The aluminum biped stumbled blindly forward toward the electronic warfare nest aft of the compressed cockpit. As the thing hunched over the electronics, blunt wrists belled into knobs, which sprouted flat flexible fingers. It seized the radarscope, extracting it, glass and all, wires trailing like stubborn ligaments.
The jointed prehensile metal fingers lifted the radarscope to the top of the biped's spinal column. A nub formed and the dark glass disk settled into place with a click. Instantly the radar screen came to life, a luminous green line sweeping around the face like a radium second hand.
Digging into the radar housing, it pulled out connectors and gold-plated microchips and began slapping them to its gleaming stick-figure form. Electronic elements melted into the accepting aluminum skin, adding bulk and function.
All the while, a tiny element deep within the caricature of a human being repeated a single electronic concept:
Survival . . . survival . . . survival . . .
The creature moved through the cabin, salvaging other useful components. Copper piping from the galley sink. Elements from the galley microwave unit. PA speakers were ripped from over bulkhead doors and attached to either side of the radar-dish face. Sound. Hearing. The helicopter noise became audible as more than skin-sensed vibration. It was closer now.
Must hurry. Must survive.
In the lavatory, a shattered mirror reflected the creature's own improbable image.
Wrong, wrong, it thought. Not optimum survival form. Must reconfigure.
Returning to the aisle, the thing stooped to avoid smashing its oversize pie-plate head on the overhead bins.
It went among the bodies, searching for a certain one.
Yes, that one, it thought. That form will assure continued survival.
But the body it sought was not to be found within the fuselage.
The creature swiveled its ground-glass radar face to the gaping tail section. One aluminum hoof of a foot stepped in a puddle of semiliquid organic matter, and artificial olfactory receptors immediately identified the matter as human excrement. The odor of it was leading away from the aircraft, its former host.
Outside, there was another body. Not the one it sought, but a parasite protector, called a Secret Service agent by the meat machine known as the President of the United States.
Sweeping the horizon with its multiple sensors, it tracked the human-excrement odor going south.
It instantly determined to go south. After a suitable survival-assuring reconfiguration.
Returning to the cabin, it began to dismantle the dead-meat machines, taking a portion of epidermis from the back of this one, hair from that one, slapping and stretching them over its metallic frame, adding a layer of human skin.
Soon the nude body of a man stood in the cabin, looking pale, corpselike, and human except for the radar screen of a head.
Humanlike arms, with aluminum bones under the cold unfeeling skin, swept up and knocked that anachronistic head off: The screen shattered on impact with the floor.
And now-humanlike hands lifted a human head to the stump of a neck. Filament connectors entwined with spinal-cord ganglia, making connections never intended by nature.
The dissynchronized eyes rotated in their orbits like a pinball machine gone amok. They synchronized at last, lining up to focus on the floor.
Eyes that saw, even if they did not live.
Teeth that smiled, even if they were rooted in metal, not bone and gum.
The thing dressed quickly, selecting clothes at random. The helicopter sound increased in the night. Glass lenses behind the dead human corneas detected the faintness of the approaching sun.
Must hurry. Locate the important meat machine. There is safety in the company of the one called President.
In the bathroom, a last look into the mirror.
The stiff face showed a flicker of disappointment.
No. Wrong. Unfamiliar face. Must assume trusted face. Components do not match.
The creature went back to rummage through the presidential section. There the floor was covered with pictures that had fallen off the blue cabin walls. The thing picked them off the floor, scanning them in quick microseconds, discarding them with careless glass-shattering flings.
One photograph held its attention an immeasurable microsecond longer than the others.
Yes, it thought. This one. He will trust this one face.
He repeated the thought aloud, testing his mechanical voice box.
"Yes." The voice was a croak. Intonation was wrong. It tried again.
"Yes. This face trust. This one. Yes."
Syntax wrong. Circuits not fully repaired. Selfrepair diagnostics continue troubleshooting.
It looked again at the picture of the man. It pressed one hard strong hand to its own face, pushing the cheekbones higher, pinching the chin, to add a cleft. Better. But the modified skin called hair atop the head was the wrong color. The hair color should be sandy, not black.
The thing went among the cabin dead, looking for wheat-straw-colored hair. He found a journalist with thick hair. It was almost perfect. He tore the scalp free and chewed the hair to the correct configuration with his dead human teeth.
The hair settled atop his shiny cranium perfectly, knitting scalp to facial skin.
Blue eyes were plucked from a shattered skull and exchanged for the gray ones in his borrowed head. New teeth were extracted by aluminum pinchers from another dead mouth, and one by one, they were made to fit.
Finally the manlike simulacrum examined his own reflection in the glass of the framed photograph. The features matched. All that remained was the cylindrical bag carried over the shoulder, filled with aluminum instruments. There was ample aluminum in the discarded host aircraft to fashion them from.
The creature set to work ....
Chapter 5
At Lima International Airport, Remo Williams got a call through to Harold Smith in Rye, New York, on his first try.
"They are still searching for Air Force One," Smith told Remo. His voice was tinny.
"What's the holdup?" Remo demanded.
"Air Force One went down in very rugged territory," Smith told him. "Er, there also seems to be a jurisdictional problem."
"Tell the Mexicans to get lost," Remo said heatedly. "He's our President."
"The Mexicans are not the problem. It's an interagency problem. The FBI is claiming jurisdiction, but the Secret Service is insisting on leading the search. The Air Force has sent in helicopters. And then there is the National Transportation Safety Board."
"I don't believe this," Remo groaned.
"Between these agencies and the darkness, we have nothing. It is fortunate that it is night. Easier to maintain the news blackout."
"Screw the news blackout," Remo grumbled. "What do you want us to do?"
"Go to Mexico City."
"And then?"
"Check in with me."
"That's all? Check in?"
"Until we know more, I want you close enough to the situation for insertion if that's advisable."
Smith hung up.
Remo turned to Chiun. The Master of Sinanju stood resplendent in a flaming scarlet kimono. His wise face was a landscape of mummy wrinkles, like the surface of a dead yellowing planet. His eyes were a clear hazel. They were a young man's eyes, full of fire and humor and wisdom all at once.
Chiun was over eighty. A tendril of pale straggly hair clung to his tiny chin, passing for a beard. The puffs of hair over his ears were like frozen smoke. He was otherwise bald as an egg.
"We're going to Mexico City," Remo told him.
"Then we go to Mexico City," said the Master of Sinanju in a mouse-squeak voice. "Has Smith taken control of the government yet?"
"No, and he's not going to."
"He is very foolish," Chiun said as Remo hurried to the Aero Mexico counter to book the flight north. "This is his golden opportunity."