"Therefore," Istoropovich went on, "my only option is to kill you along with myself."
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Remo sighed. "Looks that way, I guess. Well, you'd better get to work, because there are twelve minutes to launching time, and I'm going in." He tried the door. It was at least a foot thick, made of solid rock. "Come on, Gordons," he said. "How about some creative battering?"
"Have you ever wondered what these gold balls contain?" Istoropovich asked.
"No," Chiun said.
"I shall tell you now."
"I was afraid of that," Remo said. "Say, can you make it fast? We've got an awful lot to do in there."
"They contain cyanide pellets surrounded by sulphuric acid. Once broken, they will turn an enclosed area like this into a gas chamber."
"Oh, come on," Remo said. "What kind of enclosed area is this? We came in through an open door." He indicated the entry to the stairway.
As he pointed, the door slid shut with a soft click.
"Let's see how cynical you are after the poison gas takes effect," Istoropovich said. He dropped the balls to the ground and stepped on them. Immediately they began to hiss. A wisp of creamy white smoke snaked out. The air turned foul.
Remo ran back to the stairway door and tried it. It was locked and sealed. Quickly he moved to the sliding stone panel that led to the lab. There was no way to open it without breaking the solid rock.
"Find a way to get air to the woman, if you want to save her," Chiun commanded.
The professor and Istoropovich were hacking
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and gasping for breath. To preserve his own oxygen supply, Chiun closed his eyes and slowed his breathing near coma.
"Get some air to her," Remo said to Gordons. He was already feeling dizzy. Concentrating, he began to bring himself to low consciousness.
"I will activate my pollution filters," Mr. Gordons said. He knelt over the professor. His fingers worked inside his shirt, and then he began to hiss like a garage air hose, and he put his face over the professor's and put air into her mouth.
He stopped for a moment and called over his shoulder to Remo. "I only have a four-minute supply. To create oxygen, I must destroy some of my internal circuits," he said. "I suggest you get us out of here."
Remo was slamming both feet against the stone panel, chipping away inches at a time. Chiun walked to it and flicked Remo out of the way. With a circular motion of his arm, he drew a neat zero on the stone with the fingernail of his index finger. Then, his hand moving at a speed too fast to be called a blur, his fingers sped around the circle, tapping the stone so rapidly that the sound seemed not to be tapping, but a buzz.
He stopped, then pressed the heel of his hand into the center of the zero. The round piece of stone fell through on the other side of the door, and the poison gas poured out of the anteroom into the vast missile lab. Remo could feel the air clearing, and he slowly let his breathing and heartbeat return to normal.
He reached through the hole Chiun had just made and found a switch next to the stone panel.
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He pressed it, and the door slowly swung open. Then he went back and propelled Mr. Gordons and the professor, who were still attached to one another by their lips, toward the doorway.
"No!" Istoropovich called weakly from the shadows where he had fallen. He was slithering on his stomach, the muscles of his abdomen contracting in terrible spasms. A trickle of black bile ran from his mouth down his chin. "I will not die for nothing," he groaned.
"That's the way it goes sometimes," Remo said, and turned back to the embracing couple.
"So is this," Istoropovich said. And before Remo spotted the glint of gray metal in the Russian's hands, a shot fired. It rang through the small anteroom, echoing tinnily. It ricocheted off one wall and came to rest with a soft snap in the professor's back.
She arched wildly, her features contorted. "Get them inside," Remo said to Chiun. With a small kick to Istoropovich's throat, he snapped the man's head, and the Russian lay still, the gun warm in his hand.
"Frances," Mr. Gordons whispered. "Why are you acting like this? Frances, stand up."
Chiun shuffled the dazed robot, carrying his limp charge, into the lab.
"Please, Frances," Mr. Gordons said softly.
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CHAPTER TWENTY
They were met by a burst of machine gun fire.
