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“It’s fascinating,” Flash said from his lab at the Institute. “Whoever built this has an incredibly fine grasp of three-dimensional circuit design.”
Cap said nothing. He gazed intently at the complex circuit diagram developing as the computer analyzed the microbot. His deep green eyes drank it all in as though they were bottomless seas of infinite capacity. After a moment, he tapped at the computer keys with swift, sure finger strokes. He superimposed another circuit diagram-different in several ways from the original-over the circuit diagram for the tiny scavenger.
“How’s that, Flash?” was all he said.
After a moment, Flash said, “Looks fine, Cap. That ought to turn it against its own.”
“Let’s try it.” Cap programmed the plasma beam to deposit a new circuit on the microbot’s surface. With stupendous precision, the beam alternately vaporized old pathways and fused new ones with near atomic-width tolerances. Within moments, it was done.
Rock stared at the screen in bafflement. “What does that do?” Though he was one of the most brilliant aerospace propulsion experts in the world, electronics proved a constant source of bewilderment to him. As far as he was concerned, computers were incomprehensible black boxes that one attached to rockets or jets to make them fly. He used computers every day for design and control, but what went on inside them-their electronic guts-he expressed little desire to understand.
“Simple, Rock.” Flash watched the operation on his own terminal screen. Next to that glowed a screen presenting a view of the Lawrence Livermore lab, courtesy of Leila’s videocam. “Cap’s reprogrammed that microbot to seek out the other microbots and reprogram them to stop scavenging. And to become reprogrammers themselves. And nothing else.”
“Let’s test it.” Cap used a microscopic probe to position another, unaltered microbot into the vicinity of the reprogrammed one. Immediately, the latter used its carbon rods to size up the newcomer like one ant feeling out another. When it did, it immediately attacked, carefully cutting new atom-wide pathways into its foe’s circuitry, following the commands indelibly etched into its own memory.
“See?” Flash’s voice said over the earcomm. “Now we have two robots working on our side. Now they won’t destroy anything in their path-they’ll just search for other microbots to reprogram.”
Rock grunted. “And when they run out of microbots to reprogram?”
“They’ll keep searching until they corrode from sunlight and air pollution.” Cap held the probe in front of the mandibles of the newly-reprogrammed creature. It felt at the probe but did nothing to it. Neither did the other. He urged the pair into the teeming millions that made up the tiny silver blob floating on the magnetic field. They immediately attacked one microbot apiece. Now there were four anti-scavengers. Shortly there were sixteen. “These microbots have no defense against being reprogrammed. Whoever built them thought they could overrun anything, making new copies of themselves to replace the older ones. We’ll unleash this countermeasure at the Los Gatos site to handle any stray microbots that might have escaped the freeze. And we’ll keep a few for ourselves.”
Thirty-two. Sixty-four. The electromechanical antidote spread through the mass of scavengers. One hundred twenty-eight. Two hundred fifty-six.
“Any big news today, Flash?” Cap asked, sitting on a lab stool and folding his arms. They were muscled not with the lumps and knots of a body builder, but with the smooth, hard lines of a man of action. Captain Anger had made himself into a man of uncommon strength, but his strength lay in more than mere muscle. His was a strength powered by will and an astonishing self-confidence.
“General Secretary of the United Nations was missing for forty-eight hours,” Flash a
Cap nodded, storing the piece of information for later consideration. “Anything on Dr. Madsen?”
Flash answered the captain. “The mortgage and utility payments on his Palo Alto home are current, even though he’s been missing for four months.”
“Let’s drop some of these little bugs off in Los Gatos to handle any strays we may have missed, and then go pay his house a personal visit.”
Chapter Ten
The Safecracker
The house-an expensive, two story building-sat on a culde-sac in an exclusive suburb of Palo Alto. Cap drove his unassuming white van past the domicile and parked halfway down the block. Leila and Rock stepped out, this time dressed more conservatively. Rock wore a dark blue business suit that attempted but failed to conform to his thickset physique. He wore a wide, garish blue paisley tie around his thick neck. Leila, at least, looked refined in a free-flowing maroon jumpsuit not too different from her more functional black one. Neither of them wore their pistols on the outside. A barely visible bulge under Rock’s left arm, though, let the experienced observer know that he was armed.
Cap emerged from the van finally looking like himself. He was a tall man, over six-foot-three, who seemed even taller because of his self-assured and powerful bearing. When in disguise, he could look several inches shorter simply by assuming a poor posture and a weaker attitude. Now, though, he stepped onto the sidewalk with strength and dignity, cleansed of all disguise and wearing an outfit specially designed for his life of action and danger.
Pants, shirt, and jacket of khaki clad his body with comfort and panache. But unlike the mock clothing sold in fashion houses, Captain Anger constructed his gear of a rugged, almost indestructible weave of aramid fibers developed in his own lab. The same cloth composed Rock’s business suit and Leila’s apparel. The dense fibers provided some protection against low velocity bullets and insulated well against heat and cold while maintaining a constant body temperature for the wearer.
Captain Anger’s shirt sported several pockets, two large ones and several smaller ones designed with their openings disguised and not obvious to the casual glance. His pants similarly possessed cargo pockets that did not bulge away from his strong legs, but rather conformed to them without clinging tightly. The jacket hung to mid-thigh and displayed crisp, no-nonsense lines. It hid many secrets in its six outer pockets and ten i
His face, scrubbed clean of the rubber mask he utilized in his guise as the old bum, looked even more impressive in the afternoon sun. This was a man meant to live in the fire of adventure, born to roam the world and change it wherever he went. Nothing less could please such a man of action.
Yet in his gaze dwelt the soul of a scientist, a rationalist whose every action was ruled by the cool workings of the intellect. Even his boldest, wildest moves operated under the firm yoke of reason.
It was his expertly trained intellect that warned him of danger in the seemingly unthreatening home. He stepped in front of the other two members of his team and strode to the front door. Standing aside to avoid any gun blast that might chance to punch through the closed door, he swung the ornate brass knocker twice.
No response.
Without any urging, as if they had rehearsed a hundred times, Rock and Leila split up, heading to the left and right sides of the home. Captain Anger withdrew a slender, bendable black tube from his jacket and peered around the window frame and through the glass next to the entry. The tube-an infra-red viewer-detected the slightest variance in temperatures and converted it into an image. Looking through it at the hall carpet, Cap saw the blurred heat-outline of footprints. Someone had been there only a few moments ago. The steps led from the foyer up the curved stairway to the second story.