"There were strange rumors surrounding the Volga's fate," Anna Chutesov said slowly. "The men in charge of the project were blamed for the failure and executed."
"That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said.
"I do not understand how this Gordons could attach himself to the Yuri Gagarin. The Volga was lost in deep space."
"That part I can't explain," admitted Remo.
Smith suddenly looked up from his terminal. "Oh, my God," he whispered.
"Smitty?" said Remo.
"Gordons knew where to find us."
"Yeah, he's creative now. He probably looked us up in the Yellow Pages."
"No. That isn't it." Smith turned in his chair to face the others. "Even lost in space, Gordons wasn't entirely helpless. He probably fabricated some kind of propulsion system from the Volga's parts. It would be easy for him. But finding earth would be next to impossible without specific navigational programming. Unless Gordons had a signal to home in on."
"What's so hard about that? There's plenty of earth radio transmissions he could have locked in on," said Remo.
"Not from Rye, New York. Not from Folcroft."
"From where, then?" asked Remo.
"Do you remember the transmitter Gordons planted on you that last time?"
The memory made Remo absently scratch his back. "Yeah, he stuck a little thing into my back no bigger than a bee sting. I didn't even feel it, but it threw my body out of whack. I couldn't stop hopping like a jack-in-the-box until Chiun pulled it out."
"You never could sit still," Chiun said unkindly.
"I took possession of the device after you returned from Moscow," Smith said. "It later disappeared. I can remember thinking it must have fallen off my desk and I had accidentally swept it up during a cleaning."
Anna Chutesov came to her feet.
"If this Gordons homed in on this office, it would explain why he landed in this area," she said.
"Yes, it would," Smith agreed.
"Then the transmitter must still be here. Where did you see it last?"
Smith considered. "Right ... here," he said, placing a finger on a packet of printouts. "I placed it on a set of computer forms. I always put my printouts on this quadrant of the desk."
"Believe him," said Remo. "At home, he's probably got individual compartments in his sock drawer."
"Then the transmitter is still here," said Anna. Everyone got down on the floor and looked for the transmitter, except the Master of Sinanju, who muttered something about closing the barn door after the horse. Only he didn't say "horse," he said "ox."
After several minutes, Remo got to his feet and said, "I don't see anything."
"Nor I," admitted Smith.
"It does not seem to be here," said Anna Chutesov. And remembering that Remo had called it a bee sting, she ran her hands along the floorboards. She was rewarded by a tiny stinging sensation in the ball of her thumb.
"Ouch!" she said deliberately.
"You all right?" asked Remo solicitously.
"A splinter," Anna said, getting to her feet. "Here, let me . . ."
"I am fully capable of extracting a splinter from my own hand," she said sternly. Turning to Smith, she asked, "Is there a washroom where I can clean the wound?"
Smith handed her a brass key. "Use my private washroom," he said. "It's out in the hall."
"Thank you," said Anna Chutesov.
In the washroom, she held her thumb up to the bare ceiling bulb. As she had hoped, the splinter was black, insectlike. It had penetrated at a shallow angle so that it was clearly visible under the translucency of her epidermis. The transmitter.
Anna washed a droplet of blood from the point of entry and, without removing the transmitter, she rejoined the others.
"Find it?" she asked brightly.
"No," said Smith.
"Uh-uh," seconded Remo. "I don't think it's here."
"I'll have the room swept electronically," Smith decided. "A bug is a bug. I'm certain it will be found. I should have thought of it before this."
"Don't be too hard on yourself, Smitty," Remo said. "Who would have thought Gordons would return?" But Smith wasn't listening. He was at his terminal again, tapping keys like some demented concert pianist. "What're you doing, Smitty?" Remo asked curiously. "I'm setting up a program to collect statistics on infertile couples. It will feed off the AMA computers and Health and Welfare files."
"You're going to track Gordons that way?"
"No, this is in case you and Chiun don't stop him before he succeeds in sterilizing more people. I can count on your help, can't I?" said Smith, thinking of Anna Chutesov's promise to influence Remo into solving the Gagarin mystery.
"Sure," said Remo. "I promised Chiun I'd pitch in on this one. And I have six months to kill before returning to Korea."
"This could take much longer to resolve than six months," Smith warned.
"How long?"
"Weeks, months, years," said Smith. "We don't know what form Gordons will take next. But based on the car-wash experience, he will probably assume the form of a commercial structure, something through which large numbers of people pass daily."
"Like an airliner?"
Smith shook his head. "Not efficient enough. Something stationary. A skyscraper, or possibly the Lincoln Tunnel. The World Trade Towers, perhaps."
"You're talking about a needle in a haystack here," Remo protested. "Chiun and I can't just walk up to every big building on the continent, tip our hats, and ask, 'Pardon us, but are you Mr. Cordons, the sterilizing machine?' "
"When we find the transmitter, we should be able to track him through it," Smith said. "It's our only lead."
"Okay," Remo said, settling back onto the floor. "So we wait."
"Wait!" cried Anna Chutesov. "Thousands of people are being sterilized with each passing hour and you want to wait! Does he not understand what is happening?" she asked no one in particular.
"No, he does not," said the Master of Sinanju. "He cannot understand. He thinks it is some unfortunate minor ailment, like a hangnail."
"What'd I say?" said Remo plaintively.
"For every person who loses the ability to procreate," Smith said, "the world not only loses the 2.3 children most couples bear in their lifetimes, but also the grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so on who will never be. Future leaders, scientists, entertainers, and ordinary hardworking people will never be. The loss to our social and economic future is incalculable. If Gordons only partially succeeds, Americans may become scarce in the next century."
"Smith is right," said Anna Chutesov.
"I'm glad you said that, Ms. Chutesov," said Harold W. Smith, "because I would like some information from you. Please give me the specifications on the microwave satellite. I believe that Gordons' survivalist accomplice referred to it as the Sword of Damocles."
"I regret I cannot," said Anna Chutesov. "That is a state secret."
Smith nodded imperceptibly and returned to his computer.
"Do any of you know the Russian words for 'Sword of Damocles'?"
"Damoklov Mech," answered the Master of Sinanju. "Thank you," said Smith, keying the phrase into his computer. He waited, and in a matter of seconds he was reading an on-screen file.
"The Sword of Damocles is a phased-array microwave transmitter," he reported. "It's very powerful, capable of affecting a massive landmass during an approximately four-year orbital sweep. As you may know, microwave ovens heat by exciting water molecules in food. This satellite uses the same principle to raise the human body temperature just enough to neutralize the reproductive system. Slow but certain sterilization results. The transmitter is very powerful, but for it to accomplish its full task, the sterilizing of America, it must be placed in orbit. That part at least is good news. On the ground, Gordons can do limited damage. But we're still talking thousands of people each month, under optimum circumstances. And Gordons, being a machine, has no limitations on his lifespan. If not stopped, he could conceivably sterilize the entire earth."