“Actually, I think you should let them stay right where they are,” said a new voice. “I’d like to hear what they have to say for themselves.”
Brody spun around—and found himself face-to-face with a smiling Bridget McGrory.
“You!” he cried, taking a step toward her.
“Stay right there, meatball,” said McGrory. “The game’s not over at all. In fact, it’s just getting started.”
“I’d do what she says, Sarge,” said Roger. “That thing she’s holding is a laser pistol. She could turn you into cold cuts in about thirty seconds flat.”
“I think she’d do it, too,” said Wendy. “Probably even enjoy it. Sliced baloney does have its uses.”
Additional guards had appeared at the doorway. At a quiet suggestion from Bridget McGrory, Brody waved them in and asked them to drop their guns.
“Thanks, friend,” said Roger, once the uproar had died down a bit. He smiled. “I assume we can drop the word mysterious now?”
“It was you in the water that day!?” cried Wendy. “Wow! Thanks, Bridget. I owe you my plasmagorgeous hide!”
Bridget McGrory shrugged. “It was the least I could do, since it was my note that sent you into that trap to begin with. Luckily I found some information about what that clue really meant while I was going through Dr. Hwa’s notes. I got to you as soon as I could.”
“What are you two talking about?” asked the Wonderchild’s mother.
“Later, Mom,” said Wendy with a wave of her hand. “It was nothing big.” She was relieved to see Bridget’s wink. She didn’t really want her parents to know just how wild and woolly everything had gotten at some points. She had a feeling Bridget would keep things quiet.
“Would you like to go first, or shall we?” asked Roger.
“Go ahead,” said Bridget graciously. “I’m dying to know how you put this all together.”
“Wait a minute,” said Dr. Clark. “I want to know by what right you’re holding Sergeant Brody at gunpoint.”
Bridget nodded. “Fair question. Other than the fact that he’s so stupid it’s probably a criminal offense, I have jurisdiction over him. And since I don’t trust him to trust me on that point—especially since he believed the frame-up that put me behind bars a few days ago—I think I’ll just keep him in line through raw terror for a while. It’s one of the few things he can understand.”
“Jurisdiction?” asked Brody scornfully.
“National Security Task Force,” said McGrory, pulling a badge from inside her jacket. “Top-level stuff. You guys are under orders to make way for us whenever we see fit.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“That’s why you’ve still got this gun pointing at your belly, beef brain. Now be quiet, you’re making me nervous. Roger was about to tell me how he figured out Black Glove’s identity. You have figured it out, haven’t you?” she asked, glancing past Brody to the center of the room where Roger stood waiting.
“Absolutely,” said Roger with a grin. “Actually, we’ve had the answer right in front of us for the last few months without knowing it—ever since Wendy’s mother passed on a little something she thought was just a cute reminder of our silly belief that we had a dangerous spy on Anza-bora.”
“The glove!” cried Ray, slapping his forehead. “I just figured out what you’ve been babbling about!”
“The glove,” agreed Roger, taking the item in question from his shirt and holding it up.
“You think that’s going to get you off the hook?” snorted Brody incredulously.
“Let the boy finish,” said Bridget McGrory, waving her laser gun at Brody’s midsection. “I’ve got plenty to back him up.”
“Well, those who knew about the glove treated it like a joke, said it was meaningless. And no one said that more forcefully than the person this glove actually belongs to.”
“You’d better explain yourself, Roger,” said Dr. Phillips nervously.
“Be glad to, Dad. Let me start by going over what we knew. The first thing we learned about Black Glove was that the spy was fairly short—a fact we deduced from seeing our mystery person run under a five-foot-seven-inch-high crossbar way back on the night we defused Dr. Standish’s bomb.”
The shorter people in the room, of which there were several, looked at one another nervously.
