worse he seemed more like the Gordons we first met years ago-same face and everything. And I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I'd forgotten just exactly what a miserable pile of scrap he was way back then."

"So you were unable to neutralize him?"

Chiun was quick to answer. "I landed a crippling blow," he called.

"We put a few dings in the bumper, that's all," Remo said. "I don't know if we could have done more. He got away thanks to Ripp Aspirin and his band of space pirates."

"Remo, Mark and I were in the process of trying to ascertain who at NASA might be Gordons's confederate," Smith said, voice level. "Are you saying that it is Colonel Zipp Codwin who has allied himself with Gordons?"

The CURE director couldn't mask his surprise. Although lesser known than Neil Armstrong or Alan Shepard, NASA's current administrator was one of the pioneers of the early space program.

"You wouldn't be surprised if you ever met him, Smitty," Remo said. "By the sounds of it, that blowhard would get in bed with an invading army of mankind-enslaving space ants just to keep that flapdoodle agency of his afloat. And speaking of stuff NASA does to piss me off, just how the hell did they manage to get Gordons out of that volcano, anyway?"

"They were testing a new piece of equipment in Popocatepetl," Smith explained. "Gordons assimilated it."

"Swell," Remo muttered. "I guess that explains why he thinks his family rescued him. As far as the here and now goes, your guess is as good as mine where he winds up. If he stays with the guys who snagged him, they're probably on their way back to NASA."

Smith pursed his lips. "Did Gordons actually say to you that he felt it was his family who rescued him?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Mr. Gordons has always gone to great lengths to mimic human behavior," the CURE director said. "He has had varying degrees of success, but his attempts have been consistent. For most people the family environment means safety. If he truly considers NASA to be his family, and continues the pattern, it is likely he will go there at a time of crisis."

"I suppose," Remo said.

Smith sat forward, pointing to the door. "I will have Mark arrange a flight from Maine to Florida for you."

Howard nodded sharply at the command. He dashed from the room to make the arrangements from his own office.

As the door swung shut, Smith's face grew somber. "Remo, the technology Gordons has incorporated into his system from the Virgil probe is more advanced than anything else he has ever assimilated," the CURE director advised. "Just because he looks as he once did, do not assume him to be obsolete. I implore you and Chiun to use the utmost caution against him."

"Not to worry, Smitty," Remo said. "We know what we're up against. Let's just hope he ran back to the warm embrace of his loving family." His voice grew cold. "But even if he didn't, I'm gonna enjoy paying a visit to his old Uncle Zipp."

Chapter 27

At an order from on high, the Kennedy Space Center was closed to outsiders until further notice. No guests or tours were allowed either on grounds or in lockeddown buildings. Most of the civilian staff had been given the day off.

A lone space cadet guarded the main entrance. When Dr. Peter Graham and Clark Beemer raced up the road, the sentry waved their van through, quickly calling ahead. By the time Graham squealed to a stop near the command center, Zipp Codwin was already waiting near the door. The NASA administrator was accompanied by a phalanx of armed men.

"Is Gordons okay?" Codwin barked as the two exhausted men climbed down from the cab.

The clipped metallic voice that answered was so close the colonel nearly jumped out of his startled skin.

"I have completed repairs to my damaged systems."

When Codwin whipped around, he found Mr. Gordons standing at the side of the van.

"Oh," Zipp said, trying not to show his surprise. "Good. No, wait a second, you were damaged?"

"Yes," Gordons explained. "In an encounter with my enemies. I was assisted by a novelist in my effort to remove them. I devised a method of attack based on story elements that I found on his computer hard drive. I suspect he was not very creative, for my enemies failed to succumb. As a result of this unsuccessful effort, they now know that I exist. They will come for me. Therefore, I must go."

With that, Mr. Gordons turned and began walking away.

"Whoa, there, son," Codwin said, jumping around him. He bounced along in front of the walking android. "We went through this already. You were gonna let us help you out."

"The element of surprise is now gone," Gordons said. "I trusted another human to aid me, and he failed. At this juncture another such alliance would pose an unacceptable risk to my safety."

"But you were with us first," Codwin argued. "And since you left, I've given your problem some thought. I think we can help you get rid of those guys once and for all."

When Gordons abruptly stopped walking, Colonel Codwin knew he had the android on the ropes. Gordons said nothing.

"All the resources of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have been put at your disposal," Zipp said slyly. "We saved your bacon without even trying a couple of times. Doesn't it make sense that with a little effort we'd be able to solve this little problem of yours?"

Gordons considered. "They are unlike any humans you have met before," he said.

"And we're unlike anything they've ever met before," said Zipp Codwin. Throwing back his shoulders proudly, he drew himself up to his full height. "We are the goddamnedest sons-of-bitches explorers to ever trod the surface of this benighted rock. We conquered space, for God's sake! And if you need more proof, we're the ones who built you, sonny boy." He tapped a finger against Gordons's metal chest. "And you're the finest, most beautiful durnblasted hunk of technology ever to threaten the human race in the name of old-fashioned exploration." His eyes were growing moist. "Oh, God, you got me blubbering here," he sniffed.

