Unpopular Science

Something started up, something whirred, and Remo was abruptly cast into a pit of lifeless blindness. Ironhand was recharging itself, and Remo Williams’s senses were cast into a void.

He thrust out his arms as he collapsed onto his knees and felt his hands come in contact with something that burned and froze and began sucking out his own existence, like a chain from Hell tugging on his soul. Had his fingers closed on the thing itself, the proton emitter? Did he feel Ironhand moving to strike him down? Was he even still alive?

Remo didn’t know the answer to any of these questions, but he exerted his will, or he attempted to, or he thought he did, and as blackness fought to claim him, he imagined he was wrenching the heart out of the machine man.

Chapter 37

Jack Fast wasn’t a happy boy. “Those meatballs gutted the Big I, Pops!”

“Get out of there, Jack,” Fastbinder ordered, his voice distorted by the digital satellite feed.

The laptop sitting on the copilot’s seat beep shrilly and Jack jumped. “I got a fix on Ballboy, Pops! He’s sending!”

“Jack, don’t do anything risky.”

“What in tarnation is happening? You seeing this, Pops? This is all freaked out.” Jack could hear his voice rise as he grew more agitated every second. “He’s not on the White House grounds anymore. He’s moving away. His gyros are totally out of whack.”

“They apprehended him,” Fastbinder said. “They will get him away fast as possible, just in case he is wired to blow zee House up.”

“I’m not buying it, Pops. If it was the Service they’d have stuck him in a sealed vehicle so he couldn’t get communications out. Ballboy is still sending full-strength, it’s just all messed up. The GPS is fluctuating like—like— Hey, Pops, Ballboy is rolling down the street!”

“That is unlikely, Jack.”

“Yeah, look at the fluctuations in the GPS feed. It’ll model out to pi, I guarantee it. It must be those weirdo friends of Senator Whiteslaw who nabbed him. It isn’t the Service at all…”

Fastbinder read volumes in the thoughtful tone in his son’s voice. “Jack, please do nothing that is foolish.”

“I gotta know, Pops. These jerks have caused us nothing but trouble since the beginning. They killed Ironhand, Pops! He’s an heirloom. He’s what we’re all about.”

“He’s a machine only, Jack. He can be reconstructed.”

“You’re not getting it. Pops. It’s not about Ironhand—it’s about this pair of reprobates who keep ruining everything we do. We gotta stop ’em. We gotta.” Jack Fast steered the aircraft into a bank so sharp he felt the blood travel into his legs. Time to return to the scene of the crime.

Fastbinder was still talking on the radio, trying to convince the teenager to keep his distance. “We will get them sooner or later. You risk getting caught or shot down.”

“They’ll never catch me. Pops. Not if I dive.”

There was a moment in which Fastbinder said nothing. “Do not dive—I beg this of you.”

“Sorry, Pops,” Jack said, “I’m diving already.”

Chapter 38

The Air Force general opened the door fast and hard, breaking the nose of the lieutenant who collapsed to the floor, the coffeepot he’d been rushing to refill shattering against his head.

“Your lucky day. Lieutenant,” the general barked. “If there had been coffee in that pot you’d be looking at years of skin grafts.”

“Yeth thir, General,” said the lieutenant, holding his spurting proboscis in one hand and his gashed scalp in the other.

“Have this cleaned up,” the general snapped at his assistant.

The assistant, a captain and decorated fighter pilot, snatched at his lapel and spoke into the clip-on mike. “Cleanup in Command Control.”

General Elvgren “Sick Puppy” Rover was already shoving his way through the crowd around one of the banks of flight controllers. “Show me.”

“Right here, sir,” said a button-pusher.

General Rover looked at a dot on the screen. It was different from the other dots because it had a red circle blinking around it.

“What of it?”

“It came out of nowhere. Sir. One second it wasn’t there, the next second it was just there. Now it’s going Mach 4, Sir.”

Rover shouted, “It’s a missile, you idiots! Shoot it out of the sky!”

“When it first showed on the screen it was going Mach point five, General, Sir.”

“What the hell is this geek going on about? Captain! Where the hell—?”

“Here, Sir!” His assistant had just now elbowed his way through the pack of onlookers. He withered under the disapproving glare of the general, then quickly straightened. General Elvgren “Mad Dog” Rover disdained any sign of weakness. “He’s saying the aircraft is an aircraft. Sir. One-half mach is too slow for a missile. Sir.”

“You screwed up the ID, son, that’s all,” the general accused the flight controller. “You got some dinky plane and this missile mixed up together.”

The flight controller tried to decide how best to defend himself against the accusations of General Elvgren “Ruff! Ruff!” Rover. He decided on the straightforward truth. “It is not my identification, Sir. NORAD’s had a lock on it since it entered the ECUSSA.”