“Then Rachel clued us in that Black Glove had dark hair, something she was able to spot when she was trapped in the rocket we built for Euterpe. That narrowed it down to a handful of suspects. Seven, to be precise. But that was where we stayed. We just couldn’t get another lead on our slippery spy.” He looked around the room. “I don’t know why it took me so long to realize we already had the final clue. I can’t tell you how many times I looked at this glove, trying to figure out whose hand really belonged inside. It was like having Cinderella’s slipper. Only we couldn’t come up with any way to get each of you to try it on.
“I finally realized that we didn’t need to. This glove carries its owner’s mark as clearly as if that mark was a fingerprint.”
He held up the glove and pointed to the base of the second finger. “These stress marks were what finally clued me in. I ignored them time after time, until finally, just a few hours ago, it suddenly struck me what must have caused them—and who that meant it had to belong to.”
“Got it!” cried Trip, his eyes almost bulging out of his head. “Holy mackerel. I can’t believe it!”
Roger smiled. “That was the way I felt when everything suddenly fell into place. It was like finding the missing piece that everything centers on in a jigsaw puzzle. When I asked myself whose hand might have caused this mark—”
“All right,” snarled Dr. Hwa. “That’s enough, Roger. You can stop your explanation right there.”
A gasp of astonishment rose from the others—a sound that quickly gave way to cries of horror.
Dr. Hwa was pointing a small gun at Wendy’s head.
The Plan
“Now, miss,” said Dr. Hwa, “why don’t you come with me?” His hand snaked out and snatched one of Wendy’s pigtails. Holding the Wonderchild tightly, the man everyone had trusted as the creator of Project Alpha began backing toward the center of the room.
“Let go!” cried Wendy. When she tried to break free, the yank Dr. Hwa gave her hair nearly lifted her off her feet.
“Shut up!” he snapped. “I won’t need you for long. But a little insurance might be helpful for the time being. Just play along and you won’t get hurt.”
“Let go of her!” cried Rachel. Why she bothered she couldn’t have said; she knew it wouldn’t make any difference. It might have had to do with the fact that for the first time in all their adventures she saw fear on Wendy’s face, and the sight twisted in her stomach like a knife.
Dr. Hwa continued backing toward the center of the Brain Cell, where a smooth white column held a keyboard and a control console. Still holding Wendy by the hair, the spy slipped behind the console and tapped a few keys.
“ADAM, are you listening?”
After a momentary silence the computer spoke. “Yes. I have been paying close attention.”
It was a shock for the gang to hear the computer speak in a voice other than the Basil Rathbone imitation they had become so used to; indeed, at first it was hard to realize it was the same machine. But it was, of course. Terminals and voice synthesizers were no more than tools attached to the central brain. And that brain was where ADAM lived—was ADAM, in point of fact.
“Good,” said Dr. Hwa. “Stay with me. I will have some assignments for you soon.”
“I’ll be right here,” said the computer. Its tones were smooth and mellow—pleasant, but with none of the personality that marked the voice synthesizer the gang was used to.
“You might as well relax,” said Dr. Hwa, speaking to his former friends and comrades. “Everything has already been done; there is no turning back now. Ah-ah. Touch that gun and I will put a hole through this abhorrent little upstart’s sk
ull.”
This last was addressed to one of Brody’s men, who had been inching forward to grab the gun he had been forced to drop earlier.
The guard moved back toward the wall.
“Shield, please, ADAM,” said Dr. Hwa. At the same time he gave Wendy’s pigtail a vicious yank, which sent her spinning away from the console. As she fell, a thick cylinder of clear material began rising swiftly from the floor, separating Dr. Hwa from the rest of the room.
Bridget McGrory fired a blast from her laser, but the beam had no effect on the shield.
“Where did that come from?” cried Dr. Mercury, pointing at the shield.
“It’s built in,” said Rachel.
“How do you know that?” asked Dr. Ling.
“I read the plans.”
When the adults looked at her in surprise, and some indignation, she said, “Well, they were right in the computer. It’s not like they were classified or anything.”
