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  Sole Survivor

  ( The Destroyer - 72 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Was this the way America ended-Not with a bang but a fizzle?

  The Russians who invented it called it the Sword of Damocles-a device that silently sterilized men and women alike. And now the Sword was in the worst possible hands - the out-of-whack android named Mr. Gordons that had returned from outer space to wreak revenge on those who had sent it there. Remo. Chiun. And the entire U.S. population. America was heading for a fate worse than death unless, Remo, Chiun and an untrustworthy, supersexy Soviet superspy could defeat this cybernaut chameleon that could destroy and attack with ease....

  Destroyer 72: Sole Survivor

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Chapter 1

  The world was astounded when the first Soviet space shuttle blasted off into orbit.

  Everyone knew that the Russians had been working on a shuttle of their own. But no one expected it to get off the ground. The Russians had finally licked the problem of cryogenic propulsion, but they couldn't come up with a reusable rocket motor. They tried to steal the secret from the French Ariane space program, but failed.

  And so they resorted to the tactic that had enabled them to get Sputnik into orbit. They didn't build a better propulsion system, they built a bigger one. They mounted their main rocket engines onto the fat external fuel tank, strapped the shuttle to it, and augmented the system with four slender solid rocket boosters. The U.S. shuttle had used only two.

  Once again, the Russians had solved a problem through brute force when patience and skill would have been more efficient.

  In the Sputnik days, so long ago, they blew up rockets every third day until the law of averages ran in their favor and their tiny satellite achieved orbit. In the days of manned space flight, Russian cosmonauts lost their lives on the launching pad or in space, one for every five successful American man-in-space projects.

  Thus, when the first Russian shuttle made it into space on the first try, the world was astonished.

  "Amazing," said the President of the United States. "It didn't blow up."

  "It isn't down yet, Mr. President," the Secretary of Defense replied. "They got it up there, but they haven't got it back in one piece. Not yet."

  They were in the Situation Room in the White House basement. The walls were covered with giant computer simulation displays, which fed off a bank of manned consoles that received instantaneous data from orbiting satellites. The President had SINCNORAD on the line. The head of NORAD's Space Defense Operations Tracking Center was explaining over the phone link that the launch was half expected.

  "The Soviets have always operated this way," the general said. "Every time we announce something new, they break their necks to beat us to the punch. When we announced our first satellite program in the fifties, they sent up Sputnik. When we started shooting monkeys into orbit, they sent Gagarin up there. When we put our first man into space, they sent up the first woman. Now that we're about to resume our shuttle program, they do this to upstage us. Typical Russian thinking."

  "But we beat them to the moon, right?" the President said. "We won that one."

  "Yes, sir. Twenty years ago," the NORAD general said. "Times have changed. The Russians are beating the pants off of us in space."

  "What is it doing up there?"

  "Just orbiting so far," said the general. "But you can bet they're going to deploy a payload. The Soviets may be grandstanders, but they aren't doing this just for the show."

  "I just want to know one thing," the President demanded. "Is their shuttle better than ours or not? I have to face the American people with this."

  "It depends on how you look at it, sir."

  "Look at it straight on, without blinking," the President said. "That usually works for me."

  "Their new Energia booster system is clumsy. Too many boosters. Dangerous to launch. They should have waited. A few more years and they could have had reusable rocket motors attached to the shuttle itself. Instead, they have to jettison their motors when they ditch their external tank. Not cost-effective."

  "It's a turkey, then?"

  "Not exactly, sir. Their design is a carbon copy of ours. In place of the rocket motors, they've installed ordinary jet engines. They're smaller than rocket motors and that gives them a bigger payload bay. But the important thing is that the jet engines enable their shuttle to make a powered landing. It can land anywhere a 747 can. That's a major plus."

  "I don't understand. Why doesn't our shuttle have that capability? We have jet engines too."

  "Budget restrictions," answered the NORAD general.

  "That I understand," said the President, who had just spent the morning arguing with the Speaker of the House over the mounting national debt. "Your intelligence sources are to be commended."

