"He used to," Howard said. "Until he got hit by a car. I heard on TV he's got writer's block. Anyway, because of the stuff he writes and the fact it's almost Halloween, the cops didn't believe her story. Didn't hurt she was at a bar. But I had a hunch so I did some digging. Turns out a car was rented down there last night under one of McQueen's pseudonyms. He's already turned it back in. And he bought an extra ticket for the plane ride home."
"You think he managed to sneak a giant spider into first class?" Remo said doubtfully.
"He snuck something on," Howard insisted. "He's back at his home in Bay Cove, Maine, by now. Dr. Smith wants you to check him out."
Remo felt someone pressing in close behind him. Hot breath whistled from pinched nostrils.
Zipp Codwin was leaning in, straining to listen to what was being said. Beyond him, Pete Graham cowered in the corner, chewing nervously on his ragged fingernails.
Remo turned a withering eye on the NASA head. "How'd you like a trip back to the moon?"
Zipp hitched up his belt with both hands. "Well," he said proudly, "technically I was never on the moo- Oh."
Crossing his arms huffily, the NASA administrator turned away from his visitor.
"Is there a problem?" Mark Howard asked.
"No," Remo grumbled. "Tell Smitty we're on our way."
"I'll have the tickets waiting for you at the airport," Howard promised. He cut the connection.
Remo handed the phone back to Codwin. "Looks like you clowns are off the hook," he said. "You and the rest of NASA can go back to pretending to work while the rest of us have to do the real thing."
Turning from Codwin and Graham, Remo and Chiun quickly left the lab.
When the ping of the elevator doors closing issued from far down the hallway, Pete Graham finally worked up the nerve to speak.
"Did I do okay?" he asked weakly.
Zipp responded by cuffing the scientist in the back of the head.
"You're as big an idiot as that Beemer," the NASA head growled. "Not that it matters. Thanks to those two, we know where Gordons is now. The capsule's splashed down. We just have to go retrieve it."
"But the FBI's involved," Graham argued. "How are you going to get by them?"
For the first time, Dr. Pete Graham saw something that approached a genuine smile on the face of Zipp Codwin. It was like some demonic grinning ice sculpture come to life.
"NASA has resources that you don't know about," Codwin said malevolently. "And dang-blast it to all high heaven, it's not like they don't deserve it. I mean, they don't pay taxes." His voice was flirting with the quivering edges of outrage. "I mean-Lord God Jeebus Almighty-tax cheats. At NASA there's nothing lower. No wonder Gordons wants them dead. Well, that tin can's about to get his wish."
Spinning sharply on one hard heel, Colonel Zipp Codwin marched boldly from the research lab.
Chapter 19
Stewart McQueen knew that it was the intervention of Old Scratch and all of his hellish minions of evil that brought him safely back home to Maine. The front door accepted the writer's key, and the security system-which was wired around the entire mansion-yielded to his special access code.
His gimpy leg ached. Limping under the weight of his precious bundle, the novelist steered his mutant spider-man into the living room.
Mr. Gordons had fallen silent during the plane ride up from Florida. Good thing, too. It was hard enough to hide all those extra furry legs under an overcoat, but McQueen doubted he could have avoided extra attention if the creature had continued to mutter "survive, survive" over and over again as he had on the car ride to the airport.
Once on the ground in Maine, McQueen had been startled when he started to help his monster up from his first-class seat and discovered that the spider legs had disappeared at some point during the flight. All that was left were the two human appendages. When McQueen looked closely, he could still see the slices in the blue fabric of the jacket through which the extra legs had jutted.
He was home now, and his creature still had but two arms as Stewart McQueen dumped Mr. Gordons into his old living-room chair. A thick cloud of white dust escaped into the air as the heavy bundle settled into the cushions.
Coughing and limping, McQueen collapsed exhausted to the high-backed Victorian-era sofa.
"We made it," the novelist gasped to himself. He blinked away the sharp pain that suddenly gripped his knee.
As if in response, a noise sounded deep within the chest of his guest. It was as if he was trying to speak, but the words wouldn't come. Even his lips failed to move.
Stewart strained to hear what he was saying. It came slowly, as if echoing up from the depths of a dark well. The same word, repeated over and over.
"...survive, survive, survive, survive..."
McQueen's shoulders slumped. "Not again," he sighed.
"...survive, survive, survive..."
The word grew louder. He had been quiescent during the flight, but it now seemed almost as if the spider creature had been recharging its batteries.
All at once Mr. Gordons snapped alert. His eyes opened wide, as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. His head twisted to one side.
On a stand next to the chair was a television remote control. As the word survive cut out, Gordons lifted his right hand and dropped it on the sleek black device.
There was a crack of plastic.
When he took his hand away a moment later, all that remained was the shattered casing and two crushed batteries. The guts of the remote had been absorbed into Gordons' s hand.
His head twisted again, right then left. He seemed to be absorbing every minute detail of the room he was in. At last he turned his flat gaze on Stewart McQueen.
"I am not home," Gordons pronounced.
"Home?" McQueen asked, still amazed by what his monster had done to the remote control. Gordons resumed scanning his surroundings. Artificial cobwebs hung from beamed ceilings. Above the black stone fireplace, a pair of carved gargoyles stared back at him.
"This is not NASA," Gordons stated. "It is an environment unfamiliar to me. Where am I?"
"You're at my home," McQueen explained. "In Maine. I rescued you from that bar. You were pretty beat up."
Gordons seemed to be remembering, accessing those parts of his stored memory not damaged after his deadly confrontation at the Roadkill Tavern.
"I encountered an entity of a nature unknown to me," he said. "From what I was able to ascertain before and during his attack, he was a cybernetic being."
"Yeah," McQueen nodded. "He seemed to pack a real wallop." A hopeful glint sparked in his eyes. "You wouldn't happen to have his address, would you?"
"No."
"Too bad," McQueen said. "That guy had inspiration written all over him. Just like you."
Standing, the android examined his arms and hands. "There are no words inscribed on my body," he disagreed. "Nor would the presence of such a disfigurement be effective camouflage. As for the cybernetic man I encountered, he is irrelevant. I do not have the time to engage another enemy. My primary targets remain the same."
"Targets? What targets? Hey, that's my computer."
Gordons was at the desk in the corner. "I require components to complete repairs."
Placing his palms firmly on either side of McQueen's PC, the android's hands began to shudder. As the writer watched, fascinated, the hands seemed to melt through the chassis, disappearing inside the machine. They rested that way for a moment, bare wrists fused to metal. A few crunches and whirs later, the hands reappeared, apparently as good as new.
The same couldn't be said for McQueen's computer. The device now sported two perfectly round holes in each side.
"Hey, the first drafts of my next fifteen books were stored on that thing," the novelist complained. "I wrote them before I got hit by that car. That's three weeks' worth of work you just ruined."