Warren Murphy - Killer Watts

Shocked, the CURE director focused back on his computer. His mind reeled even as his fingers typed nonsense strings of letters.

Look casual. Do not appear obvious.

Smith tried to pull himself together. It could be that the man just happened to be looking at Smith at the same time Smith happened to be looking at him.

Coincidence. That had to be it. Convinced that this must be the case, Smith cautiously looked up. His eyes again locked with those of the stranger. Worse, the man stood, collecting his knapsack.

Heart thudding, Smith looked back down at his computer.

The man was leaving. That was it. The only real explanation. The stranger would step outside, and afterward Harold Smith would get on the first plane back to New York. Chiun could deal with the Remo situation. It was foolish for Smith to have come out here in the first place. The very idea was a security risk.

Staring at his laptop, Smith waited for the stranger to step past him and continue toward the exit.

But the man did not go. As Smith felt his bowels clench in sick fear, the khaki jacket slid into the seat beside him.

"The truth is out there," the man said cryptically.

Smith continued to type. His mind swam. Fingers pressed blindly against keys.

"Trust no one," the man said. His voice was hushed.

"Excuse me," Smith said, not looking up from his computer. "I am trying to work."

There was silence for a moment. Smith felt the man hovering somewhere to his left.

"Is that some kind of code?" the stranger said suddenly.

With a start, Smith glanced up from the jumbled letters of his bar screen. The strange man was leaning back in his seat, peering at the CURE director's hidden laptop.

In a surprisingly swift move, Smith slammed the lid on his battered leather briefcase, shutting the lid on the laptop in the same move. He didn't even care if the device was broken.

"That is none of your business," Smith snapped.

"Relax, old-timer," the man said. "Arthur Ford," he held out a hand, smiling broadly. Smith didn't know what else to do. To refuse the gesture would have been to draw more attention to himself. Feeling the life drain from him, he shook the man's hand.

"You're a believer. I can tell," Ford said cheerily. "You dress the part."

Smith shook his head, baffled. "Part?"

"You know," Ford insisted. "The X-Files. We get a lot of your kind around here. I'm more a Star Trek man myself, but to each his own."

"I am sorry," Smith admitted. "I am at a loss."

"Sure you are." Ford laughed. "I suppose you're going to tell me you don't know what happened here in Roswell?"

Smith was beginning to relax slightly. He had obviously caught the eye of a local nut. Still, he had no desire to engage the man in conversation.

"I am busy," he said. "If you would not mind."

"Aliens," Ford insisted. "They crashed in the desert. Everyone knows about it. There's been a big government cover-up of the whole thing. The military is using reverse engineering to figure out how their ship works. Where do you think stealth technology came from?"

"From years of hard work," Smith replied.

"Yeah, picking apart alien technology."

Smith had had enough. Uttering a firm "Excuse me," he got up, shifting down a few seats. Arthur Ford followed.

"You really aren't a believer?" he asked, surprised.

"I believe in reality," Smith said, exasperated.

"But the spaceship? I mean, come on," Ford insisted.

Smith's expression soured. "Young man, the only thing of great historical significance to happen in Roswell were the experiments of Robert Goddard. Perhaps it is his research into rocketry that led you to believe something more fantastic has occurred here, but I assure you that it has not." Smith was greatly relieved at that moment to spy the Master of Sinanju coming through the gate far down the terminal. He had been so unnerved by his unwanted visitor that he hadn't noticed the arrival of Chiun's flight on the electronic board. "Excuse me," Smith said firmly to Ford.

Rising, he walked briskly away from the obviously deluded man. He and Chiun met up in the middle of the terminal.

The Master of Sinanju wore a silver kimono that shimmered in the light. Behind the old Korean, a helpful stewardess was pulling the Master of Sinanju's two lacquered steamer trunks on a wheeled dolly.

"Greetings, Emperor Smith, Preserver of the Eagle Throne, Guardian of the Constitution," Chiun intoned, bowing formally.

"We should go," Smith said in crisp response. Without a word of thanks, he took control of the cart away from the flight attendant. Chiun fell in beside Smith.

"I would have arrived sooner, but the craft on which I was to journey was unacceptable," Chiun announced.

"I understand," Smith whispered, hustling to the door.

"They would have been better advised to affix paper wings to a sow's back and launch it from a catapult than to attempt flight in that death apparatus."

This time Smith did not even respond. Gray face pinched, he hurried through the automated terminal doors and out into the bright New Mexico sunlight. The Master of Sinanju followed close behind, his silver kimono sparkling in the brilliant desert light.

At the row of plastic seats near the closing doors, Arthur Ford viewed Smith and Chiun with intense suspicion. As he watched them hurry down the sidewalk through the tall glass windows at the front of the terminal, he seemed to reach some internal decision.

Gathering up his nylon knapsack, Ford pulled himself up on his long legs. He hurried out the door in the wake of the two strange men.

Chapter 8

Major Arnold Grant had been a U.S. Army doctor for more than ten years but had never seen a case like this one.

The patient had been warehoused in a secure wing of the Fort Joy infirmary. "Warehouse" was the best term Grant could come up with to describe the treatment of Remo Halper.

Lying in a private room at the end of a guarded corridor, the patient was doing little more than breathing. There was neural activity, but it was low, as if the man were a computer running some kind of self-diagnostic program. Occasionally a finger or leg would twitch, clearly indicating that there was no paralysis. At one point during that long first night, Halper's hand had snapped upward with such ferocity that it launched an orderly out into the hallway. But the patient remained in a coma.

He should have been dead. The patient had absorbed a massive amount of electrical energy. Major Grant had sat in on the autopsies of two of the other victims. Their skin had been like that of burned barbecued chicken.

Even if he had accepted less voltage, the man-who General Chesterfield insisted was a CIA spy to all who would listen-should not have survived. Somehow he had.

Grant had a sneaking suspicion why, though he dared not speak it to anyone.

The agent's nervous system was what had fascinated Major Grant the most, as well as given him the most concern. It was far more complex than that of any human being Grant had ever seen. For a brief time while studying the X rays, Major Grant had allowed the possibility that some of the crazies who hung around in the desert outside the base were right. This man's nervous system was complicated enough to be extraterrestrial in origin. Even as the thought occurred to him, the doctor dismissed it with an uncomfortable laugh. What he was looking at was an aberration. A naturally occurring, very human aberration.

Grant was walking down the infirmary hallway toward the special wing. Even though he hadn't mentioned his fleeting suspicion to a soul, the ludicrous thought that the patient might be an alien embarrassed him as he passed the two soldiers on guard duty.

He pushed through the double doors and walked down the silent end of the corridor to the patient's room.