No Contest

The best he could do was simply wait and watch what happened, and hope he and CURE survived it.

Meanwhile, he turned the EBE around and pointed her back to her Yuma base. It wouldn’t help matters to have the spy airship hovering over the village when Remo arrived.

The EBE traveled a hundred yards, then descended to the desert floor.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Smith heard someone say.

“Freya,” Mark Howard said.

Smith looked at him, standing in the door. “I asked you not to involve yourself in this, Mark.”

“It is time I become involved, don’t you think?”

Smith nodded. “I suppose so.”

“I saw Remo coming home in a big hurry. He’s ticked off.”

“Yes.” Smith nodded. “You sure it was Freya?”

“That was her voice.”

“I had forgotten you met her.”

Mark Howard made a face. “Not so much met. I heard her talk, anyway.”

Smith nodded. “She’s got the EBE. She’ll give it to Remo. What do you think he’ll do?”

“I can’t imagine.”

There was little more activity to watch. The aircraft landed in Yuma, on Thursday evening, and then there was nothing. Smith monitored the incoming data for hour after hour, and still nothing.

Until Friday morning.

Mark Howard called up from his rooms. “Check out the morning news show on seven. I’ll be right up.” When he arrived, still buttoning his shirt, Harold W. Smith was watching the morning news show and chewing on one antacid tablet after another after another. “This is Good Day, U.S.A. and we’re heading back to our affiliate in Phoenix,” the smiling redhead said. “Hi, Bob!”

“Hi, Katie!”

“What’s going on with that big boy, Bob?”

“Well, if you’re just tuning in, here you go, folks. It’s The Ladies’ Man blimp, floating over the Phoenix rooftops!”

There it was. The EBE. A ten-million-dollar top secret U.S. military drone aircraft, drifting aimlessly over Phoenix, Arizona. Hanging beneath it was a dangling banner. The Ladies’ Man Will Cure Your TV Blues. Tonight You Will Meet The Ladies’ Man. Learn All the Man’s Secrets Tonight On The Ladies’ Man.”

“I guess they want to be very sure that everybody knows The Ladies’ Man debuts tonight on this network, Bob!”

“That’s right, Katie, but let me add that this network is not responsible for the launching of The Ladies’ Man blimp. The production company has also denied involvement in the blimp launch. Nobody seems to know who authorized this stunt or where the blimp even came from!”

“Pretty strange, Bob.”

“Now, the FAA would like to find out about this because the airship appears to be constructed of a radar-invisible material! Get this—the air-traffic control over Phoenix cannot find the blimp on their radar! They had grounded all air traffic until they can figure this out.”

“We’ll come back to you in a few minutes for an update on this bizarre promotional stunt in Phoenix, Bob.”

“Wait, Katie, something is definitely happening!” The shot of Katie in New York changed back to Bob on the street in Phoenix, then back to the blimp. Another banner was unfurling. “There’s another banner opening up under the blimp, and I’m trying to make it out, Katie.”

“I think it says, Call The Ladies’ Man Now, Bob. Dial 1 And Hold It And Speak With The Ladies’ Man Personally.”

Smith swallowed an antacid tablet without chewing it. It scratched his throat all the way down, and his telephone began to ring.

Once upon a time, Harold W. Smith had engineered one of the great telephone switching and routing achievements of all time. Smith designed it to allow Remo Williams to contact CURE with the simplest of all possible phone numbers. Press 1 and hold. Sometimes, other people pressed 1 and held it, for their own bizarre reasons, but Smith’s filtering software disconnected most of them.

Maybe one out of a hundred inappropriate phone calls penetrated Harold Smith’s filtering system. That was, maybe, a few each year.

Until 7:18 Eastern time on that Friday morning, when an entire nation was instructed to press the 1 key and hold it. The system was deluged with tens of thousands of calls and they started getting through.

“No, Miss, this is not the ladies’ man,” Smith said sourly.

“You sure? ’Cause I wanna see this ladies’ man in action. You thank you can get me in the sack?”

“Of course not, miss.”

“You willing to give it a try?”

“No,” Harold W. Smith said.

“You chicken shit?”

“I am not the ladies’ man.”

“Hey, guess what?” she called to someone else. “The ladies’ man is a chicken shit!”

“Good day, miss.”

Smith hung up. Why was he even talking to her? The phone rang again instantly. The system monitor showed it had attempted to filter 24,561 calls in less than a minute.

“The system will overload,” he said in sudden realization. “That much traffic will leave a surge trail.”

“I’ll shut it off,” Mark Howard said, and jumped to his own desk.

“Don’t. The end point of the traffic surge will be obvious to anyone who knows how to read the switching patterns. We have to redirect the traffic. It has to go somewhere.”

“Where?”