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.""Cheeta Ching?""The newscaster," Chiun said."Surely you have the photograph."Smith grimaced."I'm sorry, Chiun," he said."With everything going on, Isuppose I forgot.""Persia is a most amicable place for master assassins, O illustrious Emperor,"Chiun said, his eyes narrowing.'I'll have someone get the photograph right away.""That is what you said the last time we spoke," Chiun said as he walked out.He slammed the door behind him so hard that the hinges shattered and fell inpieces to the floor.Smith sighed again and gathered up the papers he was taking home with him.At the doorway he remembered some computer printouts he had left on his deskand returned for them.He didn't bother to turn on the light, since everythingon his desk was within a millimeter of what it had been the day before.Hepicked up the printouts and stuck them in his coat pocket.In the process, thesmall transmitter Remo had193Tshown him fell to the floor and disappeared through the floorboards.Smith would not think about the transmitter again.The next day, businesswould go on as usual, and the next evening, the cleaning woman would sweep thefloor with a broom as she always did, since Smith refused to requisitioneither a carpet or a vacuum cleaner for the executive offices of Folcroft; thefirst layer of dust would sift through the floorboards to obscure thetransmitter.It was gone for good, the last memento of Mr.Gordons and theprofessor obliterated forever.194EPILOGUEIn distant space, catching light from the Andromeda Galaxy, the orbitalPage 68 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlcapsule of the USSR Volga drifted harmlessly in its slow, unending journeythrough the universe.Inside the capsule lay the mummified remains of a woman, her Soviet Armyuniform pefectly preserved, its medals gleaming on the skeletal chest.Besidethe body rested a small, rough-edged metallic rock.Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the rock moved.A centimeter at a time,it began an infin-itesimally slow rotation toward the missile's inner wall.Then it began to move faster, picking up momentum.By the time it reached the wall, the rock was spinning, ever faster, awhirling blur.Shards of fiberglass splintered off the inside of the capsule.The dent created by the rock deepened to become a small hole, then a largerhole.Then the vacuum195of space took over, and the imbalance of pressure caused by the hole in thecapsule ripped open the smooth walls with a monstrous creak.The fiberglass interior starred and fragmented.The insulating materialbetween the inner and outer walls flew off into space like cobwebs.And afraction of a second before the outer walls burst apart in a massiveimplosion, the small metallic rock spun out the hole and away, plummetingalone through the airless vastness of space.Contained within the rock was one sound: The steady thrum-thrum of atransmitter.It was stationary somewhere on earth, and already the microscopiccomponents inside the metallic rock were calculating the coordinates of thetransmitter.It was calling the rock home to finish an incomplete task.Home,to another identity, another form, other adventures.The coordinates were set.Once on earth, the entity in the rock would beginits work anew from where the transmitter was calling.Calling somewhere from Rye, New York, in the United'States of America.Calling Mr.Gordons to find Remo Williams.And to kill him.196Page 69
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