Warren Murphy - The Wrong Stuff

"Use caution, Remo," Chiun warned. Ever alert, he kept his voice low as he advanced with his makeshift weapon. "He is not as he was when last we met."

Remo, too, had noticed the speed. During their last encounter with Gordons, the android was a weakened version of his former self. But this seemed like the Gordons of old.

Although Chiun's words were soft enough that only Remo should have heard, it was Mr. Gordons who replied.

"The old one is correct," Mr. Gordons agreed. "With the introduction of supplementary data, my original program was altered over time. Due to the damage inflicted by the two of you I have decided to go back to my beginnings, reinstalling my original commands. What I once was, I am again."

"You were a tin-plated asswipe," Remo suggested, raising his spear.

Gordons flicked his metallic eyes to the younger Master of Sinanju. And in that sliver of a moment when his attention was diverted, Chiun let his missile fly.

The spear whistled through the dank air, sinking deep into the android's head. A spray of white sparks spit from his face, peppering the dirt floor around his feet.

Gordons reeled, spear jutting from between his eyes like a misshapen extra nose.

It was only when he staggered to one side that they saw the second set of spider legs. Curled tightly, they had been hidden behind the android's back. Imminent danger provoked action.

The spare legs shot out from his body. But rather than launch forward at Remo and Chiun, the spider legs plowed into the dirt walls of the tunnel, burrowing deep into earth.

There came a muffled snap of old timber breaking. When the legs retracted, the walls seemed to come with them.

With an ominous groan the tunnel began to collapse in on itself.

As stone and dirt rained down on all their heads, Mr. Gordons fell away, staggering up the far end of the tunnel.

"Remo, hurry!" Chiun insisted. Twirling, he bounded back toward the cellar, away from the dirt avalanche.

Remo hesitated. He clearly wanted to go after Gordons, but he could see that it was already too late. The center of the tunnel was filling in. With a rumble the ceiling began to cave in above him.

With a frustrated snap of his arm, Remo flung his spear through the collapsing wall of dirt. He wasn't sure if his aim was true, but he swore he saw the metal end sink into Gordons's fleeing back. And then the tunnel collapsed fully and the android vanished from sight.

Spinning, Remo leaped back through the stone archway in a cloud of exploding dust. Behind him the thick-packed earth of the tunnel continued to settle in on itself.

Once he saw that his pupil was safe, the Master of Sinanju became a flash of silk. Remo joined his teacher in a mad race for the cellar stairs.

Wherever Gordons was heading, he'd have to surface eventually. Both men intended to be there when the android came up for air.

When they burst into the foyer, Remo's tense face dropped into an angry scowl.

A dozen men were waiting for them, each decked out in the same white jumpsuits as their Florida attackers. Unlike the first group, these men wore round plastic helmets over their heads. Their toy ray guns with the very real .45 muzzles were aimed at Remo and Chiun as the two men appeared through the broken basement door.

Blue patches decorated with the nine planets of the solar system were fastened to their chests. In the center where the sun should be, the legend Space Cadets was stitched in ominous black letters.

"What in the ding-diddly crap?" Remo growled. He had barely uttered the words when the twelve men opened fire. As the two Masters of Sinanju dodged and weaved, bullets thumped thickly into the wall behind them.

"We don't have time for this," Remo warned Chiun.

"In that case, move quickly," Chiun advised.

The old man skittered right, taking up that line of attack. Reluctantly, Remo moved to the left.

The nearest shooter seemed frustrated by his inability to aim true. He fired madly as Remo waltzed up.

Remo grabbed a palmful of Plexiglas. "I'm in a hurry, Pez head," he said, steering the man's fishbowl into the nearest wall.

Something went crack, and it wasn't the space cadet's helmet. As the Plexiglas globe filled with dark red fluid, the man collapsed to the knees of his space suit.

On the opposite side of the foyer, the Master of Sinanju was using the bright blue patches of two space cadets as makeshift dartboards. He scored perfect bull's-eyes with a pair of extended fingernails.

Shocked gasps hissed from within their helmets. When Chiun drew his hands away, the tidy little solar systems of their patches were decorated at the center with expanding red nebulae. Clutching chests, the men collapsed like futuristic rag dolls to the floor. Remo had already moved up the line. Two flattened fingers pierced a domed head, sinking shards of plastic deep into the temple of its occupant. At the same time he launched a toe back in a deceptively gentle move. The rib cage of another attacker was reduced to jelly.

And as he and Chiun moved up their respective lines, the front door of the mansion-and the killer android who lurked somewhere beyond-inched closer.

TWISTED SIDEWAYS in the passenger's seat of the rented van, Clark Beemer was trying to get a good look at the front door of the spooky old house. As he peered into the darkness, he tapped his anxious fist on the dashboard.

Behind the steering wheel, Pete Graham scowled. "Will you stop doing that?" he complained, his youthful voice thick with tension. He, too, watched the door.

The space cadets had gone in a moment ago. With any luck they'd soon emerge in the company of his poor wayward Virgil probe.

Graham had been surprised when Zipp Codwin told him about the space cadets. They were an elite group of commandos hired secretly by the head of NASA with space-agency funds, to be deployed in emergency situations only.

"I'd intended to use them against the more stubborn budget-cutters in Washington," Colonel Codwin had told Graham back at Canaveral. "Maybe their wives, kids, pets. But, son, we have got a dagblummed emergency scenario that's almost as big as our budget woes shaping up here."

And so Graham and Clark Beemer had been sent to Maine with Zipp Codwin's private army to retrieve Mr. Gordons.

As the seconds ticked by and the space cadets remained within the building, Pete Graham's anxiety level continued to rise. By the time the first gunshots sounded, his tension was a palpable thing within the cab of the van.

Graham shot to attention, and Clark Beemer's head snapped up.

"What was that?" the PR man asked.

"Gunshots, I think," Graham said.

"You think the robot attacked them?" Beemer asked.

Graham shook his head. "I don't think so. Gordons is a survival machine. As long as they identified themselves to him like they were supposed to, he wouldn't see them as a threat."

"So that means there's something else in there," Beemer said, his voice laced with foreboding. Sick eyes were trained on the eerie Gothic mansion.

As soon as he finished speaking, something caught his attention beyond the wrought-iron gate that ran along the sidewalk next to the van. Since it was night, Beemer couldn't see clearly. But it appeared as if the side lawn of the estate had begun to bulge. There was a small hillock of bowed earth and dead grass where there wasn't one before.

Gasping, he clutched Pete Graham's wrist, steering the scientist's attention to the lawn.

When he tracked the path of Beemer's eyes, Graham's eyes opened wide in shock.

In the wash of pale moonlight it appeared as if the ground were slowly heaving up.

Clark Beemer had seen enough Stewart McQueen movies to know this was in no way good.

"Get us out of here," the PR man hissed.

Pete Graham hated to agree with Beemer, but as the earth continued to bubble the NASA scientist found himself fumbling with the ignition key. He hadn't a chance to turn the engine over when two slender black objects thrust up from the center of the earth-bulge.