  "Thank you, Mr. President," said the general, neglecting to mention that he'd gotten everything out of his office file of Aviation Week.

  The President replaced the phone. Over the loudspeaker system of the Situation Room, the intercepted communications from the Soviet shuttle crew were reproduced. Listening to the two-way chatter, the President wished he knew conversational Russian. An NSA stenographer was rapidly transcribing the communications into translated English on a shorthand machine. The President looked at the unreeling strip of paper blankly. He didn't read shorthand either.

  "They're up to something up there," the President told the Secretary of Defense grimly.

  "They're also in trouble," the Secretary of Defense, who did know shorthand, said suddenly.

  At first Mission Commander Alexei Petrov did not think the spinning object was a threat.

  He sat at the controls of the first Soviet space shuttle, commissioned the Yuri Gagarin in honor of the first man in space, and watched the metallic object through the big vacuum-insulated cabin windows.

  The object appeared to be a meteorite on a collision course with earth. It was small and misshapen, not much larger than a toaster. Commander Petrov was not concerned about the possibility of colliding with the meteorite. In the vastness of space, meteorites were no more a threat than they were on earth. A hit was possible, but the odds of such a freak accident happening were about the same as being struck by lightning during a rainstorm.

  Commander Petrov's attention was drawn to the object because it moved more slowly than a meteorite being drawn into the earth's gravitational field should. Much too slowly.

  "Look there," he told his copilot, cosmonaut Oleg Gleb.

  Gleb followed Petrov's pointing finger. "I see it," he said excitedly. Gleb was the mission's exobiologist, which meant that he was schooled in the subject of life beyond the earth. Inasmuch as life beyond the earth had not so far been discovered, Gleb's specialty was only a little more practical than psychiatry. "But what is it?" he asked.

  "I do not know," answered Petrov, "but it now appears to be spinning in our direction."

  "Yes. I agree. It has charged direction toward us. What do we do?"

  "Request orders."

  "But it will be upon us before the chain of command can issue an informed decision."

  "Then my hand will accidentally trip the maneuvering thrusters while you communicate with Star City." Suiting action to words, Commander Alexei Petrov pressed the control yoke with both hands. Thruster jets sent the shuttle tipping away from the approaching object, which resembled a clump of fused nickels. "Yuri Gagarin to Cosmograd. Acknowledge please, Star City," said Cosmonaut Gleb as he watched, with widening eyes, the strange spinning object appear to change course again. "We have an unidentified object closing on us. Orders, please."

  "Describe object,"
demanded ground control.

  "Not a satellite, not a meteor, not otherwise identifiable," sputtered Cosmonaut Gleb as the object reversed its spinning motion as if locking in on them. It continued to close.

  "Be more specific," said ground control in that infuriatingly steady monotone. Don't those fools realize that we might possibly be under attack? thought Gleb.

  Mission Commander Alexei Petrov jumped into the conversation.

  "I am taking evasive action, but the object continues to follow us. What do we do?"

  "Do not take evasive action without orders," Cosmograd insisted. Then the voice went away, obviously to confer with higher authorities. In Russia, there were always higher authorities and no one courageous enough to make a decision in a crunch.

  "Chert vozmi!" Petrov swore harshly. "Do they not care about us? What about our mission?"

  Faster than either cosmonaut expected, an answer crackled uplink. It was two words. Brittle and inexplicable. "Attempt salvage."

  "Repeat," said Petrov.

  "Attempt to capture this foreign object in your cargo doors. "

  "What about our payload? The satellite may be damaged."

  "We can always build another satellite. Attempt salvage."

  Cosmonauts Alexei Petrov and Oleg Gleb exchanged sick glances, but there was no time to think. The spinning object was closer now, its pitted surface more clearly discernible.

  Petrov threw the yoke to bring the Yuri Gagarin about while Gleb got on the intership radio and alerted the third crewman, Engineer Igor Ivanovitch, to don his spacesuit and prepare to retrieve an object from the cargo bay.

