Warren Murphy: The Wrong Stuff

"Beemer, you weasel!" he boomed.

As soon as Codwin said the name, Graham recognized NASA's top PR man. The boat bounced off rocks as Clark Beemer yanked it desperately toward the waves.

Colonel Codwin leaped to his feet, pounding a balled fist against the console. "Damn you, you cowardly bastard!" the administrator roared. Ropy knots bulged in his purple neck. He wheeled on Graham. "That man is a traitor to space and every man who's ever set foot in it! He has now officially become bait. Man your station and aim for the yellow stripe up his back. We'll take those other two out in the blast."

As Graham scurried on weak legs over to a console, Zipp Codwin dropped back in his chair. Furious eyes flashed back to the screen.

"No one leaves NASA in the lurch," the colonel growled.

REMO AND CHIUN WEATHERED the blast beneath their rental car. They had spotted the man dragging the boat as soon as they'd climbed out from under the charred car.

"I hate it when they blow us up," Remo complained. He brushed stone dust from his hair as they walked.

"If you had disposed of that flying contraption the correct way, we would not have been anywhere near it when it boomed," Chiun sniffed. With delicate hands he brushed puffs of dust from his sleeves.

Remo gave him a baleful look. "And what's the right way, Mr. Know-It-All?"

"Did it blow up?" Chiun asked blandly.

"Yeah," Remo replied.

"Then the right way would be the opposite of whatever it was you did."

At the shore they stepped down the black rocks to the oily little man with slicked-back hair. Clark Beemer was straining hard to lug his motorboat into the water. He had nearly succeeded when he heard Remo's voice behind him.

"Where's Mr. Gordons?"

Beemer whipped around. When he saw the young white man and the old Asian standing on the rocks before him, his jaw dropped wide.

"It wasn't me!" Beemer begged. "It's Zipp Codwin. He's gone nuts. NASA used to stand for something, like dipping rocks in glitter paint and saying they were filled with Martian bugs or selling spaceshuttle posters to grammar schools. But now Zipp's got it in his crazy head that he can start exploring space again. All because of that bank-robbing psycho robot of his."

Remo apparently wasn't happy with Beemer's nonanswer. Remo convinced him to be more forthcoming in his replies. He did this by shattering the PR man's right kneecap.

"Aahhhrrgg!" Beemer screamed as he tipped sideways onto the rocks of the shore.

As the PR man grabbed his broken knee in both hands, Remo crouched beside him.

"Okay, let's try this again," he said coldly. "Where is Mr. Gordons?"

"I don't know!" Beemer gasped. "I think he said he didn't want to stay on the base while Zipp went after you guys. He didn't think it was safe. But I don't know where he is now." His eyes were watering from the pain in his leg.

Remo stood. "He didn't want to stay here, huh?" he said flatly. His eyes strayed across the stretch of water.

A space shuttle sat on the nearest launching pad. It was nestled back on its thrusters, its black nose aimed skyward.

Remo's eyes narrowed as he looked over at the shuttle.

"That time Gordons was launched into space, he got back home on board one of those things," Remo said, nodding toward the silent space shuttle.

"That thing-that-is-not-a-man has in the past equated safety with survival," Chiun agreed. His hazel eyes were trained on the distant shape of the shuttle.

Remo glanced down at Beemer. "You're driving." Hefting Beemer up, he tossed the NASA PR agent into the back of the motorboat. With Beemer aboard he lifted the boat up and dumped it into the water.

Chiun scampered up to the prow, leaving the center seat for Remo. Clark Beemer didn't dare refuse. Wincing at the pain in his knee, he started the outboard motor.

Leaving a wake of frothy white, the boat sped away from shore. It bounced across the rolling waves toward Pad 39A and the looming shape of the space shuttle.

They had gotten barely halfway across the wide stretch of water when Remo heard a high-pitched whistling noise. It registered as an abrupt itchiness on his eardrums.

It was not so much a sound as something that was felt.

A noise beyond ordinary sound, beyond the normal human capacity to hear. It was as if in a bright-flashing instant, something had attacked the very nature of the physical world as Remo had been trained to perceive it.

Nothing traveled as fast as the sound that struck his ears. Nothing, save the object that at that moment came screaming from the mainland toward their spluttering boat.

And, Remo realized in an instant of slow-motion shock, it wasn't a noise he had heard, but the sensation of something flying toward them at an impossible speed.

The object was fat, small and moved faster than anything Remo had ever encountered.

Faster than any bullet could travel, faster than any man could react, the projectile roared into the rear of the boat.

From start to finish it had taken less than one-hundredth of a slivered second. Remo didn't know if Chiun had felt the strange sensation. So fast did it come, he didn't even have time to speak a word of warning.

Wood splintered at the vicious impact. The outboard motor was ripped into twisted scrap.

When the trailing sound finally cracked like a sonic boom over the desolate wastes of the Kennedy Space Center-catching up with the deadly projectile-it thundered over the churning river on which floated pathetic scraps of pulped wood.

And as the sound waves echoed off into the distance, the first mangled slabs of raw human flesh splattered in wet red gobs on the distant, mosscovered rocks of Merritt Island.

IN THE SHADOW of the space shuttle Discovery, Mr. Gordons clung to the side of the metal service structure. He had once more assumed his spider shape. From the safety of the crisscrossing network of steel girders, he scanned the water with cold mechanical eyes.

There were but a few fragments of wood visible bobbing on the surface. A widening dark stain was dissipating on the surface of the clear blue water. Mr. Gordons calculated a one hundred percent probability that this was human blood. However, since there was another human being on board the boat at the time of impact, he could only further compute a ninety-two percent probability that some of this blood was that of his enemies.

An eight percent margin of error was unacceptable. And since a visual inspection from this distance could not produce definitive results, he concluded that closer inspection would be necessary.

The data was processed and the conclusion was made in less than the blink of an eye.

Decision made, Mr. Gordons began crawling down the side of the tower on eight furry legs.

Chapter 29

No one noticed the tall, thin man as he limped across the dock at the busy Cocoa Beach marina. His shaggy hair was tucked up under his hat, his upper lip pulled down tight over his long incisors. The rest of his face was hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses.

He had rented the motorboat with a phony credit card. He had several of them-one for each of his pen names. They worked great whenever he desired anonymity.

He had regretted his actions since fleeing in terror the previous day. The greatest jolt of inspiration he'd been given in the past two years and he'd run away from it.

But he knew where his inspiration would go. After all, even as he had set up his trap, the soulless automaton had kept going on about his family. And the outfits on the men who had come to collect him were a dead giveaway.

He'd be at NASA. Waiting to inspire nightmares in the midnight hearts of timid souls the world over. The boat engine chugged with spluttering determination. His jaw firmly set, Stewart McQueen putted out into the choppy waves of the Atlantic.