The colonel pulled out a handkerchief, blowing a massive honk of pride into the finest taxpayersupplied silk.

As Codwin blew, Mr. Gordons came to a conclusion.

"Very well," the android said. "I will accept your assistance. However, if you fail I will skin you alive while simultaneously crushing every bone in your body. I say this to help motivate you to succeed. I have found that humans perform better with proper motivation."

Pirouetting on his heel, Mr. Gordons marched in a direct line back for the building. Beemer, Graham and the group of armed men had to jump out of his way. Still standing in the parking lot, Colonel Codwin sniffled proudly as he considered Gordons's threat.

"Danged if you ain't a man after this old flyboy's heart," he choked out softly.

Blowing his nose loudly once more, Zipp and his entourage followed Mr. Gordons inside the building.

Chapter 28

Remo knew something was amiss when the first guard they encountered on their way into the Kennedy Space Center jumped into a golf cart and sped down the empty road before them.

"Codwin's great at setting a trap," he said blandly as they followed the racing cart along NASA Parkway onto the grounds of the space center. "I'm surprised he didn't balance a box on a stick over the whole damn place."

The driver of the cart was dressed in the same white jumpsuit and domed helmet as the men from Maine. As they drove, Chiun was peering at the back of the cart.

"It's not Gordons, Little Father," Remo said. "He didn't move funny enough when he ran."

"Have you forgotten the lesson of Master Shiko so soon?" Chiun asked dully. He continued to stare ahead. "Do not be certain of everything you are told to see. I was not looking at the driver."

Remo nodded understanding. That was the problem with Mr. Gordons. He could literally be anything. A lamp, a desk, a chair. Even a golf cart.

They lost sight of the cart as it whipped around the side of a huge hangar off Kennedy Parkway. When they drove around the corner a moment later they found that the cart had been abandoned in the center of a vast stretch of asphalt near the orbiter processing facility.

Remo parked their rental car behind it.

"Be careful," he warned as he popped the door. Chiun's curt nod held the same warning.

They climbed out of car. Circling to the front, they closed around to either side of the cart.

Remo watched the sides for any small irregularities. A sudden tiny eruption could warn of another spear-tipped spider leg being launched their way. But as they circled the small vehicle, they saw nothing out of the ordinary.

"I don't think it's him," Remo whispered.

On the other side of the cart, Chiun carefully explored a side panel with the toe of one sandal.

"It is not," he stated firmly.

Remo put his hands on his hips. "Looks like they've got us standing under the box," he said, glancing around the wide stretch of vacant tarmac. The wind blew his short brown hair. "Isn't it time to yank the string?"

As if in response, a high-pitched electronic whine sounded above the breeze. When Remo and Chiun honed in on the source, they saw something long and black swooping down toward them from out the sky. "What the hell?" Remo asked, squinting.

If the thing was supposed to be an airplane, whoever had designed it had obviously gotten it wrong. The main body was far too small to fit a man inside. It would have looked like a toy model if the wings hadn't been so long.

The massive wings stretched to comical lengths from the menacing black fuselage. As the thing soared toward them out of the heavens, both Remo and Chiun remained fixed to the asphalt. They watched the small plane fly in.

"Gordons?" Remo questioned Chiun.

"He has never attacked us from the air before," the Master of Sinanju replied.

Remo nodded. "Anyway, I doubt it's him. Too creative. Besides, that thing doesn't have too much heft. He'd have to shuck too much of that probe he swallowed to turn into that."

The whining aircraft was nearly upon them, zooming along roughly five feet off the ground.

Not perceiving a threat, the two men split apart and waited for it to buzz up to them. When it did, they would simply snap off both wings and let the detached fuselage slide to a stop on the long empty lot.

A thrust of displaced air from the fore of the craft reached Remo seconds before the plane was upon them. He was reaching out with one hand when he caught a glint of too sharp sunlight off the leading edge of the right wing.

His breath caught in his chest.

"Watch the wings, Chiun!" Remo yelled. The instant he shouted, he dropped to his belly on the hot tar.

The Master of Sinanju's hand had been streaking out to snap off the left wing. At the last second he sensed what his pupil had seen. The entire length of the wing from fuselage to wing tip was honed to a deadly sharp edge. The wings were nothing more than massive knife blades.

The instant before his palm touched steel, Chiun snapped his hand away, flattening himself on the ground.

The small plane flew over both their prone forms, soaring back up into the pale blue Florida sky. It banked hard to one side and with a growing whine from its small engine swooped back around. It screamed down between the big hangars. With fatal purpose the plane flew in for another pass.

FROM THE SAFETY of the orbiter processing facility, Colonel Zipp Codwin watched on security cameras as the aircraft flew down toward Remo and Chiun. The plane was supposed to be a simple data-gathering drone for military reconnaissance. Codwin had had it converted to his own private use.

