He had rented the motorboat with a phony credit card. He had several of them-one for each of his pen names. They worked great whenever he desired anonymity.
He had regretted his actions since fleeing in terror the previous day. The greatest jolt of inspiration he'd been given in the past two years and he'd run away from it.
But he knew where his inspiration would go. After all, even as he had set up his trap, the soulless automaton had kept going on about his family. And the outfits on the men who had come to collect him were a dead giveaway.
He'd be at NASA. Waiting to inspire nightmares in the midnight hearts of timid souls the world over. The boat engine chugged with spluttering determination. His jaw firmly set, Stewart McQueen putted out into the choppy waves of the Atlantic.
Chapter 30
When he saw the speeding boat smash to smithereens on his monitor, Colonel Zipp Codwin allowed himself yet another unaccustomed smile.
The two groundlubbers hadn't even had a chance to see the weapon that had been fired at them.
The electromagnetic launcher was part of a prototype space-based defense system that his boys had been tinkering with for the past ten years. Capable of firing a projectile at hypervelocity, three of the hightech guns were at Zipp's disposal. To aid Gordons, the NASA head had loaded each of the launchers on a swivel base and pointed the business end out their respective hangar doors. He figured that the two fellas were bound to wander into the range of one of the guns, and sure as shootin', they hadn't disappointed old Zipp.
The boat was there one instant -skimming the waves of the Banana River-and the next it was pulp. Along with Gordons's two pals. That the traitorous Clark Beemer had also been blasted into a zillion scraps of fish food was a bonus that the NASA head savored as he climbed to his feet.
"Good shooting, Graham," Codwin remarked. He nodded approval to the scientist.
At the launcher controls, Pete Graham's face was ashen. He nodded nervously as he swallowed. "Now that that nonsense is out of the way, we can finally get back to doing what NASA does best," Zipp said.
And for the first time since taking command of the space agency, Colonel Zipp Codwin wasn't thinking of the endless cycle of raising enough funds in order to sponsor nothing but another round of even bigger fund-raising. That was what he had been forced to do all these years. Whore himself out along with the space agency he loved so dearly. Now, thanks to Mr. Gordons, NASA was about to enter a new golden age.
The money would come. And not the nickels and dimes of the past week. With Gordons on his side he could have every member of Congress quaking in their boots. Hell, with the skills the android possessed, the White House was his for the taking. And not just for so simple a thing as shaking down the President. After all, the real benefits would come to NASA only with a true sympathizer to the cause of space exploration living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
President Zipp Codwin. And the gross national product of an entire nation turned over to the single goal of colonizing and exploring the final frontier.
With starry-eyed images of moon colonies and space stations dancing in his head, Zipp exited the control room.
Pete Graham and a group of space cadets followed him downstairs.
In the empty parking lot next to the command center was a waiting helicopter. While Graham and the rest of the men ducked from the powerful downdraft of the whirling rotor blades, Zipp Codwin kept his head held high. The NASA administrator strode to the front of the waiting craft.
As Zipp climbed in beside the pilot, the rest of the men scurried up into the back. Graham was still scampering aboard as the wheels pulled off the ground.
Nose dipping, the chopper flew across the river to the shuttle launch pads.
By now the remnants of the broken boat were barely visible. Zipp nodded deep approval as the helicopter swept over the tiny chunks of floating debris.
The chopper landed near one of the low concrete shuttle control bunkers. Sand swirled angrily around a wide area as Zipp and his team climbed down to the ground.
From the shadow of the launch tower a figure was scampering toward them.
The thing that had been the Virgil probe looked like the featured performer in some 1950s B movie on the folly of atomic testing. Codwin watched without reaction as the eight-legged creature sped across the asphalt.
Several of the space cadets who were seeing Mr. Gordons for the first time took a frightened step back. In a panic a few started to raise weapons.
"At ease, men," Colonel Codwin barked, nudging down the barrels of two of the nearest guns.
