And one by one the others drifted back, while Amanda explained about the World Master from Betelgeuse and the mission she had been given, the mission they were invited to share. Suddenly they weren't frightened anymore. They were eager.
"We want to see him," they shouted like kids at recess. "Let's see the alien."
"Here's not an alien," someone else cut in. "He's what you call an extra-terrestrial."
"No, he's an ancient astronaut."
But when a rectangle of pebbled glass showed suddenly in front of the object on the ground, and the torso of the creature within showed itself weirdly, a hush gripped the group as if they had been asphyxiated. The World Master spoke no words, but everyone saw it wave two hands, and everyone saw that those hands were both on the right side of its body.
"Oh, wow," said Orville Sale. "A real extraterrestrial. A genuine creature from Out There. Hey, everybody! We're all contactees now," meaning that they could claim contact with alien beings.
"Yeah, but I'm not so sure about this missile stuff," said Lester Gex, who ran a secondhand bookstore in Damascus, Arkansas, and who, although a member in good standing with FOES, sometimes thought the group had more than its share of wackos. "What I mean is, this could be serious business. What if we here start disarming America and over there in Russia, they get wind of this and decide this is their chance to blow us all away?"
"The World Master has already explained that to me," Amanda called out quickly. "We're going to operate in secret. Like a commando team. The government will be too embarrassed by our success to dare let any of this get into the papers. That way, the Russians won't know a thing until we begin to work on their weapons."
"I still don't like it," said Lester Gex. "I'm leavin'."
Lester Gex walked ten paces in his Wrangler boots when a silver tube popped out below the port in the spaceship, and a cold blue pencil of light licked out and dropped him in his tracks, a burnhole just over the eighth dorsal vertebra of his back. He never made a sound. He was dead.
"No one must be allowed to interfere with the dawn of the new era of peace and goodness that will be Earth's once we have prepared the human race," the World Master said musically.
"That's right," Amanda Bull said sternly.
"Oooh," a woman said, looking at the body, from which a curl of stinking smoke rose. "It was just like a laser."
"Except it was blue," Orville Sale pointed out. "Lasers are red, so it couldn't have been a laser, even though it burned Les like one."
"Yes, that's right."
After that, there were no more problems.
* * *
That had been a week ago. A week in which to arm and train Preparation Group One and take them out to scout their intended targets. The World Master gave the orders, which were relayed by Amanda Bull. Once each night, she drove out alone to a prearranged spot where the ship was always waiting, to report and receive new orders. The World Master always received her from behind the pebbled glass. Last night Amanda had reported that Preparation Group One was ready. Or, as she put it, "as ready as they're ever going to be."
"Very good, Preparation Group Leader Amanda Bull. Your first target will be the 55th Missile Wing of the United States Air Force. Here are your instructions."
Amanda subsequently learned that a missile "wing" was a loosely grouped cluster of missiles buried in scattered silos. The 55th Wing was deployed in a fan between 30 and 60 miles north of Little Rock. Because the silos, each holding a 103-foot Titan II missile, were deployed over such a wide area, they would have to attack them one at a time, retreat, and move on to the next target. It was not going to be easy, but as Amanda led Preparation Group One to within a few yards of the first missile site without being challenged by anyone, she thought that maybe it would not be all that hard, either.
"Everybody keep down," Amanda hissed to the others.
From the highway, the site seemed to be nothing more than an acre of land, fenced off, in which carefully trimmed grass grew. There were no buildings visible, just the sliding concrete silo roof set low to the ground and, not far from it, another concrete structure that was too squat to be a building. This contained electronic detection devices that were hooked up to the radar scoops set at intervals behind the perimeter fence.
"Those thingies must be radar," whispered Lucy Lamar, a 32-year-old housewife who weighed 169 pounds and looked as if her scalp was growing stubby horns under her knit cap. This was because she hadn't had time to take the curlers out of her hair earlier that evening. Until a week ago, she had fervently believed that flying saucers were the advance force of an invasion fleet that lurked just beyond the moon, waiting for the proper moment to strike— which she knew would be on April 28, 1988, because she had read that in an article in UFO Pictorial Quarterly.
