Chapter 15
"It's my fault," Arthur Ford wailed.
The jeep was prowling swiftly across the desert toward Fort Joy.
The stars were diamonds, scattered across the heavens. Out here they were bright enough to illuminate the vast tracts of empty land in a thin wash of ethereal white.
"Are you going to ask him?" Remo said to Chiun.
"No," the Master of Sinanju droned. "And if you know what is good for you, neither will you." Neither one of them had to ask. Ford volunteered the answer on his own.
"I failed to understand him. I'm lucky enough to meet an actual alien and I have to run away. Now he's at the mercy of the military." As if cradling a baby, Ford clutched to his chest the water bottle he'd found in the back of the jeep. "Oh, how terrible it must be for him. To have to face the hostile military of an alien world on his own."
"I think the military has to worry more about him than he does about it," Remo commented aridly.
"No, no," Ford moaned. "You don't understand. No one understands." He stared out into the lonely desert night.
"You think you've been tooling around the desert all day with Robby the Robot and you're telling me I don't understand?" Remo said.
"Remo, why are you still talking to it?" Chiun complained, his parchment face a scowl. "You are only encouraging it."
"Why didn't I sign a mutual nonaggression peace treaty with him?" Ford lamented to the desert night.
"See?" Chiun demanded, swatting Remo on the arm.
"I don't think he needs much encouragement, Little Father." Remo frowned, rubbing his stinging bicep. He was about to say something more when Chiun touched him on the forearm.
When he glanced over at the Master of Sinanju, the old Korean was nodding surreptitiously to the back seat.
All was silent. For the first time since Arthur Ford had come back to what passed for his senses, the UFO enthusiast had stopped talking.
Chiun placed a long finger to papery lips. "Shh," he said in a cautious whisper only Remo could hear. "With any luck he has swallowed his tongue and is choking to death."
The silence lasted all of three seconds.
"Maybe if we'd agreed on terms, the military would have been persuaded to go along," Ford announced abruptly. "After all, the United Federation of Planets has a military dimension, but it has benign intentions. Maybe this could have been the start of a new world order."
Twisting in the passenger's seat, the Master of Sinanju stared, irritated, at Ford. He frowned as he examined the features of their passenger. Bouncing morosely in his seat, Ford didn't seem to notice the scrutiny.
"Is he insane?" Chiun asked Remo.
"He wasn't in the desert long enough to be dehydrated," Remo offered, steering up an incline in the dusty path. The hurricane fence surrounding Fort Joy was a dark strip in the distance. "And it wasn't daytime, so he couldn't have suffered sunstroke. My guess is he's the real deal."
"Hey, aren't you the guy who was with that G-man at the Roswell airport?" Ford blinked, noticing Chiun for the first time.
"G-man?" Remo questioned.
"Smith," Chiun replied, facing forward once more.
"Oh."
Ford had already forgotten his own question. He sank back into the pool of despair he had created in the rear of the jeep.
"How is history going to remember me?" Ford complained. "I missed an opportunity for a cultural exchange with an extraterrestrial. Think of what he could have taught us."
"How to kill for fun and profit?" Remo suggested blandly.
"That was only a defensive mechanism," Ford insisted quickly. "The Army shot first."
"Only because they know what he can do," Remo said.
"And are afraid of him. Typical. A visitor comes all the way from another planet and we greet him with guns."
"He's no more an alien than I am," Remo said, irritated.
Ford's eyes suddenly narrowed. He stared intently at the back of Remo's head, as if searching for antennae. "Are you?"
"Of course not," Remo snarled.
Ford accepted the denial even as he scooted to the far corner of the back seat. Just in case. "Think of the science we missed out on because of me," Ford complained from his new perch. "Maybe if I'd stuck by him when he needed me, he might have given me the secret of an inverse proton propulsion system or some other method of interstellar travel. Otherwise it could take years for humans to travel from Earth just to the nearest star."
In the front seat, Remo and Chiun glanced quickly at one another.
"I'll pay for the ticket," Remo volunteered hastily.
"One way," Chiun added swiftly.
SMITH BECAME AWARE of the sound as he was completing his work on the Shock Troops files. The pulsing explosion was like that of a transformer blowing up. The noise swelled in a loud thump, then receded. Thumped, then receded. It was as if an awkward giant were taking huge steps across the grounds outside the laboratory.
Smith assumed the sound was just more of the crazed activity that had followed Roote's assault against the perimeter fence.
There were fewer helicopters rumbling over the roof now. The dead and wounded had been returned to the main camp area. The sound he was hearing was probably just the Army involving itself in some exercises preparatory to another attack.
Disregarding the noise, he detached his laptop from the back of the lab terminal.
Every scrap of information contained in the computer had been transferred back to Folcroft. As soon as the transfer was complete, Smith destroyed the hard drive. He proceeded to do the same to all the other computers within the lab. He would deal with those in the outer offices later.
Using a special wand from his briefcase, Smith magnetized every floppy disk he could find, destroying the contents of those, as well.
As he worked, Smith could not help but think of what General Chesterfield had done here.
The casualty list that had caught Smith's eye while at CURE headquarters was woefully inadequate. He had found a far more detailed inventory of Elizu Roote's victims on the base computer system. It was a grisly roster with a few notable exceptions.
During and after his escape from isolation, Roote had killed virtually all of the scientists involved in the procedure that had made him what he was: Their deaths, coupled with the destruction of all records, guaranteed there would be no resumption of these horrible experiments.
All that was left was the general himself. Returning to the workstation where he had completed the bulk of his work, the CURE director gathered up a few last items. He replaced his laptop in his briefcase, sliding in beside it the thick dossier left him by General Chesterfield. With both thumbs, he was careful to make certain that the two briefcase latches were secured tightly.
Smith stood, scanning the area to see if there was anything he had forgotten.
Thump!
The noise was closer than before. It filtered through to Smith's consciousness, though he paid it little real attention.
Yes. His work was finished in the lab. All he had left was whatever information remained in the outer offices.
Thump! Very close. Followed by a muffled shout.
To Smith, it still sounded like a transformer exploding. He thought of this as he began strolling to the lab door.
Thump! A scream.
It hit Smith all at once. His face registered the shock of sudden realization.
A transformer.
Thump! More cries of panic.
Knuckles white on his briefcase handle, Smith ran from the coolness of the lab out into the hallway. He found a window in one of the tidy offices. As he peered outside, there came a brilliant flash, as from lightning during a fierce thunderstorm.
But, Harold Smith knew, this storm was anything but natural.
The flash was accompanied by the same massive thump he had heard before, this time no longer muffled by the laboratory walls. The window panes rattled at the sound waves from the electrical blast.