Unpopular Science

“I doubt that a contest named Junkyard Wars befits a Master of Sinanju.”

They cautiously crossed the old warehouse until they came to the great pit, the source of the continuing grinding vibration. The pit was surrounded with fresh, earthy sand. A heavy-duty ramp stood next to it, streaked with fresh grease, as if it had recently launched something directly into the earth.

Remo shook his head, amazed. Chiun was simply perplexed.

The fresh-dug tunnel was now more than sixty feet deep, and they could make out huge black metal gears that were channeling loose soil under a pair of rotating battering rams, which thrust away from each other on hydraulic thrusters and crushed the loose earth into the walls and ceiling of the tunnel.

“What is it?” the old man asked.

“Willy Wonka’s Mechanical Mole, from the look of it,” Remo said.

“Speak no nonsense. Simply explain.”

‘It’s a mechanical mole, Chiun. For riding into the earth. You know, Journey to the Earth’s Middle, Mahars, mushrooms big as mountains, Pat Boone as action-adventure hero.”

“Why do I ask you anything, ever?” Chirm demanded. “Are you trying to say Fastbinder is aboard that device? That he is attempting to escape us in this way?”

“Exactly,” Remo said. “Kind of cool, huh? I never knew anybody ever actually tried to build one of those contraptions. Looks unsafe.”

“Unsafe is an understatement.”

Remo said, “We have to stop him right away. What I if he’s headed for a cave system? They can go for miles.”

“You must pursue him immediately,” Chirm agreed.

“Okay. Here I go.”

Before Chiun could change his mind, Remo stepped into the open mouth of the pit and dropped, touched down lightly on the steep incline of the tunnel, stepped again and came to a stop just inches from the rotating pounders at the rear of the mechanical mole. Imbedded in the wall nearby was the fishbowl-headed robot who had been tossed in minutes before. Now he had the appearance of a Dodge Dart just emerged from the junkyard flattener.

Remo watched the half-moon-shaped hammers extend violently, in opposite directions, compressing the crumbling earth into a solid tunnel wall. It still didn’t look all that stable, and he had no intention of sticking around to see how long the tunnel would stay intact. He hit an extended hydraulic shaft with a thrust of his palm, then hit the other one. The shafts bent.

The hydraulics struggled to retract the shafts, and the result was a metal-on-metal death scream. Remo jogged out of the hole and joined Chiun on the ledge to watch the mechanical mole die.

“But what purpose did the hammer heads serve?” Chiun asked.

“Used to compact the soil excavated by the drills on the front of the mole,” Remo said. ‘This thing excavates and reinforces its own tunnel, so it doesn’t collapse. But the thing only has one big engine and it drives the drill and the pounder and everything in unison. So if one part freezes up, it all freezes up.”

A plume of smoke drifted to the surface, smelling of superheated metal.

“How do you know all this?” Chiun demanded.

“Read it in a book. When I was a kid. At the orphanage. You know, some science-adventure novel from years and years ago.”

In the stillness that followed the death of the mechanical mole they heard bolts turning and, through the haze, saw a small hatch swing open from the rear of the mechanical mole.

“I zurrender,” Jacob Fastbinder said through a fit of coughing, his accent more pronounced in his fear and lack of oxygen.

“We know,” Remo said.

“Zere is a rope up zere somewhere.”

“So what?”

Fastbinder stopped hacking and stared up at the entrance to the tunnel, mouth open to make breathing possible, but it was so dark and smoky he couldn’t see a thing.

Remo, standing on the lip of the hole, crushed his expensive Italian shoes into the earth and sent down a shower of sand.

Fastbinder spit it out “You vouldn’t!”

“Vee vould,” Remo replied. “Vouldn’t vee?”

“Vee most assuredly vould,” Chiun agreed with a sniff.

Fastbinder dived through the hatch in the mole and was still tightening the hatch bolts when Remo and Chiun stomped their feet in exactly the right spots. They stomped several more times, just to be sure, and by then they had stopped breathing because the air was thick with billowing dust. The tunnel was collapsing, again and again from the bottom up, until the place where it had been was only a sinkhole in the floor of the old warehouse.

They breathed again when they were outside, strolling leisurely to the Fastbinder’s Museum of Mechanical Marvels.

“Howdy!” Remo said.

“Hello.” Margo didn’t seem to care for him much.

‘Two, please. One regular person, one senior citizen. Show Margo your AARP card. Little Father. Is this the only Fastbinder museum, by the way?”

“Of course.”

“So we get to see all his collection, right? I mean, everything that’s not kept up at the house?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Just checking. You guys recycle? You know, tin cans, scrap metal, stuff like that?”

“No. Why?”

“Just checking.”