“As if that would have stopped you if they were,” said Dr. Hwa. “That was the trouble with you brats—you were always too curious for your own good. Well, it won’t make any difference after today.”
Now that Dr. Hwa was shielded from the rest of the room, a change seemed to occur in his personality. The tense facial expression disappeared. His features relaxed and took on an almost insolent air as he produced a pair of black gloves from the pocket of his lab coat.
“I feel more comfortable with these on,” he said. “More myself, if you know what I mean.” Dr. Hwa lifted his hands. The ruby ring sparkled for an instant, then disappeared as he pulled the black glove over it. “Yes,” he said, looking at the glove. “The ring does make a distinct bulge, doesn’t it? Very clever of you to figure that out, Roger.”
The members of the gang exchanged a glance. It was almost as if Dr. Hwa’s personality had changed when he put on the gloves. His face had grown harder, and a sly look filled his eyes. Now, indeed, he was their enemy Black Glove.
“Actually, this has worked out rather nicely,” purred the spy. “I am about to make a speech that will be heard around the world, informing everyone that I am taking over. It’s only appropriate that we have a live audience for such an auspicious occasion.”
“Jeez,” said Wendy, patting the side of her head, which was still tender from Dr. Hwa’s yanking on her pigtail. “I thought Dr. Standish was crackers. This guy makes her look positively sane.”
“You can mock,” said Black Glove jovially. “It makes no difference. You might as well know that you have all been pawns in one of the greatest plots of all time. G.H.O.S.T. has pulled your strings from the beginning. And now I have pulled the rug out from under G.H.O.S.T.!”
“Aha!” cried Dr. Remov triumphantly. “I knew it. Now do you believe me, Armand?”
“I believe you, Stanley,” said Dr. Mercury dismally. “I believe you.”
“I think you’d better explain yourself,” said Dr. Fontana angrily.
“Why not? It’s conventional at this point, I believe. The difference, of course, is that in stories the idea is to get the villain talking while the heroes figure out some way to best him. I’m not quite that stupid.” A leather-covered knuckle tapped the clear shield as a reminder. “If you could do anything now, if you presented the slightest danger to me, I would not give you an instant of my time. But everything is in place; I am safe behind my shield. And in a short time the world will be at my feet.”
Black Glove looked around the room. “The funniest thing is, none of you even knew what you were working on. You really believed that story about artificial intelligence!”
An indignant murmur swept through the room. “What do you mean?” yelled several of the scientists.
“It was all a front! We never expected to create a self-aware computer. The whole idea is a pipe dream, preposterous. What we did want—and what I got—was the most sophisticated computer ever created; a computer that makes everything that came before it look like a pocket calculator.
“It was all so simple. G.H.O.S.T. was looking for a computer that would let it control the world.
“The question was, how to get it?
“The basic answer was simple enough: Put together the most sophisticated collection of computer scientists ever gathered for one project.
“Unfortunately, the execution of that idea was a bit trickier. How many of you would have come to Anza-bora if I had approached you with an offer to help build a computer that would allow my organization to take over the world?”
Black Glove chuckled at the absurdity of the thought. “We needed a carrot, some bait to pull you all in. That’s all Project Alpha was—a ruse to get you involved. No matter what you might have thought, the sole purpose of this effort was the creation of the world’s most powerful computer. Artificial intelligence and self-aware machines? A delusion; they’ll never happen. But in striving for it, you gave me the supercomputer I was after.”
The spy frowned.
“Even so, I had a problem. The original plan called for me to send all the information you generated, all the work you did, on to G.H.O.S.T., so they could build an identical computer. When the work here was completed, this computer would have been destroyed, leaving G.H.O.S.T. in control of the single most powerful computer in the world. It would have worked smoothly, had not the children kept interfering, locating my transmitters, which forced me to destroy them.
“Finally I realized it would be more efficient to simply take over this computer. So I began building a back door. Over the last few months I have secretly created a command structure that will allow me to lock you out—like this!”
