"Come and get it," she called. All the charms of middle-aged spinsterhood were on display as she undulated to Remo in invitation. Remo suppressed a shudder.
"Hop to it, big boy. I'm hotter than an É-C 135 on target range, as they say at NASA." She licked one finger and made sizzling noises as she held it to a heavily dimpled hip. "Get over here. It's the only way I'm going to talk to you."
"Oh, hell," Remo said, obeying reluctantly.
"Now sit up here." She patted the table.
He sat. Her hand went immediately to his leg.
"Couldn't we skip this part?" he asked.
"And deprive you of the ecstasy of making love to me? Are you kidding?"
With a sigh, Remo began the series of maneu-vers-Chiun had taught him long ago, the meticulous steps designed to bring a woman to shrieking
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fulfillment. In the case of Dr. Frances Payton-HoJmes, however, it almost wasn't worth the time spent. This dame, Remo said to himself, could find fulfillment sitting on a ping pong ball.
"Could we please talk now?" Remo said, placing his hand on a spot on the professor's left kneecap that set her teeth chattering with joy.
"Of course, darling. I was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the only child of a prosperous dairy farmer. ..."
"I was thinking of more recent events," Remo said. "Like the disappearance of the computer. What's it called again?"
"The LC-111," she moaned. "The most important technological breakthrough in the past decade. The new defender of the free world." "What's it do?"
"That's a state secret." Remo touched á spot above her navel. "It tracks missiles and controls them," the professor screamed. "One missile in particular."
"Which missile?" Remo asked, stroking a nerve cluster beneath the professor's left earlobe.
"The Volga," she whinnied. "The new Soviet superweapon."
"Ojaly one missile?"
"One is all they need," she said, her nostrils flaring.
"What's your computer do after it tracks this Volga thing?"
The professor was thrashing, her sagging breasts twirling in dual counterclockwise circles. "It destroys it, if we want. Or we can make it get lost. From earth, without any advanced range in-
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strumentation aircraft. It can find the Volga, track it to 150 miles above the earth, and smear it across the sky like jelly, all ... without . . . leaving ... this .. . lab.. .." she chanted rhythmically.
"Does anybody besides you know what your LC-111 can do?" He pinched a spot on her scalp. She began to drool and kick her feet in the àir.
"Everyone knows what it can do, unfortunately. NASA, the President, everybody. A whole slew of Russian agents in Moscow Center, probably. It doesn't matter who knows about it. Even Ralph Dickey knew about it. Probably told every Communist fag in town."
"Knew? Told?" Remo said.
"Knows. Tells," she corrected. "Anyway, what counts is how the LC-111 works. The laser theory used in programming that computer is so complex, it took me ten years to work it out, and I'm the best there is. To steal the secret of how the machine works, they'd need the machine," she said triumphantly.
"I hate to break it to you, professor," Remo said, "but somebody's got the machine."
"Don't be ridiculous," she said, laughing. "You only think someone has it. Actually, the LC-111 is right-"
Suddenly the table emitted a shriek, and an electric shock that propelled the professor to the floor. After sensing the first tremors of the shock, Remo automatically leaped into the air. He thought he cleared the table, but on his way to the ground, he scraped against it with his neck.
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That puzzled him. At the time, the table had seemed actually to grow a small projectile that shot out to meet the back of Remo's neck. But that was crazy, Remo reasoned. Tables didn't suddenly grow appendages that leaped out and attacked people.
He felt the spot toward the right of his spine, where he had grazed the table. Just a surface scratch, not even any blood.
"Are you all right?" he said to the professor, who was lying in a dazed sprawl beneath a row of Bunsen burners. "Let me . .."
He was going to say, "Let me help you up," but he realized with sudden clarity that he was having considerable difficulty helping himself up. The right side of his body felt heavy. The room swirled and dipped with each breath he took. When he tried to walk, his right leg felt about to buckle.
"Do you want me to call a doctor?" the professor asked, hovering over him.
Remo's triple vision presented him with six sagging breasts and three pot bellies. "Just put on your clothes," he said weakly.
Summoning up all his strength, he staggered from the software lab toward the Forty-First Street Inn.
"I'm sorry if I scared you, Mom," said Mr. Gordons, who was back in the form of Ralph Dickey. "I could not permit you to reveal my identity to that man."
"We have to have a little talk," the professor said. She sat him down and belted down a swig
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of gin. "Now, if you want to look like Ralph Dickey, that's okay with me. It's not the greatest face I can think of, but okay. But turning into an electric table that scares the living crap out of me and hurts the nice young man is going too far. And just when I had him interested in me, too."
"He's not hurt," Mr. Gordons said.
"How do you know? You were a table when it happened."
"I planted a small transmitter near his spinal column. It's just a scratch."
The professor was getting angry. "Then how come he was reeling around like a crazy man?"
"His reaction was most unusual. A normal human would not have felt the insertion at all. I knew there was something strange about him."
"Maybe you just got a case of butterfmgers. Why would you want to plant a transmitter on him, anyway? Can't you leave anything well enough alone?"
"You must believe me, Mom," Mr. Gordons said. "Something about this man is familiar to me. That is why it is imperative that you repair my memory banks. I do not know if he is helpful or dangerous. As long as he wears the transmitter, I can track his whereabouts, in case I have to kill him."