"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."