Unpopular Science

Now Remo scrambled to his feet and backed away. “Little Father, get away from it!” The source of his concern was the big round ball of a mechanical man, which stood quite still.

Jack Fast saw the fighter planes come to intercept him. “Hi, guys.” He grinned and waved.

The fighter jets spit out white bursts of fire, and Jack nudged his joystick just enough to dip the EVIDA. She dodged the burst and was past them in an eye blink.

“’Bye, guys,” Fast said as they were left behind.

He had one hand on the stick and another on the laptop on the seat next to him, keying in every command he could think of to optimize his reception.

“Come on, Ballboy, what’s the problem?”

He snapped off a quick repeating command to Clockwork, ordering it to send an emergency black-box data dump. If that fat moldy old robot reject could send even a couple seconds of data stream, it would be enough to tell Jack what was going on in the past few minutes. The glow of Washington, D.C., rushed up under the aircraft at exhilarating speed, but Jack hardly noticed. He had an eye out for another intercept.

An orange light appeared on the controls. The wing temperature was climbing into the danger zone.

“Navy piece of junk!” Jack exclaimed, leaning out the window and staring at the tiny stubs of the fully retracted wings. “Why didn’t those morons use titanium?” He throttled down to Mach 2.2 until the temperature climb stopped.. He could stay in the caution zone if he was careful…

The proximity alarm screamed and a pair of closing fighter jets came at the EVIDA from out of nowhere.

“Fine, jerks, let’s see how this grabs ya.” Jack diddled the joystick and spiraled toward the city just as a burst of fire scorched the air over him.

“He’s going down in D.C.,” the pilot radioed. “Command, you’ve got a real mess about to happen.”

“He’s trying to pull up,” added the pilot of the second fighter.

“He’ll never be able to—”

“He’s leveled it! Look! What the hell is that thing he’s flying, anyway?”

“Officially,” the second Air Force pilot answered, “I have no idea.”

“This one is not functional, Remo,” Chiun insisted. “It was damaged when it flew over the fence and rolled down the street to this alley.”

“You tossed it over the fence?” Remo asked.

“Then steered it into this filthy dark place with my feet. Perhaps I should take up soccer.”

Remo pictured it, the little Asian man carrying his inert body into the streets of D.C., nudging along this bizarre metal ball with tubular arms and tube-mounted treads for feet.

“I hear activity inside this thing.”

Chiun shrugged. “Dead machines are like dead humans. A car will continue to make pulses of electricity for days after it crashes.”

“This is more than that.” Remo could hear the rising concern in his voice. “There’s a gyroscope in there.”

“I hear it,” Chiun said.

“It’s stabilizing.”

“Of course.”

“The gyroscope is still under power. Let’s get the hell away from it, Chiun.”

“Remo, I understand if you are fearful, but this machine is broken. We may safely transport it to the Emperor. Even I can see the need to understand its workings.”

What Remo was hearing was like a rising scream, although he knew it was tiny. A minuscule gyroscope inside the robot, like the gyroscope in an aircraft autopilot, was stabilizing after the wild fluctuations of Chiun’s soccer-ball routine. Any moment now it would reach its baseline and then…what?

“We go now.”

Chiun put his hands into his sleeves and wrinkled his brow, prepared to take a stance, but then the haunted, hollowed, stricken eyes of Remo blazed into him. Rarely had Chiun been the target of that look.

“Now, Chiun.”

But even as he said the words, both of them felt and heard the subtle steadying of the gyroscope inside the foolish-looking machine. Remo made a sound in his chest that hurt his broken bones and he willed his body to move fast, move hard, just move. He had done it before when the blackness came down on him and he would do it again, but it was a nightmare that came back to devour him. The round ball head twisted and then blackness came.

Chiun felt the blackness, just as he had felt it in the grounds of the White House, and he felt Remo’s hands wrench him by the wrist, carrying him off his feet, sending him above the ground to the end of the alley where the blackness slipped away with the distance. Chiun gathered his senses about him and met the slime-coated alley floor easily, turned and skimmed the earth back the way he had come. If the thing avoided recharging itself, he would have time to best it.

The danger was over temporarily, but the damage was done.

Remo lay where he had fallen, his eyes open. He wasn’t stirring. He was more than still. He was rigid, as if long dead.

Chiun felt real terror. What a fool of an old man was he! His pupil had done this great deed once tonight, and Chiun had exposed him to the madness again! How much of this could one be expected to endure?