Warren Murphy: Dying Space

"There is no Persia anymore, Little Father, It's Iran now. And I'm not working for any guy who wears a hat and a veil."

"What about Africa? The tribe of the Timalu has also requested our services. Oh, it is lovely there. The Ugandan countryside is most—"

"I'm not working for Uganda, either."

"Picky, picky, picky," Chiun said.

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"I'm just taking a rest," Remo said.

"Can we discuss this tomorrow?" Smith asked wearily.

"We're never discussing anything again. This is it. Done. Finito. Vacation time." He walked out the door, stomping deliberately.

Chiun turned to Smith. "I believe I can make him change his decision, Emperor," he said. "However, perhaps I should first accept, with utmost gratitude, the photograph you promised me of the lovely Cheeta Ching."

"Cheeta Ching?"

"The newscaster," Chiun said. "Surely you have the photograph."

Smith grimaced. "I'm sorry, Chiun," he said. "With everything going on, I suppose I forgot."

"Persia is a most amicable place for master assassins, O illustrious Emperor," Chiun said, his eyes narrowing.

'I'll have someone get the photograph right away."

"That is what you said the last time we spoke," Chiun said as he walked out. He slammed the door behind him so hard that the hinges shattered and fell in pieces to the floor.

Smith sighed again and gathered up the papers he was taking home with him.

At the doorway he remembered some computer printouts he had left on his desk and returned for them. He didn't bother to turn on the light, since everything on his desk was within a millimeter of what it had been the day before. He picked up the printouts and stuck them in his coat pocket. In the process, the small transmitter Remo had

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T

shown him fell to the floor and disappeared through the floorboards.

Smith would not think about the transmitter again. The next day, business would go on as usual, and the next evening, the cleaning woman would sweep the floor with a broom as she always did, since Smith refused to requisition either a carpet or a vacuum cleaner for the executive offices of Folcroft; the first layer of dust would sift through the floorboards to obscure the transmitter. It was gone for good, the last memento of Mr. Gordons and the professor obliterated forever.

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EPILOGUE

In distant space, catching light from the Andromeda Galaxy, the orbital capsule of the USSR Volga drifted harmlessly in its slow, unending journey through the universe.

Inside the capsule lay the mummified remains of a woman, her Soviet Army uniform pefectly preserved, its medals gleaming on the skeletal chest. Beside the body rested a small, rough-edged metallic rock.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the rock moved. A centimeter at a time, it began an infin-itesimally slow rotation toward the missile's inner wall. Then it began to move faster, picking up momentum.

By the time it reached the wall, the rock was spinning, ever faster, a whirling blur. Shards of fiberglass splintered off the inside of the capsule. The dent created by the rock deepened to become a small hole, then a larger hole. Then the vacuum

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of space took over, and the imbalance of pressure caused by the hole in the capsule ripped open the smooth walls with a monstrous creak.

The fiberglass interior starred and fragmented. The insulating material between the inner and outer walls flew off into space like cobwebs. And a fraction of a second before the outer walls burst apart in a massive implosion, the small metallic rock spun out the hole and away, plummeting alone through the airless vastness of space.

Contained within the rock was one sound: The steady thrum-thrum of a transmitter. It was stationary somewhere on earth, and already the microscopic components inside the metallic rock were calculating the coordinates of the transmitter. It was calling the rock home to finish an incomplete task. Home, to another identity, another form, other adventures.

The coordinates were set. Once on earth, the entity in the rock would begin its work anew from where the transmitter was calling.

Calling somewhere from Rye, New York, in the United'States of America.

Calling Mr. Gordons to find Remo Williams. And to kill him.

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