As he climbed back behind the wheel, Graham noted that the gunfire in the house was dwindling. No matter. They had gotten what they'd come after. Stomping on the gas once more, Graham bounced over the lawn to the side driveway. By the time the shooting finally dwindled to a stop inside, he had plowed through the driveway gates and was hightailing it with his precious cargo back to the safer environs of NASA.
THE BATTLE within McQueen's house was dying down. With twin slaps Chiun merged two of the last space helmets into one. Looking like some alien being with but a single head to direct two distinct bodies, the pair of merged space cadets collapsed to the dusty foyer floor.
There was only one man left.
The last space cadet realized the battle was lost. Twisting his ray gun around, he aimed the barrel at his own domed head. When he squeezed the trigger he was surprised that he didn't hear a boom. It took him a moment to realize why. In order for a gun to go boom, one first needed to have a gun. Somehow his was no longer in his hand.
As his empty white glove clutched the air, an unhappy face appeared before his bowl-shaped visor. "I got some stars for you, Buck Rogers," Remo said.
He bounced the butt of the man's ray gun off the top of his helmet. The resulting gong penetrated through to the man's rattling brain stem. As his teeth jangled, Remo grabbed him up under the arms.
Chiun had whirled up beside Remo. "What are you doing with this one?" he demanded impatiently.
"I'm sick of going through this all the time," Remo said. "We keep one this time, just in case." A row of demonic heads was mounted like animal trophies on the wall. Remo hooked the collar of the space suit on the horn of a particularly ghastly creature. As the man squirmed on his hook, Remo and Chiun raced outside.
On the side lawn they found the mound of freshly turned earth and the tire marks that led across the yard from the toppled-down fence to the broken driveway gate.
"Looks like baby's been snatched," Remo said angrily.
Whoever had taken Gordons was long gone. Without hope of trailing the android, they returned to the house.
The lone surviving space cadet was still wiggling high up on the wall. When he saw Remo and Chiun approaching, his eyes grew wide with fear inside his helmet.
Remo pulled him down, popping off his fishbowl. "Okay, who do you work for?" Remo asked. "And if you say Ming the Merciless, I'm gonna stick this bowl in your mouth and plant petunias in it."
The space cadet couldn't answer fast enough. "Colonel Codwin!" the man gasped.
Remo's face grew dark. "That buzz-cut Ken doll from NASA sent you after us?"
"No," the man said. "We were sent to retrieve a package. But he did tell us to use extreme prejudice if anyone tried to stop us."
"Perfect," Remo grumbled. "A pack of you nits blew themselves up in Florida. He sent them after us, too?"
"That was Alpha Team," the man said, shaking his head. "They were strictly reconnaissance. Taking pictures, surveillance, that sort of thing. The colonel wanted to see who was interested in those giant spider robberies. I didn't know until today that it was a special NASA project."
Remo glanced at Chiun. "So Captain Codface has been pulling Gordons's strings all along."
The old man nodded. "If he so values Gordons, his minions would bring the evil machine back to him."
"Assuming Gordons lets them," Remo cautioned. "After all that's happened, he might not want to go back there."
The spaceman's eyes bounced from one man to the other. "Who's Gordons?" he asked finally.
"You don't even know who you came up here to get?" Remo said. "Is anyone at NASA earning his paycheck?" He shook his head. "So what were Zitt's orders?"
"Just to retrieve the Virgil probe-the spider thing that's been on the news-and bring it back to Canaveral. He said that Virgil had developed almost human intelligence and that to insure the solvency of the entire space program we had to get it back or die trying.
"Is that what this whole trip around the moon was for?" Remo asked. "Just to keep the cash flowing in to NASA?"
"I'm not privy to the colonel's private thoughts," the man said. "But he seemed to indicate that. Oh, and he said he had something planned for you if you came back."
Remo's expression hardened. "And I've got something for him. Here's a preview."
He delivered the spaceman's head into the mouth of the nearest convenient monster trophy. Although there was too much head to fit in so little mouth, Remo made it work.
When he was done, he turned from the dangling dead man.
"I better call Smith," he said grimly. "He'll want to know who we're up against."
Chapter 26
"The thing you are after is Mr. Gordons," Smith blurted the instant he heard Remo's voice. The blue contact phone was clutched tight in his arthritic hand. Anxiety filled his lemony voice.
"No kidding," Remo said. "Where were you half an hour ago when we could have used the heads-up?" Smith sat up more rigidly in his chair. Beside his desk, Mark Howard hovered anxiously.
"Have you already encountered him?" Smith pressed.
"We saw him, all right," Remo said. "And this isn't like the last couple times, either. He's back up to speed."
"Remo is correct, Emperor Smith," Chiun called from the nearby background. "The machine thing did seem rejuvenated. However, he still fears Sinanju."
"Please tell Master Chiun that he has managed to cause much damage over the years, despite that same fear," the CURE director warned. "We cannot take that as consolation."
"Amen to that, Smitty," Remo replied. "And to make matters worse he seemed more like the Gordons we first met years ago-same face and everything. And I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I'd forgotten just exactly what a miserable pile of scrap he was way back then."
"So you were unable to neutralize him?"
Chiun was quick to answer. "I landed a crippling blow," he called.
"We put a few dings in the bumper, that's all," Remo said. "I don't know if we could have done more. He got away thanks to Ripp Aspirin and his band of space pirates."
"Remo, Mark and I were in the process of trying to ascertain who at NASA might be Gordons's confederate," Smith said, voice level. "Are you saying that it is Colonel Zipp Codwin who has allied himself with Gordons?"
The CURE director couldn't mask his surprise. Although lesser known than Neil Armstrong or Alan Shepard, NASA's current administrator was one of the pioneers of the early space program.
"You wouldn't be surprised if you ever met him, Smitty," Remo said. "By the sounds of it, that blowhard would get in bed with an invading army of mankind-enslaving space ants just to keep that flapdoodle agency of his afloat. And speaking of stuff NASA does to piss me off, just how the hell did they manage to get Gordons out of that volcano, anyway?"
"They were testing a new piece of equipment in Popocatepetl," Smith explained. "Gordons assimilated it."
"Swell," Remo muttered. "I guess that explains why he thinks his family rescued him. As far as the here and now goes, your guess is as good as mine where he winds up. If he stays with the guys who snagged him, they're probably on their way back to NASA."
Smith pursed his lips. "Did Gordons actually say to you that he felt it was his family who rescued him?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Mr. Gordons has always gone to great lengths to mimic human behavior," the CURE director said. "He has had varying degrees of success, but his attempts have been consistent. For most people the family environment means safety. If he truly considers NASA to be his family, and continues the pattern, it is likely he will go there at a time of crisis."
"I suppose," Remo said.
Smith sat forward, pointing to the door. "I will have Mark arrange a flight from Maine to Florida for you."