At first he assumed this was overkill. Gordons had to have overthought the abilities of the two men who were after him. After all, they didn't look like anything special.

But when they'd both ducked out of the path of the decapitating wings with impossible speed, Zipp realized there might be something more to them than could be seen with the naked eye. Still, they weren't astronauts or androids. They were mere men. And mere men could be killed.

Besides, even if the wing blades of his drone didn't get them, there was another little surprise on board. A knowing smile split wide across his granite jaw. Steely eyes trained on the monitor, Colonel Codwin watched as the drone swept down for another run.

REMO AND CHIUN SCURRIED to their feet. They spun to face the incoming drone.

Remo's face was hard. "I've got this one," he growled.

The Master of Sinanju nodded sharply before bounding out of the path of the small plane.

This time when it reached him, Remo was ready. The plane was eight yards away and coming fast. Two yards, a foot. At an inch away the aircraft obliterated the sun. Remo dropped below the menacing shadow, this time at a crouch. When it passed overhead, he shot his hand up, cracking the right wing hard from underneath.

The ten-foot-long appendage sheered away from the main fuselage and skipped away across the ground.

Still airborne, the fatally injured plane plowed ahead.

With a shriek from its engines, the drone whipped around in a wide, wobbling circle. It bounced across the roof of Remo's parked car and came to a final, fatal stop against the side of the nearest hangar. There was no crash. Instead, the sharpened edge of the remaining wing bit deep into the wall of the building and the drone stopped dead. Its engine spluttered and fell silent.

The aircraft was wobbling to a stop as Chiun came back up to Remo. The old man was sniffing the air. Remo, too, had detected something faint on the wind.

Like twin bloodhounds, their heads swiveled slowly, tracing the scent back to the stalled drone. All at once their heads snapped back toward each other. Each man wore a look of alarm.

And at the precise moment that Remo and Chiun recognized the scent, the explosives that were packed on board the drone detonated with a deafening blast.

THE EXPLOSION WAS a burst of orange fire. It ripped a massive hole in the side of the hangar. The abandoned golf cart was flung up in the air by the force of the blast. It flipped end over end across the asphalt.

As he watched the explosion on his monitor, Zipp Codwin flashed a row of sharp white teeth.

Remo and Chiun were gone. Vanished in a burst of flame and a choking cloud of dust.

Zipp glanced over his shoulder. Standing behind him was Pete Graham. As he watched the action, the scientist was chewing nervously on the end of his thumb.

"Now that's how NASA used to work," Codwin enthused. "None of this namby-pamby pantywaist bullshit about weather delays and putting off launches 'cause a goddamn bird's built a nest in your launch tower. This is how we did it in the old days. See a problem, deal with the problem. In fact, we should include that in a press release." He glanced around the room. "Hey, where's that idiot Beemer? I want him to write that one down."

Graham shook his head. "He was here a minute ago," the young man volunteered. When he looked back, he found that the only men in the room were the space cadets Codwin had kept to protect them from Mr. Gordons's enemies.

"Worthless PR hack," Codwin muttered. "Probably in the can. I should have filleted him when he let Gordons get away in the first place. Speaking of which, we'd better tell that bucket of bolts we solved his little problem for him."

He slapped his hands to his knees. He was just pushing himself to his feet when he spied something moving on his monitor. When he saw what it was, Codwin's face blanched.

The dust cloud from the explosion was settling back to the hot ground. From the very edge of the collapsing cloud, two figures had just emerged.

When he saw Remo and Chiun walking, unharmed, across the tarmac, Zipp dropped back to his seat, shocked.

"Dang," the colonel breathed.

They were walking away from the buildings. The Banana River separated the main portion of Merritt Island, on which the space center was built, from the twin launching pads used for the space shuttles. Remo and Chiun were heading toward the shore. Pads A and B rose across the water.

For Zipp Codwin, the minor momentary relief at the fact that they were at least heading in the opposite direction was eclipsed by fresh concern. Something else was moving on the monitor.

It was a person. Whoever it was was in the process of dragging a boat across the rough shore toward the river.

"Who's that?" Pete Graham asked worriedly. Zipp squinted at the monitor. When he recognized the face of the distant figure, his sharp eyes grew wide.

"Beemer, you weasel!" he boomed.

As soon as Codwin said the name, Graham recognized NASA's top PR man. The boat bounced off rocks as Clark Beemer yanked it desperately toward the waves.

Colonel Codwin leaped to his feet, pounding a balled fist against the console. "Damn you, you cowardly bastard!" the administrator roared. Ropy knots bulged in his purple neck. He wheeled on Graham. "That man is a traitor to space and every man who's ever set foot in it! He has now officially become bait. Man your station and aim for the yellow stripe up his back. We'll take those other two out in the blast."

As Graham scurried on weak legs over to a console, Zipp Codwin dropped back in his chair. Furious eyes flashed back to the screen.

"No one leaves NASA in the lurch," the colonel growled.