An alarm, high pitched and shrieking, had sounded as soon as Remo opened the wall to the lab. The high commander herself was at the controls of the main launch computer terminal. When the alarm sounded, she abandoned the controls and reached for the automatic submachine gun strapped across her back.
Chiun and Remo leaped high above the spray of bullets, distracting her while Mr. Gordons hid the professor behind a remote terminal, killing the technician who operated it.
The air quality sensors inside, detecting the traces of cyanide from the anteroom, whirred to overload, cleansing the air. As Mr. Gordons crouched behind the terminal with the unconscious professor, he heard the alarm shut off. A hush fell in the lab. The normal chattering and cross-checking of controls ceased, and the only
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sounds remaining were the clicking of computer consoles and the whirring of the atmospheric sensors.
All electronic, mechanical, inorganic sounds, Mr. Gordons thought. It was his first free thought, and it made him sad. This is the sort of place where I was conceived, he said to himself. Clean, sterile, without creativity, devoid of love.
Through the smoky dark glass of the lab. he could see, a quarter-mile away, the huge Volga stationed on its scaffolding, ready for takeoff. This was a place for metal and wire coil and electric impulses and electronic circuitry and glass insulators. And suddenly Mr. Gordons never wanted to be in a laboratory again. He just wanted to take Frances to a place where she could breathe the air she needed, where they would share their lives and love each other forever.
Everything was different now. He was no longer just a machine, another brilliant series of electromagnetic connections. The professor had seen to that. She had, he realized, given him the greatest gift of. all, greater than his ability to walk or talk or assimilate information, greater even than his capacity to survive: she had given him creativity. Independent thought. Choice. With her genius, she had set him free.
"Please don't die. We have so many things to do together," he said to the still form of the professor.
He was answered by the high commander's volley of machine gun fire. Slowly Mr. Gordons stood up, his hands held in front of him. The bullets tore at the skin covering him, but bounced away
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harmlessly when they touched his metallic interior. After a few moments, the weapon clicked when she pressed the trigger, but no more bullets came out.
, "I could kill you now," Mr. Gordons said to the panicky high commander, "if I could find a way that was creative enough to make you suffer as much as you deserve." The handsome face he wore carried a strange bitterness in it.
The high commander looked around wildly. The technicians in the room were trembling and cowering behind whatever protection could be found. On the lighted console of the computer terminal, graphs and assorted countdowns continued to take place, as though they were fully manned.
The commander raised her head defiantly. "It no matter if you kill me or not," she said. "The countdown for the launch is on automatic control now. The Volga will be launched in ten minutes, and nothing any of you can do will stop it." She turned to Remo and smiled, a malicious, triumphant smile. "This is my country. You kill me, you not live long here."
"I've got news for you, sweets," Remo said. "None of us is going to live long here. Gordons over there is programmed to deflect the Volga back to dear old Mother Russia as soon as it leaves the earth's atmosphere."
"You lie!" she said. "You lie."
"He's not lying," came a woman's voice weakly from a far corner of the room.The professor's eyes fluttered open.
"Frances," Mr. Gordons said gently.
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"Who said that?" the high commander demanded with a snap of her head.
"Help me to somewhere I can talk," the professor said. Mr. Gordons carried her to the main computer launch console and lay her on top of it.
The high commander stepped over to her and raised her head arrogantly. "Is true?" she seethed. "Did you reprogram killer robot to deflect Volga back to Soviet Union?"
The professor managed a thin smile before a fit of coughing overtook her. "Yes, I did. I knew your men wouldn't have the time or intelligence to check Mr. Gordons's more complex circuits."
"Deceiving bitch." The high commander grasped the professor around the neck with both hands. In a fury, Mr. Gordons slapped the woman across the face with the back of his hand. She went flying across the lab and, to the shrieks of the dumfounded technicians, struck the smoke-colored windows with a thwack and dropped sprawling to the floor.
Mr. Gordons knelt over Dr. Payton-Holmes.
"Frances," he said.
