Warren Murphy: Dying Space

"Not bad, kid," Remo said, transforming the kidneys of the last remaining guard into brown

Jello.

Gordons beamed. "Really?"

"Really. Let's get in there." He jerked his head toward the door.

"That's wonderful, son," the professor said. "I'm

so proud of you."

"Thank you, professor," Mr. Gordons said, smiling. "But I am not your son. Now that I'm creative, I know that. It does not mean my feelings for you have lessened."

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"My friend, then," she said.

Mr. Gordons beamed. "Yes. I like that. I've never had a friend before. Can I call you Frances?"

"Can we please get this mutual admiration society into the missile lab?" Remo said, running down a stairway. It led to a windowless stone room.

"This can't be the place," he said.

"It's the place, all right," the professor reassured him. "This is the antechamber. It's used for screening incoming matter for purity. The en-' trance is a sliding stone panel. That one, probably." She pointed to a recessed wall.

Then a voice rang out, echoing throughout the room."You will never enter that lab," it said.

Chiun looked toward the source of the sound. "And why not?" he asked.

Istoropovich approached from-the shadows, the ever-present gold balls dangling from between his fingers. "I know I can't kill you and get out of here alive," he said.

Chiun considered this. "True," he admitted finally.

"And if I allow you to go into the lab, the high commander will see to the immediate destruction of my career, my family, and my life."

"That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said.

Chiun shook a finger at Istoropovich. "Things were more equitable for you peasants under Ivan the Wonderful. A fine leader. At least he would have let you remain to clean the public lavatories."

"Therefore," Istoropovich went on, "my only option is to kill you along with myself."

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Remo sighed. "Looks that way, I guess. Well, you'd better get to work, because there are twelve minutes to launching time, and I'm going in." He tried the door. It was at least a foot thick, made of solid rock. "Come on, Gordons," he said. "How about some creative battering?"

"Have you ever wondered what these gold balls contain?" Istoropovich asked.

"No," Chiun said.

"I shall tell you now."

"I was afraid of that," Remo said. "Say, can you make it fast? We've got an awful lot to do in there."

"They contain cyanide pellets surrounded by sulphuric acid. Once broken, they will turn an enclosed area like this into a gas chamber."

"Oh, come on," Remo said. "What kind of enclosed area is this? We came in through an open door." He indicated the entry to the stairway.

As he pointed, the door slid shut with a soft click.

"Let's see how cynical you are after the poison gas takes effect," Istoropovich said. He dropped the balls to the ground and stepped on them. Immediately they began to hiss. A wisp of creamy white smoke snaked out. The air turned foul.

Remo ran back to the stairway door and tried it. It was locked and sealed. Quickly he moved to the sliding stone panel that led to the lab. There was no way to open it without breaking the solid rock.

"Find a way to get air to the woman, if you want to save her," Chiun commanded.

The professor and Istoropovich were hacking

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#

and gasping for breath. To preserve his own oxygen supply, Chiun closed his eyes and slowed his breathing near coma.

"Get some air to her," Remo said to Gordons. He was already feeling dizzy. Concentrating, he began to bring himself to low consciousness.

"I will activate my pollution filters," Mr. Gordons said. He knelt over the professor. His fingers worked inside his shirt, and then he began to hiss like a garage air hose, and he put his face over the professor's and put air into her mouth.

He stopped for a moment and called over his shoulder to Remo. "I only have a four-minute supply. To create oxygen, I must destroy some of my internal circuits," he said. "I suggest you get us out of here."

Remo was slamming both feet against the stone panel, chipping away inches at a time. Chiun walked to it and flicked Remo out of the way. With a circular motion of his arm, he drew a neat zero on the stone with the fingernail of his index finger. Then, his hand moving at a speed too fast to be called a blur, his fingers sped around the circle, tapping the stone so rapidly that the sound seemed not to be tapping, but a buzz.

He stopped, then pressed the heel of his hand into the center of the zero. The round piece of stone fell through on the other side of the door, and the poison gas poured out of the anteroom into the vast missile lab. Remo could feel the air clearing, and he slowly let his breathing and heartbeat return to normal.

He reached through the hole Chiun had just made and found a switch next to the stone panel.

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He pressed it, and the door slowly swung open. Then he went back and propelled Mr. Gordons and the professor, who were still attached to one another by their lips, toward the doorway.

"No!" Istoropovich called weakly from the shadows where he had fallen. He was slithering on his stomach, the muscles of his abdomen contracting in terrible spasms. A trickle of black bile ran from his mouth down his chin. "I will not die for nothing," he groaned.

"That's the way it goes sometimes," Remo said, and turned back to the embracing couple.

"So is this," Istoropovich said. And before Remo spotted the glint of gray metal in the Russian's hands, a shot fired. It rang through the small anteroom, echoing tinnily. It ricocheted off one wall and came to rest with a soft snap in the professor's back.

She arched wildly, her features contorted. "Get them inside," Remo said to Chiun. With a small kick to Istoropovich's throat, he snapped the man's head, and the Russian lay still, the gun warm in his hand.

"Frances," Mr. Gordons whispered. "Why are you acting like this? Frances, stand up."

Chiun shuffled the dazed robot, carrying his limp charge, into the lab.

"Please, Frances," Mr. Gordons said softly.

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CHAPTER TWENTY

They were met by a burst of machine gun fire.

An alarm, high pitched and shrieking, had sounded as soon as Remo opened the wall to the lab. The high commander herself was at the controls of the main launch computer terminal. When the alarm sounded, she abandoned the controls and reached for the automatic submachine gun strapped across her back.

Chiun and Remo leaped high above the spray of bullets, distracting her while Mr. Gordons hid the professor behind a remote terminal, killing the technician who operated it.

The air quality sensors inside, detecting the traces of cyanide from the anteroom, whirred to overload, cleansing the air. As Mr. Gordons crouched behind the terminal with the unconscious professor, he heard the alarm shut off. A hush fell in the lab. The normal chattering and cross-checking of controls ceased, and the only

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sounds remaining were the clicking of computer consoles and the whirring of the atmospheric sensors.

All electronic, mechanical, inorganic sounds, Mr. Gordons thought. It was his first free thought, and it made him sad. This is the sort of place where I was conceived, he said to himself. Clean, sterile, without creativity, devoid of love.

Through the smoky dark glass of the lab. he could see, a quarter-mile away, the huge Volga stationed on its scaffolding, ready for takeoff. This was a place for metal and wire coil and electric impulses and electronic circuitry and glass insulators. And suddenly Mr. Gordons never wanted to be in a laboratory again. He just wanted to take Frances to a place where she could breathe the air she needed, where they would share their lives and love each other forever.

Everything was different now. He was no longer just a machine, another brilliant series of electromagnetic connections. The professor had seen to that. She had, he realized, given him the greatest gift of. all, greater than his ability to walk or talk or assimilate information, greater even than his capacity to survive: she had given him creativity. Independent thought. Choice. With her genius, she had set him free.