Another tiny jet flared to life and the next little rocket sped at Chiun. He stepped aside at the correct moment and allowed the rocket to crack into the wall with a sharp explosion. Remo’s rocket used up its propellant, and he held it in his fingers and tossed it across the room. It made a satisfying hollow-tube noise as it neatly entered the gun barrel from which it came, just as the next rocket was flaring to life, and they detonated against each other with force that blew the barrel open. The gunner’s transparent mask was torn off and his face with it.
“Must you always throw things?” Chiun said. “You looked like a lager-quaffing British pub patron hurling darts for amusement. I should have known better than to train an unreformed gun-toter.”
“It’s not like I’m using a weapon.” Remo grabbed the pair of cart-pushers and sent them flying into nearby walls, where they flattened and stuck like swatted flies. “It is precisely as if you are using a weapon.”
“What I mean is, I do not have to use a weapon. I didn’t have to use the little missile back there. I could have just as easily gone in and poked his lights out. You know it and I know it.”
“Why did you not do so?”
Remo thought about it. They were in the elevator that had disgorged the rocket-firing man. It appeared to be the only way up short of scaling the walls. Remo pushed the button for the top floor and they ascended.
“Their captain is not so fantastic or he would have thought to turn this thing off.”
“Answer the question. Why did you throw the tiny missile?”
“It just seemed like an interesting thing to do, I guess.”
“You did it for the novelty of the experience?”
Remo nodded. “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
“What is wrong with adhering to the noble tradition in which you are trained?” Chiun shot back.
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
“I usually do.”
“You often don’t.”
“So what?”
The elevator stopped between floors and Remo wordlessly jumped up, punched away the emergency hatch in the ceiling and followed it out into the darkness of the shaft. He landed on the roof, and Chiun emerged beside him. They started up the ladder rungs bolted into the wall. They were twenty feet above the elevator when Remo felt the tiny trickle of static in his fingers. He pushed away, from the rungs as the electric charge grew to levels fatal to humans. He was now hanging by the elevator’s safety chain, and when he looked between his feet, Chiun was also gripping the chain and looking perturbed.
The chain clanked and the elevator started rising toward them.
“This becomes tiresome,” Chiun announced. He released the chain and allowed himself to fall back to the elevator roof. Remo landed beside him, and they hurtled toward the ceiling, where the building designers had overlooked including any sort of safety hollow to keep hapless elevator topsiders from being crushed.
The elevator rose to its apex with a brake-squealing halt, its rubber bumpers thumping against the interior roof. Remo and Chiun were already inside again. Before the elevator could descend, Remo hauled open the interior door, then curled the exterior doors inward. The elevator groaned but the interior doors were heavy steel. They weren’t budging.
“You want to take me to the pilot?” Remo asked the surprised gunners, whose guns were being removed from their hands and returned, mangled.
“Even I don’t know what silliness you spout,” Chiun said. “More novelty?”
Remo just shrugged. “Where’s the pop star?”
One of the guards pointed down the hall on the right.
The two Masters glided into the corridor, their senses tuned to whatever final assault would come their way, and stopped, shoulder to shoulder. They could feel the electric charge building up in the wall in front of them. The wall was metal. The decorative copper inlay wasn’t there for decorative purposes. Something was wrong.
Remo’s mind whirled. What was he missing? There was some sort of an electric charge in the wall. It would strike them if they ventured between the copper electrodes. He sensed it and Chiun sensed it, but
