Warren Murphy: Dying Space

"Look out," Remo said, indicating a guard who was tiptoeing behind Chiun, his rifle raised and sighted.

"Fool," Chiun said, kicking his leg out behind him to disembowel the soldier. "Do you think I see nothing? Concentrate on your own work."

"Okay, I'll do that," Remo said bitterly. "See if I ever warn you about impending danger again. See if I care who creeps up on you. I'll just look after myself. Looking out for Number One, that's me from now on."

He stopped short when a pointed object whizzed past him a half-inch from his nose and embedded itself in the wall. "What was that?"

"So easily distracted," Chiun said, shaking his head as he finished off the last two guards with a single stroke of his elbow.

Remo picked the object from the wall and examined it. "A fountain pen," he said. "Somebody's throwing office supplies at us." He tossed it aside. Within one second it exploded, tearing a hole the size of a large man out of the wall.

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"When will you learn to leave things alone?"

Chiun groused.

A book of matches zipped around the corner of the corridor like a boomerang. As it approached, it burst into a ball of flame. Remo sidestepped it quickly. Chiun filled his lungs and blew the flaming object into the hole in the wall.

"I'd hate to see what would happen if they sent in the staplers and Scotch tape dispensers," Remo

said.

Another object came flying their way. It landed

at Remo's feet. It was an envelope.

"Ho ho," Remo chuckled. "If that isn't loaded, I don't know what is. What do you think it is, Chiun? Tear gas? A flat Russian grenade?"

"It is an envelope, gentlemen," came a voice from the far end of the hall. Grigori Seminov turned the corner and walked slowly toward them, his monocle glinting with the harsh artificial overhead light.

"There is nothing in the envelope. See for yourselves."

"No, thanks. We'll take your word for it."

Chiun shunted the envelope into a corner with his foot. It touched the wall and exploded into fragments. "So much for his word," the old man

said.

"Ah, you do not trust Russians," Seminov murmured.

"Not Russians who use auto crushers for holding cells," Remo said.

"Or who throw exploding pens," Chiun added.

"Juvenile."

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"Is this less juvenile?" Seminov asked, extracting a 7.65 Tokarev from his uniform.

"Hardly."

"I suppose you think I'm going to shoot you."

"It doesn't look like you're going to light anybody's cigars with it," Remo said. "Look, we'd like to stand here and chat with you about what you're going to do to us, but we have an appointment at your missile lab. You understand."

"Alas," Seminov said. "I'm afraid you'll have to miss your appointment, due to sudden poor health. What a pity." He took a step backward and began to squeeze the trigger. Watching him, Remo prepared to dodge the bullet. It was a simple matter, moving slightly to miss the projectile. Then two running steps forward, and Seminov would be as glassy and cold as the monocle in his eye.

The finger on the trigger squeezed slowly. Suddenly Chiun whispered, "Do you see the hole of the gun?"

Remo widened his pupils to focus on the barrel of the Tokarev. Around the bore were small, round notches surrounding it like a sunburst. Remo and Chiun hit the floor a fraction of a second before Seminov fired, sending a bullet and six small fragments flying into all the walls and the ceiling.

"More gizmos," Remo said disgustedly. No sooner had he said it than Seminov pressed a button on the handle of the gun and the barrel disengaged, falling downward on a hinge.

He fired again, sending an eight-foot-long stream of flame toward the young American and

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the old Oriental. The two of them climbed up opposite walls, allowing the suction of their palms and feet to keep them aloft long enough for the flame to pass.

Seminov squinted behind his monocle. He dropped the gun and took from his pocket a Zippo lighter.

"What's he going to do now, flick us to death?" Remo said.

"Filthy American pigs," spat Seminov.

"That does it," Chiun said. "First he calls me Japanese, and now he calls me an American." He squatted down low near the floor and leaped forward like a floating wizard. Seminov squeezed the Zippo, and a long string of transparent plastic wire shot out, encircling Chiun in a snare.

"Careful, Chiun," Remo said.

"Careful," Chiun mimicked. Without slowing his movements, he slashed through the wires with one fingernail and continued to propel himself toward Seminov.

The Russian's eyes widened. Frantically he searched his pockets. A moment before Chiun landed, Seminov extracted a ring with a black stone and placed it on his finger.

"Come no'closer," he shouted, his voice quavering. With a trembling arm he held out a fist, aiming the ring at the old man.

"Ass, do you expect to kill the Master of Sinanju with a simulated onyx?" With hands so swift, they were only a blur, Chiun took hold of Seminov's fist and twisted it up to his face. The stone in the ring popped open. As Seminov stared, horrified, at the contents of the ring inches from

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his monocled eye, the Russian screamed something in his native language.

Then a tiny dart slithered out of the ring and implanted itself in Seminov's monocle. The glass shattered; the eye disappeared. With a small moan Seminov accepted the dart into his brain, where it exploded with a muffled bang and blew the top of his head onto the ceiling.

"American indeed," Chiun said.

"Is he gone?" came a voice from the shadows. It was Mr. Gordon's, holding on to the professor.

"Yes, and a lot of help you were," Remo said. "We have to get to the missile lab. Do you know where it is?"

"Of course," the professor said. "That's early NASA training. Do you know how to steal a car?"

"Sure," Remo said. "That's early Newark training."

As they sped toward the missile base in a Russianized Ford Pinto, Remo asked Chiun what Seminov's last sentence in Russian was.

"He said, 'Hail, Master of Sinanju,'" the old man said with a smile. "It is good to know he was not all bad."

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

The four of them were surrounded by guards at the entrance to the missile lab.

"They've got us now," the professor said.

"I could kill them, I suppose," Mr. Gordons said, "but I feel that is not sufficiently creative. Now that I'm a creative being, I have to check all my options carefully."

"How about being a little less creative and a little more useful," Remo said, zapping two of the guards with the locked fingers of his left hand.

"That is the most intelligent thing you've said all day," Chiun said as he relocated the cranial cavities of three more guards into the poured concrete flooring.

"That did not sound particularly intelligent to me," Mr. Gordons said dejectedly. "But then, I am less creative than the rest of you. I am just beginning to think creatively. Creativity is still a

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relatively uncommon state for one of my physical components. Actually, I believe that creativity ..."

One of the guards smashed Mr. Gordons on the head with the butt of his rifle.

"On the other hand, creativity isn't everything," he said as he pulverized the man's face with one squeeze of his mighty hands.

"That was a creative maneuver," Chiun said encouragingly. "Perhaps you could be a little tidier next time. Observe." With a slow stroke of his arm, the frail Oriental sent a 260-pound soldier sprawling against the wall. "See? No blood. Much more imaginative."

"I see," Mr. Gordons said. "Excuse me," he said to a guard as he tapped him on the shoulder. "I wish to be creative with you."

The guard mumbled something guttural and blasted Mr. Gordons in the stomach with his revolver. "You are not cooperating with my creative impulses," the robot said. He grabbed the guard around the head and pressed the man's nose into his brain. "How was that?"