Black Glove tapped a few keys, then smiled at the enraged group outside his shield. “Go ahead, give it a try. See if any of those keyboards will accept your input.”
Dr. Phillips crossed to a terminal and tried several commands. His face was grim when he turned back. “It’s true. ADAM won’t respond.”
A moan of despair rippled across the room.
“Wait,” said Black Glove. “It gets better! Once I decided to take over ADAM, I also realized I no longer needed G.H.O.S.T. Then I made the most exciting discovery of all. When you kids launched Dr. Weiskopf’s robot a few months ago, you unwittingly sent with it a device installed by the spy Ramon Korbuscek. The combination was exquisite: Euterpe could calculate orbits, and Korbuscek’s device could interfere with satellite control systems to implant those orbits. Once I discovered this, my path was clear. It took time, of course. But the job has been done. The satellites are all where I want them.”
“But why?” asked Rachel. “What’s the point?”
Black Glove looked astonished. “Don’t you understand? This is for your own good. It was all for your own good.”
The spy looked almost sorrowful. “No one ever understood what G.H.O.S.T. is really all about. The whole purpose of our organization is to seize power from the fools who are ruling the world by terror and reclaim it for the people. That was where our name came from. The acronym was not ‘General Headquarters for Organized Strategic Terrorism,’ as some in the intelligence community like to claim. No, no. The ‘O’ stands for Oppose. Our purpose was to oppose the organized terrorism of governments that fill the sky with death.
“About the time I realized that I could control the computer myself, I realized it would be a mistake to give it to G.H.O.S.T. Despite the noble goals, when all was said and done, it was still a committee—and all committees eventually fall prey to dissent.
“How much more logical, then, to concentrate that power in my own hands and avoid the possibility of conflict?
“Which is what this speech is all about.”
Black Glove pulled a sheaf of papers from his lab coat and waved them toward his audience. “This is my message to the world, telling it that I am now in charge, ruling by virtue of the fact that with ADAM at my command I can logically and efficiently plan the best use of the world’s energy and resources, without the foolish interference of local boundaries and in
terests. It will be a new Golden Age: no boundaries, no selfish interests, no wars—”
“And no freedom,” said Roger, “since the whole thing depends on you ruling the world. No one’s going to buy that line.”
“Of course not,” agreed Dr. Hwa. “The velvet glove must always have a fist inside of it. So I will also rule by virtue of the fact that I have seized control of the heavens and have nuclear bombs pointing at the capital cities of every country in the world.”
Dr. Fontana slapped her forehead. “That’s why the major powers are acting so paranoid! You’ve been playing with their toys!”
“Nukes for peace,” muttered Wendy. “This guy is operating at the same level as the maniacs who run things already.”
“You’d never do it,” said Hap, good old straight-as-an-arrow Hap, who just couldn’t believe that someone could be this crazy. “You wouldn’t blow up a whole city!”
Black Glove, the man Hap had known as Dr. Hwa, turned to stare at him through the crystal shield.
“Of course I would,” he said calmly.
Hap turned pale. The look in the scientist’s eyes made it clear that he would indeed do anything to reach his goal.
Anything.
“Don’t you see how sensible it is?” continued Dr. Hwa. “I vaporize one city—two at the most—and the world knows that I mean business. And that’s the end of it. Doesn’t blowing up one city make a lot more sense than blowing up the whole planet?”
“You’d better move fast if you’re going to do it,” said Dr. Clark. “You’ve got the world on the brink of an all-out war already. If you don’t make the speech soon, there won’t be anyone left to talk to, much less rule.”
“We’d better move fast, too,” Roger whispered to Trip. “Let’s make a break for it.”
“What good can we do if we get out of here?” replied Trip.
“I don’t know! But we’re sure not going to accomplish anything here. Maybe we can find some way to get in through that back door of his and regain control of the computer.”