As he spoke, the legs of the approaching creature began to shorten visibly. The spider still came at them, but it slowed its pace. At twenty yards four of its legs had been absorbed into the body. At ten it was rearing upright. By five the remaining spider legs had re-formed into human appendages. By the time it reached Zipp's entourage, the spider had bled completely away, replaced by the familiar human form of Mr. Gordons.
The stiff, emotionless android stopped before Codwin.
Before Gordons had a chance to speak, Zipp grinned widely. "Success, sonny boy," he enthused. Gordons shook his head evenly.
"That statement cannot be made with one hundred percent accuracy," Mr. Gordons disagreed.
"Are you kidding me?" Codwin scoffed. "They're dead, Gordo, old pal. Right now your friends are combing silt from the sea floor alongside Gus Grissom's faulty escape hatch. Now, what say the two of us sit down and have a long father-to-son talk about NASA's future."
But Mr. Gordons didn't seem interested in the space agency or Zipp Codwin. His eyes were scanning the shore.
With mechanical precision Gordons turned his head from west to east, covering the entire visible shoreline. When he came to the road that led over from Complex 39 and the orbiter processing facility, his head locked in place. For the first time the almost smile that was fixed to his lips in perpetuity disappeared.
Mr. Gordons took a step back.
"Negative, negative," Gordons said. "Maximum failure level. Threat to survival imminent." Standing before him, Zipp Codwin frowned. If the NASA administrator didn't know better, he would have sworn there was a hint of true fear on the android's face.
Zipp followed Gordons's line of sight. When his eyes locked on what the android had seen, Colonel Codwin felt his own steel heart quail.
There were two men strolling up the wide road from the main base.
"It can't be," Codwin muttered.
It was the two men Mr. Gordons wanted dead. They were walking along, as free as you please. Completely unharmed.
No, not walking. It only looked as if they were going slowly. In fact, they were running. Fast.
And in that moment Colonel Zipp Codwin understood how two mere mortal groundlubbers could spark fear in the soul of an android.
Zipp didn't know how he managed to find his voice. The words were out almost without his even knowing it was he who had shouted them. They rose high up the towering form of the massive, dormant space shuttle and echoed away across the vast stretch of barren land.
"Execute Plan C!" Codwin screamed.
When the colonel whirled and ran back for the control bunker, the space cadets clamored to take up defensive positions around building and helicopter. Codwin and Graham ducked inside, slamming the steel door behind them.
As the soldiers opened fire on the pair of running men, no one saw Mr. Gordons slip around the side of the bunker, the first hint of his reappearing spider legs springing like questing buds from the sides of his suit jacket.
REMO AND CHIUN HAD glimpsed the cluster of men as soon as they'd climbed up from the shore.
They stood away from the shuttle near a squat building. A helicopter blocked the view of some of the men, but the white boots of the space cadets were still visible. Of those they could see clearly, Remo instantly recognized Zipp Codwin, as well as the young scientist he and Chiun had met while at NASA. Most important of all was the man standing with them.
It was Gordons. The android wore the same face he had made for himself years ago. His flat eyes were scanning the horizon. The instant he spied Remo and Chiun coming toward him, he took a step back.
"Looks like he's pissing 10-40 weight," Remo commented, nodding in satisfaction.
As they ran, each man raised his skin temperature. Their rapidly drying clothes left thin puffs of steam in the air behind them.
"Just remain alert this time," Chiun warned. His pipe-stem legs matched his pupil's sprinting gait. "I am finding it harder and harder to come up with creative ways to explain your failures to stop this machine in the sacred scrolls."
Remo's head whipped around. "You've been blaming me for Gordons always getting away?" he demanded.
The old man's eyes remained fixed on the group of men. "For your sake I have left some ambiguity." He shrugged. "It is either you or some other pale-skinned Apprentice Reigning Master who was trained by the last Master of the pure bloodline. I will allow future generations to decide who exactly this might be."
"Are you gonna tell them that it was me who saved you from that whatever-it-was back there?"