  "Do you not mean 'deploy'?" asked Ivanovitch. "You have not deployed while I slept, have you?"

  "Just get into the suit," Gleb barked as Petrov sent the shuttle soundlessly tipping so that its cargo doors faced the sun and the approaching object. Petrov threw the great lever that sent the massive cargo bay doors on the top of the shuttle yawning wide like a white beetle spreading its wings. And then he shut his eyes tightly. It was out of his hands now.

  When several minutes passed without the sound of an impact, he knew that the object was not one of the feared Star Wars devices of the American National Space Administration. He knew all about those. Satellite killers were being developed at a furious pace by America's Hollywood President and named after a war-mongering Hollywood movie. At least that was how the party commentators described it on the Bremya TV news program. Because he was a privileged cosmonaut, Petrov managed to locate a bootlegged videotape of the Star Wars film. Even though it was a twelfth-generation print and as full of snow as a Moscovite's boots, Petrov thought it was more exciting than all of Russia's TV shows put together. If too violent.

  When ten minutes passed, Petrov broke the silence. "We are still breathing," he told Cosmonaut Gleb.

  "The ship is undamaged," Gleb agreed. Neither man mentioned the fact that their training had required donning spacesuits at this critical time. Both understood it would be better to die instantly from the explosively cold vacuum of space than to die slowly in the limited-oxygen environment of a suit, radioing their last observations for the benefit of the bloodless scientists at Cosmograd, nicknamed Star City by the Americans.

  Petrov got on the intership link. "Comrade Ivanovitch, I am now closing the cargo bay doors. You will enter the cargo bay and report on what you find there."

  "What should I expect to find there?" Ivanovitch asked in a sleepy but nervous voice.

  "You will tell me, and not I you. Keep your suit radio link open."

  "Da, Comrade Commander," said Ivanovitch. To himself he muttered the choice Russian phrase "To zhopu," meaning, "Up yours."

  Petrov and Gleb listened pensively as the sounds of Ivanovitch's measured breathing came over the intership system.

  "I am opening the first airlock," said Ivanovitch. Indicator lights on the control panel confirmed that the airlock door had opened.

  "I am closing the first airlock door," said Ivanovitch. "I am in the airlock now."

  "He is very brave," whispered Gleb.

  "He is third in command," said Petrov. "If he fails, it will be your responsibility next."

  "Now I am opening the second airlock door," said Ivanovitch. "I can now see into the cargo bay."

  "What do you see?" demanded Petrov. "Describe it, please."

  "I see the satellite, still in its net, ready for deployment."

  "Look for something smaller, like a meteor."

  "I am entering the cargo bay," said Ivanovitch. Suddenly the Yuri Gagarin shuddered. The yoke in Petrov's hand vibrated like a living thing. He gripped it with both hands, thinking wildly that they were doomed. The control panel went crazy. Lights blinked and flashed, and levers swung of their own accord. The Yuri Gagarin, its retros firing spasmodically, turned slow pirouettes in the void of orbital space.

  "We are haunted!" screeched Gleb.

  "Shut up!" snapped Petrov, who did not believe in ghosts. But memories of another grainy American videotape, one called Aliens, flashed into his mind, and he hastily plugged himself into a relief tube before he released his bladder all over the high-traction flooring.

  When he was done, Commander Petrov tried to raise Ivanovitch.

  "Ivanovitch! Ivanovitch! Are you safe?" There was no answer.

  "He will answer," Gleb said frantically, knowing that if Ivanovitch did not, he himself would be ordered into the cargo bay next. "Give him time."

  But five minutes of repeated entreaties for Ivanovitch to answer brought only static.

  "You know your duty," Alexei Petrov told Oleg Gleb meaningfully.

  "Da," said Gleb weakly. He shook Petrov's cold hand stiffly, as if in farewell, and slipped down the winding aluminum stair to the lower deck where the spacesuits were racked.