"Yes, darling," she said.
"Frances, we have failed."
"Why?"
"I .cannot stop this Volga. To produce oxygen a few minutes ago, I burned up the circuits."
"Oh no," Dr. Payton-Holmes said. Her face twisted with anguish. "It must be stopped."
"I don't know how," Mr. Gordons said.
"You are creative. Think of a way."
"I'll try, Frances."
"I love you, Mr. Gordons."
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"I love you too," the android said as the scientist went limp in his arms and died.
Mr. Gordons stood up and looked around the control center. Hé took three steps toward Remo, who wheeled around to face him.
"I am letting you live," Mr. Gordons said. "The Volga was more important to her than anything else, and she loved me. I will stop the Volga and save you for another day."
"How are we going to stop it?"
"I am creative. I will change its trajectory. It will never reach the moon."
Remo smiled. "Go to it, friend."
"I am not your friend," Mr. Gordons said bitterly. "Frances was my friend. She told me that creativity would bring me pain. I should have listened to her. I will be no one's friend again." Softly he kissed the professor on her lips. "I will go," he said. "But I will return for you later."
"Still a robot after all, huh?" Remo said.
"That was what I was created. That is what I will remain." He cast the professor one last look, blinked, and strode across the room. As he walked, he picked up the sprawled form of the high commander, who was just coming to. " What—what are you doing?" she screamed. "Unhand me. Let me down!"
Viciously Mr. Gordons shoved her face first through the dark glass windows. They shattered in a spiderweb pattern, then gave way to the big man with the mechanical stride, and the screaming woman whom he held dangling by her hair.
He tossed her into the seat of an open jeeplike vehicle outside the building and drove quickly to
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the launch site. Remo and Chiun watched through binoculars as Mr. Gordons, still dragging the flailing form of'the high commander behind him, climbed up the scaffolding to the entry hatch of the Volga. Two small monkeys in space suits scurried out as the door opened. Then Mr. Gordons shoved the high commander inside, stepped in himself, and closed the hatch behind him. In a matter of seconds, the missile lifted off in a cloud of white vapor and disappeared into the sky.
"What's he going to do?" Remo asked outside the building.
"Whatever he must, I imagine," Chiun said.
Remo looked up to see the trailing contrail of the missile searing the blue sky. "He got kind of soft over the professor, didn't he?"
Chiun smiled. "Sometimes one is fortunate enough to find something—or someone—more powerful than his strongest impulses. It can happen even to a survival machine, I suppose. That is a good sign for all of us. Especially you."
"What if he gets out of there?" Remo said, thinking of the robot encapsulated in the speeding missile.
"He will find us and try to kill us, obviously."
Remo shrugged. "Hell never get out. That thing will orbit in space forever."
"Let us hope so," Chiun said.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In Rye, New York, in the executive office of the director of Folcroft Sanitarium, Dr. Harold W. Smith pursed his pale lips as he looked at the black object on his desk blotter through the lens of a magnifying glass.
"So?" he said. "It's a small transmitter."
"I just thought maybe you'd like to see it," Remo said, annoyed. "It was in my spine. It almost killed me. That's why we had to let things go till the last second."
"Nonsense," Chiun said. "There were several seconds remaining before it would have been necessary to dismantle the boom ship."
"That was a missile, not a boom ship," Remo complained in Korean. "And if we had so much time, then Gordons wouldn't be flying around in outer space now. We could have finished him off right there in the lab and gotten rid of him for good."
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Chiun clucked. "Tsk, tsk. With you, everything must be total. Life is not total. Much is unfinished, all is question. Become old, Remo, and perhaps you will become wise."
"I'm not going to have a chance to get old with that robot hanging around."
"Oh, how far you are from becoming a true Master of Sinanju," Chiun said. "Your friend is a machine, not a man. Nothing can destroy him. Better to live with him from a distance of millions of miles than next door."