At the moment before the projectile from Codwin's electromagnetic launcher had struck the rear of their boat, Remo's instinct had tripped him into action. A blindingly fast jerk to one side had sent him and the Master of Sinanju into the water. Unfortunately for Clark Beemer, the incredible speed of Remo's maneuver had affected only those whose senses were in tune with the harmonic forces of the universe. Like water kept in an upended bucket by centrifugal force, the NASA public-relations man had remained glued to his seat when the projectile hit.
"To give you credit for your one success, I would have to mention you by name," Chiun replied reasonably. "Were I to do that in this instance, future historians would have no difficulty linking you to your many and varied failures. By omitting your name, I am actually doing you a favor."
Remo turned back ahead. "I can't wait until I get a crack at those scrolls," he muttered.
Far ahead Zipp Codwin had just bellowed something about executing Plan C. After that all hell broke loose.
Gordons, Codwin and Graham ran toward the bunker, disappearing behind the helicopter. At the same moment the half-dozen space cadets opened fire. Bullets whizzed around Remo's and Chiun's heads like angry insects.
The route along which they ran was the one used to transport the space shuttle to the launch towers. The wide road fed toward the bunker and Colonel Codwin's idle helicopter. Though they appeared to run in a straight line up the road, not a single bullet had kissed their skin by the time they reached the first of the space cadets.
Remo fed the first two men he came upon up through the helicopter's swirling rotor blades. By the time the twin splats of red were decorating the tarmac like carnival swirl art, he'd already moved on to the next man. Remo took out this one with a heel to the chest that sent the man flying through one open side door of the helicopter and out the other. The man was still soaring through the air when Remo turned back to the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun had torn into the remaining three men with the ferocity of a living paper shredder. Silver space suits surrendered a harvest of limbs as raw stumps pumped spurts of blood onto the dry ground. When Remo reached the Master of Sinanju, the final space cadet had just relinquished both helmet and head. The upended dome and its grisly contents were rolling to a fatal stop at the old Korean's feet.
"They went thataway," Remo said.
Chiun nodded sharply. Spinning from the bodies, the two Masters of Sinanju raced to the concrete bunker. Chiun planted a foot against the steel door and it screamed off its frame, crashing into the shadowy interior. In a twirl of kimono skirts the old man followed the door inside.
Remo was about to duck inside when he noticed a flash of movement with his peripheral vision.
His head snapped around.
At the edge of the shore beyond the bunker, what appeared to be a long red dock extended out into the Atlantic. And at the far end of the dock scurried a massive spider shape. With barely a splash the creature slid off the dock's edge. It slipped under the waves and vanished from sight.
"Chiun, Gordons is getting away!" Remo yelled into the building.
He didn't know if the Master of Sinanju had even heard him. Without waiting for the Korean to reappear, Remo flew around the side of the building. He made it to the shore in two dozen massive strides, kicking off his shoes as he ran.
The sides of the strange dock angled down into the water. Staying in the middle, Remo bounded down its length, diving into the water after the fleeing android.
He hit without making a single splash. Knifing below the surface, Remo instantly extended his senses. With a normal foe he'd be able to focus on life signs, but Gordons wasn't so easy to track.
His eyes wide and his body alert, he scanned the immediate area.
The red surface of the dock from which he'd just jumped continued in a massive arc underwater, forming a huge tube. Extending from the nearest end of that tube were what looked like two conical tunnels. After jumping in, Remo had to slip down between them.
The mouth of each of the tunnels formed a dark minicavern. And Gordons could be hiding in one of them.
Toes flexing against the water, Remo swam a few cautious yards away, trying to see inside both caves at once.
He didn't see Gordons in either of them.
He was about to turn away when he heard a faint click. It carried to his hypersensitive ears through the water.
The click was followed by a rumble. And in the next horrifying instant, the world turned a blinding yellow.
And the massive burst of flame that disgorged from the two dark caverns around the stunned form of Remo Williams seemed to burst out from the very gates of Hell itself.
DEEP IN THE BOWELS of the bunker, Zipp Codwin watched Remo disappear below the waves.
"He's in!" Codwin snapped.