  "I am opening the first airlock," Gleb's voice came back moments later. "I am now in the cargo bay. The lights are on."

  "Do you see Ivanovitch?"

  "No," said Gleb in a voice so low-pitched it might have come from a dead man.

  "Look harder," said Petrov. "He must be there somewhere."

  "I see only the satellite," Gleb answered, anguished. "Never mind," said Commander Alexei Petrov in a sick voice. "I know where Ivanovitch is."

  "You do?"

  "Da, he is outside the ship, floating not ten feet in front of my face."

  "I do not remember you opening the cargo bay doors after Ivanovitch entered," Gleb pointed out.

  "I did not. They must have opened during the malfunction."

  "Then I may leave this place now?"

  "No. Look for the object," said Petrov, repressing a shudder as silver-flecked pieces of Ivanovitch's pressure suit drifted away. No doubt the rest of the late Igor Ivanovitch was now spinning through empty space.

  "I am looking for the object now," said Gleb. "It may have floated out with Ivanovitch."

  "No!" said Gleb excitedly. "I see it! I see it!"

  "Describe it!"

  "It is exactly as it appeared when first sighted. A pitted clump of metal. One side is smooth, as if machined. It has attached itself to the cargo bay doors manual control board."

  "Magnetic?"

  "It must be so."

  "Attempt to remove it."

  "I am doing that now," Gleb said, exertion twisting his voice. "But it will not disengage."

  "No magnet could be that powerful, could it?" demanded Petrov.

  "Commander," Gleb said wonderingly, "it does not appear to be merely attached to the control board. It appears to have fused itself to the board."

  "Fused?"

  "The edges of the board where it touches this object have grown out into the object. This is most passing strange. "

  "It is more than passing strange," said Commander Petrov.

  "What do I do?"

  "Let me think."

  Commander Alexei Petrov stared out the windows into the star-sprinkled deeps of space. Faraway now, he recognized a luminous shape like a deformed silver sta
rfish as the mangled remains of Cosmonaut Ivanovitch. He quickly flipped the switch that reestablished a voice downlink to Cosmograd. To his surprise, there was no uplink. He checked his telemetry indicators. The downlink was dead too. He was cut off from all communications with earth.

  Alexei Petrov switched to the intership communicator. "We have lost ground communications," he informed his copilot in a voice more steady than he felt.

  "This ... this thing must be the cause," Gleb called back. "It is affecting our electronics. It must have caused that earlier malfunction."

  "Await me, Gleb. I am coming with tools. We must remove that leech of a thing from our electronics."

  "Hurry," said Oleg Gleb.

  Commander Alexei Petrov scrambled into his pressure suit, twisted the helmet on its ring mounting, and drank in the sterile-tasting oxygen/nitrogen mixture. It lifted his heart, which was racing more rapidly now. Toolbox under one arm, he made his way clumsily to the airlock. The outer door was open. Strange. Gleb should have closed it behind him.

  Commander Petrov poked his head into the cargo bay. He saw the satellite, whose purpose was unknown to him, still cradled in a restraining net of nylon filaments, like a mirrored ball in a spider's web. He saw also the shiny lumpish thing which clung to the control board like a half-melted ice cube.

  But he did not see Oleg Gleb.

  Perhaps Oleg was behind the satellite, just outside the range of his own vision. Yes, that must be it, Petrov told himself. Oleg is behind the satellite.

  But a slight doubt flickered through Petrov's mind. He smelled, within the confines of his suit, a sudden rush of odor. A stale, sweaty odor. His visor began to steam. Petrov swore at his own infantile reaction to fear. There was nothing to be frightened of within the cargo bay. Just an unusual technical problem caused by a peculiar meteorite which must be magnetic because it had followed the shuttle through evasive maneuvers. Yes, that was it. The meteor was magnetic. That would explain everything-why it stuck to the control board and its strange effect on the Yuri Gagarin's complicated electronics.

  But still Alexei Petrov could not will his booted feet to step over the threshold of the airlock.