"I wish you'd quit with the Oriental philosophy," Remo said, still in Korean.
"Stop, stop, stop," Smith pleaded. "It's eleven o'clock at night. I do like to get home every four or five days. And you need to rest. Something's brewing on the East Coast which may require your services in a day or two."
"Oh, no you don't," Remo said. "I'm taking some time off."
"Wonderful," Chiun said, smiling. "The ruler of Persia extended a standing offer three hundred years ago to the Master of Sinanju. We are welcome to work for him at any time. For four trunks of rubies a year," he said, wiggling his eyebrows. ^
"There is no Persia anymore, Little Father, It's Iran now. And I'm not working for any guy who wears a hat and a veil."
"What about Africa? The tribe of the Timalu has also requested our services. Oh, it is lovely there. The Ugandan countryside is most—"
"I'm not working for Uganda, either."
"Picky, picky, picky," Chiun said.
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"I'm just taking a rest," Remo said.
"Can we discuss this tomorrow?" Smith asked wearily.
"We're never discussing anything again. This is it. Done. Finito. Vacation time." He walked out the door, stomping deliberately.
Chiun turned to Smith. "I believe I can make him change his decision, Emperor," he said. "However, perhaps I should first accept, with utmost gratitude, the photograph you promised me of the lovely Cheeta Ching."
"Cheeta Ching?"
"The newscaster," Chiun said. "Surely you have the photograph."
Smith grimaced. "I'm sorry, Chiun," he said. "With everything going on, I suppose I forgot."
"Persia is a most amicable place for master assassins, O illustrious Emperor," Chiun said, his eyes narrowing.
'I'll have someone get the photograph right away."
"That is what you said the last time we spoke," Chiun said as he walked out. He slammed the door behind him so hard that the hinges shattered and fell in pieces to the floor.
Smith sighed again and gathered up the papers he was taking home with him.
At the doorway he remembered some computer printouts he had left on his desk and returned for them. He didn't bother to turn on the light, since everything on his desk was within a millimeter of what it had been the day before. He picked up the printouts and stuck them in his coat pocket. In the process, the small transmitter Remo had
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T
shown him fell to the floor and disappeared through the floorboards.
Smith would not think about the transmitter again. The next day, business would go on as usual, and the next evening, the cleaning woman would sweep the floor with a broom as she always did, since Smith refused to requisition either a carpet or a vacuum cleaner for the executive offices of Folcroft; the first layer of dust would sift through the floorboards to obscure the transmitter. It was gone for good, the last memento of Mr. Gordons and the professor obliterated forever.
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EPILOGUE
In distant space, catching light from the Andromeda Galaxy, the orbital capsule of the USSR Volga drifted harmlessly in its slow, unending journey through the universe.
Inside the capsule lay the mummified remains of a woman, her Soviet Army uniform pefectly preserved, its medals gleaming on the skeletal chest. Beside the body rested a small, rough-edged metallic rock.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the rock moved. A centimeter at a time, it began an infin-itesimally slow rotation toward the missile's inner wall. Then it began to move faster, picking up momentum.
By the time it reached the wall, the rock was spinning, ever faster, a whirling blur. Shards of fiberglass splintered off the inside of the capsule. The dent created by the rock deepened to become a small hole, then a larger hole. Then the vacuum
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of space took over, and the imbalance of pressure caused by the hole in the capsule ripped open the smooth walls with a monstrous creak.
The fiberglass interior starred and fragmented. The insulating material between the inner and outer walls flew off into space like cobwebs. And a fraction of a second before the outer walls burst apart in a massive implosion, the small metallic rock spun out the hole and away, plummeting alone through the airless vastness of space.
Contained within the rock was one sound: The steady thrum-thrum of a transmitter. It was stationary somewhere on earth, and already the microscopic components inside the metallic rock were calculating the coordinates of the transmitter. It was calling the rock home to finish an incomplete task. Home, to another identity, another form, other adventures.
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