"What about the other one?" Peter Graham asked worriedly. Seated behind his console, the young man's eyes were locked on his monitor screen.
The long red finger that was the arced dock extended far into the water.
"One at a time," Zipp growled. "Get this one while we've got the chance. Gordons can handle the geyser."
Graham didn't seem certain. "But-"
"Dammit, man," Zipp interrupted angrily, "do I have to do everything around here?"
A single red button sat in the middle of Graham's console. Jumping around the seated scientist, the NASA head dropped a flat, furious palm onto the switch.
The instant he depressed the button, the ground began to rumble. On the monitor the weirdly shaped red dock shook visibly.
Of course, it wasn't a dock. When Zipp ordered that the external shuttle tank with its solid rocket boosters be put in the water, he never thought they'd need it. The thing that propelled the shuttle into space would certainly be overkill in the extreme.
Now he was glad he'd done it.
As he watched the rocket boosters rumble to life, Zipp Codwin frowned deeply. As much for Mr. Gordons, this had now become a matter of life and death for the old astronaut, as well as for the agency he led.
This had to work. With that much fuel burning off, there was no way anyone would be able to survive. Ocean water turned to steam. A white haze enveloped the shore like beckoning fog. The rumbling continued unabated. And as the very walls around them shook, the reverberations seemed to suddenly increase.
Fearing that the rockets were somehow misfiring, Zipp leaned down over the monitor. As he did, the rumble found focus at the control room's locked steel door.
In a spray of concrete dust, the thick door buckled and flew into the room. And coming in behind it, like some nightmare-inspired wraith, swirled the Master of Sinanju.
"Where is the evil machine-man?" Chiun boomed, his accusing tone more fearsome and low than the continuing rumble from the rocket boosters.
Zipp gasped, falling back against the monitor. "That's-that'
s impossible," he stammered. "That was a NASA door. It was built to withstand the punishment of a thousand shuttle launches."
Chiun's hands appeared from the folds of his voluminous kimono sleeves. Zipp Codwin was surprised to see that the tiny Korean held a familiar object.
"Sinanju reserves punishment for men, not doors," the old man intoned.
And raising one leathery hand, he let the object fly. The toy rocket Chiun had taken from Zipp's desk hopped from slender fingers. It became a blinding plastic blur, eating up the space between Chiun and the colonel. Before the former astronaut even knew what had happened, the blunt nose cone had tracked a course straight through his protruding Adam's apple.
Although the impulse to grab at his throat was there, the NASA leader's arms could not respond. The burrowing nose of the rocket had bored straight through Zipp's neck, severing his spinal cord.
His eyes bulged wide.
His hands locked in a final, fatal clench, the old astronaut toppled to the floor.
Zipp was in the last stages of slipping the surly bonds of Earth when Chiun wheeled on Pete Graham. "Where?" the old man barked.
Shaking visibly, Graham pointed a weak finger at the monitor. "There," he offered. "He tricked your friend into following him into the water."
Chiun saw nothing on the monitor but a great swirl of impenetrable steam. So thick was the cloud that even his keen vision couldn't pierce its depths.
"Remo," the Master of Sinanju breathed. He wheeled on Graham. "Shut it off!" he commanded.
"I can't," Graham pleaded. "The abort's been disabled. It'll burn until it runs out of fuel."
Chiun didn't hesitate.
There was not time to make Pete Graham suffer for his sins. With a backward slap the Master of Sinanju sent the scientist's head deep inside his computer monitor. As sparks and smoke erupted from the shattered screen, the wizened Asian was already bolting for the door.
And all around, the unearthly rumble of the still firing rockets shook the Earth to its molten core.
THE MOMENT the flames were released from the pair of giant nozzles, every muscle in Remo's body tensed.
Before the onrush of flame from the firing boosters had a chance to char him to ash, he snapped his back hard and thrust his feet downward. He shot to the surface, breaking up through the waves like a vaulting porpoise. He was running before the soles of his feet had even brushed the swirling surface of the churning water.
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