The Wrong Stuff td-125

by Warren Murphy

  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.

  REMO AND CHIUN WEATHERED the blast beneath their rental car. They had spotted the man dragging the boat as soon as they'd climbed out from under the charred car.

  "I hate it when they blow us up," Remo complained. He brushed stone dust from his hair as they walked.

  "If you had disposed of that flying contraption the correct way, we would not have been anywhere near it when it boomed," Chiun sniffed. With delicate hands he brushed puffs of dust from his sleeves.

  Remo gave him a baleful look. "And what's the right way, Mr. Know-It-All?"

  "Did it blow up?" Chiun asked blandly.

  "Yeah," Remo replied.

  "Then the right way would be the opposite of whatever it was you did."

  At the shore they stepped down the black rocks to the oily little man with slicked-back hair. Clark Beemer was straining hard to lug his motorboat into the water. He had nearly succeeded when he heard Remo's voice behind him.

  "Where's Mr. Gordons?"

  Beemer whipped around. When he saw the young white man and the old Asian standing on the rocks before him, his jaw dropped wide.

  "It wasn't me!" Beemer begged. "It's Zipp Codwin. He's gone nuts. NASA used to stand for something, like dipping rocks in glitter paint and saying they were filled with Martian bugs or selling spaceshuttle posters to grammar schools. But now Zipp's got it in his crazy head that he can start exploring space again. All because of that bank-robbing psycho robot of his."

  Remo apparently wasn't happy with Beemer's nonanswer. Remo convinced him to be more forthcoming in his replies. He did this by shattering the PR man's right kneecap.

  "Aahhhrrgg!" Beemer screamed as he tipped sideways onto the rocks of the shore.

  As the PR man grabbed his broken knee in both hands, Remo crouched beside him.

  "Okay, let's try this again," he said coldly. "Where is Mr. Gordons?"

  "I don't know!" Beemer gasped. "I think he said he didn't want to stay on the base while Zipp went after you guys. He didn't think it was safe. But I don't know where he is now." His eyes were watering from the pain in his leg.

  Remo stood. "He didn't want to stay here, huh?" he said flatly. His eyes strayed across the stretch of water.

  A space shuttle sat on the nearest launching pad. It was nestled back on its thrusters, its black nose aimed skyward.

  Remo's eyes narrowed as he looked over at the shuttle.

  "That time Gordons was launched into space, he got back home on board one of those things," Remo said, nodding toward the silent space shuttle.

  "That thing-that-is-not-a-man has in the past equated safety with survival," Chiun agreed. His hazel eyes were trained on the distant shape of the shuttle.

  Remo glanced down at Beemer. "You're driving." Hefting Beemer up, he tossed the NASA PR agent into the back of the motorboat. With Beemer aboard he lifted the boat up and dumped it into the water.

  Chiun scampered up to the prow, leaving the center seat for Remo. Clark Beemer didn't dare refuse. Wincing at the pain in his knee, he started the outboard motor.

  Leaving a wake of frothy white, the boat sped away from shore. It bounced across the rolling waves toward Pad 39A and the looming shape of the space shuttle.

  They had gotten barely halfway across the wide stretch of water when Remo heard a high-pitched whistling noise. It registered as an abrupt itchiness on his eardrums.

  It was not so much a sound as something that was felt.

  A noise beyond ordinary sound, beyond the normal human capacity to hear. It was as if in a bright-flashing instant, something had attacked the very nature of the physical world as Remo had been trained to perceive it.

  Nothing traveled as fast as the sound that struck his ears. Nothing, save the object that at that moment came screaming from the mainland toward their spluttering boat.

  And, Remo realized in an instant of slow-motion shock, it wasn't a noise he had heard, but the sensation of something flying toward them at an impossible speed.

  The object was fat, small and moved faster than anything Remo had ever encountered.

  Faster than any bullet could travel, faster than any man could react, the projectile roared into the rear of
the boat.

  From start to finish it had taken less than one-hundredth of a slivered second. Remo didn't know if Chiun had felt the strange sensation. So fast did it come, he didn't even have time to speak a word of warning.

  Wood splintered at the vicious impact. The outboard motor was ripped into twisted scrap.

  When the trailing sound finally cracked like a sonic boom over the desolate wastes of the Kennedy Space Center-catching up with the deadly projectile-it thundered over the churning river on which floated pathetic scraps of pulped wood.

  And as the sound waves echoed off into the distance, the first mangled slabs of raw human flesh splattered in wet red gobs on the distant, mosscovered rocks of Merritt Island.

  IN THE SHADOW of the space shuttle Discovery, Mr. Gordons clung to the side of the metal service structure. He had once more assumed his spider shape. From the safety of the crisscrossing network of steel girders, he scanned the water with cold mechanical eyes.

  There were but a few fragments of wood visible bobbing on the surface. A widening dark stain was dissipating on the surface of the clear blue water. Mr. Gordons calculated a one hundred percent probability that this was human blood. However, since there was another human being on board the boat at the time of impact, he could only further compute a ninety-two percent probability that some of this blood was that of his enemies.

  An eight percent margin of error was unacceptable. And since a visual inspection from this distance could not produce definitive results, he concluded that closer inspection would be necessary.

  The data was processed and the conclusion was made in less than the blink of an eye.

  Decision made, Mr. Gordons began crawling down the side of the tower on eight furry legs.

  Chapter 29

  No one noticed the tall, thin man as he limped across the dock at the busy Cocoa Beach marina. His shaggy hair was tucked up under his hat, his upper lip pulled down tight over his long incisors. The rest of his face was hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses.