"Come on, Jacki," Jill said from behind Remo. "Let's get out of here."
"Sheriff," she called. "We're coming out. Don't shoot. He's been holding us prisoner. Don't shoot."
"Come ahead," boomed the voice of Brace Cole. "I'll cover. . . ." And then his voice stopped, in mid-sentence.
Remo got to his feet. Another voice came over the loudspeaker, speaking English in a precise sing-song. "The sheriff has decided to take a nap." It was Chiun.
"Sony, girls," Remo said.
They attacked him. Nails, fingers, feet and breasts clawed and hammered at him. They all missed. Then Remo had the girls from behind, an arm around each, holding them by the boobs and he dragged them past the water-lasers, to the gash in the earth that was the fault line.
He tossed them in. They hit with a thud, eight feet below him, and lay there, stunned. Remo turned back to the two water-lasers. They were screaming now, building up pressure, ready in moments to start pouring their gallons of water down into the shaft, a concentrated spurt of force that could tear a state apart.
Remo looked for switches. The machines still thumped. He couldn't find out how to turn them off.
He put his hands on the coupling which joined the machines to the shaft and wrenched. The coupling snapped loose and just at that instant, the water started to pour out of the end of the tubes.
The jarring force of the pressure paralyzed Remo's arms. He spun. The water poured out in a powerful cohesive stream. With all his strength, Remo aimed it down toward the ground, into the fault.
The water was barrelling now into the crack in the earth. Then the earth groaned, and as Remo watched in fascination, the earth began to close up. The girls screamed, then the sound stopped as the earth closed over them, then the lasers ran dry.
Remo looked down at where the gouge in the earth had been.
"That's the biz, sweethearts," he said. Two lives against maybe a million. Still, they had had great tits.
The ground shook again and Remo was knocked off his feet. He fell heavily on his bleeding shoulder. Another grenade, he thought.
But it was no grenade. The ground rocked and vibrated.
A quake, Remo realized in horror. But how? The water-lasers had been disconnected. He laboured his way to his feet, unsteady on the ground. He took a step in one direction. No, the force was coming from the other direction.
Had they set another device, timed to go off? Why then had they been working on this one?
Remo took off, over the shaking ground, racing along the rocky ledge, trying to find the source of the power. He ran heavily and he realized he was losing blood from the shrapnel wound. Then a tiny figure in black flashed by him, passing Remo as if he were standing still, out-distancing him, racing far ahead. It was Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, running across the shifting, sliding earth as if it were a cinder track.
Remo ran full sprint but Chiun pulled ahead. While Remo's legs pumped, pushing him forward against the shifting thrusting ground, Chiun seemed to glide motionless, moving through an inner momentum, the legs just keeping pace. Chiun pulled farther ahead into darkness.
Birds called, shrill caws of danger from their aerial safety. Remo saw a fear-crazed collie ,run at him and stumble into a somersault, its hind legs pumping furiously as though running uphill. The earth churned and the air was thin.
Into the brush Remo ran, cutting himself on brambles that came lurching at his face. Then he was in a clearing, and there, rising on long aluminium stilts like the shell of an unfinished steeple, was a giant water laser, twenty times larger than the ones Remo had seen before. And in this clearing, a half-football field wide, was stillness, a stillness surrounded by earth amok. It was as though a still hand suspended from an aloof moon held it placid in a sea of chaos. The earth smelled of ozone, the calls of the birds were muffled as though the vibrations of their sounds sucked from the air.
Dr. Quake was on his knees as if in prayer. He was in pain, and this Remo knew because the black robed figure of Chiun stood over Dr. Quake, one hand on the neck as if squeezing a collared pigeon.
Remo almost fell because of the sudden quiet of the earth. His reflexes were attuned to the previous vibrations and still reacting to them. This upset was only momentary; he moved to the pair quickly.
Remo heard Dr. Quake groan:
"It can't be stopped. No one can stop it. It feeds on its own progression. It generates itself."
"That which is started can be stopped." Chiun's voice was even and as distant as the moon.
"They wouldn't listen to me. If they had listened I wouldn't have done this," said Dr. Quake.
Chiun released the hold on the neck.
"He has told all he knows," Chiun said.
"Where are Jacki and Jill, my daughters?" sobbed Dr. Quake looking at Remo. "They were supposed to meet me here."
"They're where they belong," said Remo. "How do you stop this machine?"
"It can't be stopped," sobbed Dr. Quake.
"He tells the truth," said Chiun. "He surrendered to the pain and has told all he knows." Chiun looked up the aluminium stilts of the water laser. "Is this the machine with no vibrations?"
"Yes," said Dr. Quake.
"It's going to blast water into the lock at tremendous pressure," Remo said to Chiun. "The state is going to snap along the fault." He had to yell just so his voice sounded normal.
"Is this space here free of vibrations because the machine has harnessed them?" asked Chiun.
"Yes," said Dr. Quake.
"You are wrong," said Chiun, "Everything that moves has vibrations. Life is vibrations."
"That's your philosophy, not science," said Dr. Quake. Then he cried for his daughters and called them his poor innocent babies.
Chiun looked at Remo.
"If this is your science and this is what it has brought you, then I say your science is false. Life is vibration, movement is vibration, being is vibration. The universe is a vibration. Your science has created a machine that appears to have forgotten vibrations. I will have to remind it."
"Chiun?" said Remo. He wanted to warn but knew not how.
"You believe that science is one thing and the spirits of man another."
"Chiun, this is a machine. If it were a thousand men, little father, I would not doubt you."
"It is all one," said Chiun, and he briefly surveyed the long stilts and the giant metal nozzle pointing into the belly of the earth. "I will remind this insolent machine of its vibrations."
"We're all doomed," yelled Dr. Quake with laughter that was despair, a final not-caring before the end.
"Fool," said Chiun to the kneeling figure. And his black robe disappeared up the stilts. Remo could discern only an edge of the robe outlined against the moon at the pinnacle of the steeple.
The robe fluttered once and then the earth seemed to explode. The muffling silence became a shriek as if someone had clanged cymbals in Remo's ears. The stillness became a giant snap as if someone had pulled strings on Remo's legs; he was suddenly somersaulting, his legs flying wildly. Then a tremendous vibration slapped Remo's finely tuned body
Blood filled his mouth. He could not focus his eyes.