"Yeah," said Amanda. "We don't have to worry about those. They're there to detect incoming missiles."
"Then why aren't they pointed into the sky?" asked Orville Sale. "Look at them. They're all pointing out, not up."
"Maybe they're resting," someone offered hopefully.
"Never mind about the stupid radar," Amanda snapped. "Orville! Get to work on that fence, with the wire cutters. The rest of you cover him."
Orville sneaked forward and attacked the chain links of the fence with the wire cutters while the remainder of the group hunkered together nervously, bunching up in exactly the manner soldiers in Vietnam were taught never to do because one machine gun could take them all out with a single burst.
Orville got seven entire links open and was working on the eighth when a voice called out of the darkness, "You there! This is a government installation. Stand where you are and don't move!"
"A guard!" Amanda said. "Cut him down, somebody."
When no one made a move, Amanda brought her .22 Swift up, sighted and fired. The guard went down, moaning. Probably no one was more surprised than Amanda herself, who had never hit a target in the week since she'd purchased the weapon.
"Okay," she yelled. "We've lost the element of surprise, so we've got to move fast."
They got through the fence just as a siren whined somewhere, and hidden lights came on like sprays of white blood.
They got as far as the octagonal silo roof sitting on its sliding track before the other guards, who emerged from the underground control center, opened fire. This time no one gave any warning. The brittle snapping of automatic weapons sounded like faraway firecrackers, only they weren't faraway, and the bodies began to make small piles next to the missile silo.
"Don't just stand there, you morons!" Amanda screeched. "We're under attack. Fire back!" To demonstrate, she fired straight up into the air where the bullet, meeting nothing but air resistance, lost momentum and fell from such a height that when it struck Orville Sale on the top of his head, he collapsed, seriously wounded.
The others got organized and started shooting at shadows or into the night.
Meanwhile, Amanda began applying the puttylike plastique explosive charge to the lip of the silo cover. The World Master had given her the stuff, along with instructions on its use, saying that it was a specimen once studied on his home planet— which certainly explained where he got it, Amanda thought as she set the timer.
"Run, run! It's going to blow!" Amanda yelled, following her own instructions.
Everyone scattered who could, some into the fire from the guards. After counting to 10, Amanda yelled, "Dive!" and at the count of 20 the silo went crump!
Amanda ran back and was disappointed to see that only one corner of the silo roof had cracked loose. And a small corner at that. A sharp-edged crack showed, but it was too small. "Damn, damn, damn. Not enough explosive." Then she saw the smooth mouth going down into the silo, which she hadn't seen before. Her flashlight didn't show any sign of the Titan II missile, but that didn't bother Amanda. A hole was a hole, after all.
Out of her backpack she extracted a three-pound wrench with which she was going to disable the missile. She had chosen a three-pound wrench because she had read about an accident in which a technician had dropped a three-pound wrench socket down a silo, which ruptured the first-stage fuel tank and blew a Titan missile completely out of its silo. Amanda couldn't find a three-pound wrench socket— whatever that was— but she figured an ordinary wrench would do just as well.
She dropped the wrench in, heard it bang off the side of something metallic, and ran for all she was worth.
"The missile's going to explode, everybody! The missile's going to explode!" she cried. "Preparation Group One, follow your leader!"
But when she got outside the fence, Amanda realized that Preparation Group One would never follow anyone again. They were all dead or wounded or flat on the ground under the guns of frantic Air Force guards.
With bitter tears in her eyes, Amanda drove off in the waiting van. "At least we got the missile," she told herself, and watched the rearview mirror for the flash she knew would come.
But when the flash didn't come and there was no distant boom or thump, Amanda knew that she had failed utterly.
"Next time," she vowed, "I'll know to use fewer men. They always ruin everything."
?Chapter Four
The last person in the world Remo Williams wanted to see for breakfast was Dr. Harold W. Smith. Chiun had been giving Remo the silent treatment since the night before, a silence broken often by mutterings in Korean, all of which had to do with Remo's worthlessness and all of which Remo had heard many times before.