"What say you now?" said Chiun.
"The ship flew itself," Earl Armalide moaned through watering eyes. "It was alive."
"Okay, the ship flew itself," said Remo, who knew that no one ever lied under the fierce pain the Master of Sinanju could inflict. "Tell us more."
"I climb into the ship, you understand? Only there's no one aboard. I'm in this airlock thing and suddenly the walls start closing in. You know, like in an old movie when the hero is locked in a secret room by the bad guy."
"Impossible," scoffed Anna Chutesov. "The airlock has no such function."
"Don't I wish," said Earl Armalide. "I was this close to becoming a bouillon cube, when-"
"Did you say cube?" asked Smith, suddenly thinking of the objects found on the Kennedy Airport runway. "Yeah, cube. The walls were coming in and so was the roof. I figured if they didn't stop, I'd be cubed. But they did stop. In fact, the ship asked me a question. I look up and there's an eyeball sticking out of a wall. It's looking at me, and it wants to know about this magazine that fell out of my pocket Survivalist's Monthly."
"What did the ... er ... ship want to know?" Smith asked.
"It wanted to know what a survivalist was. It was interested in survival."
The hair on the Master of Sinanju's face suddenly trembled, but there was no breeze to stir it.
"What did it ask?" Chiun wanted to know.
"About survival stuff mostly. It wanted to compare notes. It said it was a machine, a survival machine." Smith, his face ashen, looked at Remo. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he said hollowly.
"Gordons," said Remo. "He's back."
"Who's Gordons?" asked Anna Chutesov.
Chiun nodded grimly. "Gordons. Oh, this is a doubly evil day."
"Who's Gordons?" repeated Anna.
"You saw him?" Smith asked Earl Armalide. "Can you describe him?"
"I told you. I just saw the eye. He claimed that he was the shuttle. Said he assumilated it."
"Assimilated," corrected Smith. His face was haggard.
"Yeah, that."
"Did he give you his name?" Smith asked.
"I didn't know he had one. He said he was a survival machine and if I helped him, he wouldn't cube me. It was a good deal, so I took it. I wasn't interested in being on a first-name basis."
"Explain the car wash," said Smith. "It's the Gagarin, isn't it?"
"Must be. One minute I was inside the ship, flying along calm as you please. The next, we landed and I was knocked cold. When I woke up, I was inside the car wash and the ship was gone. I figured I was home free at first, but when I tried to leave, the place came alive. You can't imagine what it's like, being threatened by a car wash."
"Oh, I don't know," Remo said dryly.
"That's right," Earl Armalide said sheepishly. "You do."
"Why a car wash?" Smith asked.
"Camouflage. At first, I gave him the idea that if he didn't want anyone chasing him, he had to be unobtrusive."
"The Yuri Gagarin Free Car Wash is not exactly a masterpiece of subtlety," said Remo.
"That part came later. He kept the name because, to be truthful, he didn't seem too bright. Know what I mean? He took things too literal. I tried explaining that the name was a problem, but he said he had to work with the things he assimilated. First he assimilated the shuttle, then he merged that with the car wash. When the military dropped their search, he was ready to move on to something else, when the idea hit him."
"What idea?"
"Well, he was afraid of enemies. I guess that's you guys, because he talked about you a lot."
"Oh, Gordons and I go back years," said Remo.
"Who is Gordons?" Anna asked again. She was ignored.
"He said as long as there were so many people on this planet, he wasn't safe, I kinda understood him then for the first time. I'm a survivalist, you know. We had that in common. The way we figured it, there were too many people on the planet telling others what to do and using up all our resources. There were people after me and other people after him. So we decided to team up to solve the problem."
"By sterilizing the planet," said Anna Chutesov. Remo, Chiun, and Dr. Smith all looked at Anna Chutesov in the same blank way.
"Yeah? How'd you know that?" Armalide said wonderingly.
"Yes, how did you know that, Ms. Chutesov?" Smith asked firmly.
"Let him tell it," said Anna Chutesov. She looked pale. Her Walther hung slack in her hand as if it was suddenly too heavy.
"There was this satellite thing that came with the shuttle, the Sword of Damocles," Earl Armalide said. "The machine had figured out it used microwaves to sterilize people-only he didn't call people, people. He called them meat machines. Isn't that weird? He and I figured out that if we kept killing our enemies, it only made more enemies. But if we sterilized them, all we had to do was wait them out, and in time, we would have the problem licked."
"The Yuri Gagarin Free Car Wash was a sterilizing factory?" Smith said, aghast.
"The free part was my idea," Earl Armalide said proudly. "You get more people faster that way."
"Did it never occur to you that a single car wash, at best, is only going to get a fraction of the population in, say, a fifty-mile radius?"
"After a while, yeah, it did. I explained that to the machine, and we worked it out. Once we figured out how to make more microwave sterilizers, he was going to give me the franchise. I was going to have free car washes all over the world."
"Wonderful," said Anna Chutesov, throwing up her hands. "Capitalism at work."
"Don't knock it if you ain't tried it, honey," Earl Armalide said.
"Who was in the booth?" asked Remo.
"The machine, I guess. He could turn into anything. I guess he turned a part of the car wash into a mechanical man. I never saw him clearly, though. He never came out of that booth. But I was glad about that. I got tired of air ducts talking to me and eyeballs staring from walls. It was creepy."
"So where is Gordons now?" asked Remo.
"He got spooked. He said he picked this area because he knew his enemies-that's you guys-were near here, and he figured if he waited around long enough you'd drive through, and zap-he'd sterilize you both. Only the Oriental came through alone and he panicked when you were knocked out, mister."
"I am not a mister, I am a Master," said Chiun, his face full of repressed rage. He slapped Earl Armalide's head and the man, paralyzed in a fetal position, tipped over like a tenpin.
Remo set him up again.
"Sorry, Master," Armalide said. "When it happened, he figured it was time to split because he was worried you'd probably investigate what happened to your friend. He didn't want a fight. So he had me steal a garbage truck for him so he could get away. I was to wait until you people showed up. You know what happened after that."
"He's driving a garbage truck?" Smith asked.
"No, he is the garbage truck. It was the only thing I could hijack that was big enough to carry the satellite so no one'd notice it."
"Where did he go?"
"He didn't say. But I figure he's out there doing his thing, sterilizing people. He wants to clear the planet of meat machines. You know, people."
"That's insane," said Anna.
"No, ma'am, it's survivalism in its purest form. You get rid of the people and you got no problem. No more wars, no more racism or nuclear fears, and plenty of food to go around. It was going to be just him and me."
"It would take, minimum, about eighty years for the last living adult to die off," Smith pointed out.
"We had it figured at fifty," said Earl Armalide. "In fifty years, the only ones on their feet would be so old we could shoot most of them. Can you guys make my arms and legs work again? I'm ready to go to jail now."
"No chance," said Remo.
"Okay, I'll go to jail like this."