"It is no more than paper stained by ink," the android said. "While the design is slightly different than it was before my confinement, presumably to discourage replication, it remains uncomplicated."
Zipp got a sudden flash of hope. "Can you print your own cash?" he had asked.
"Affirmative," Mr. Gordons replied.
Lights of joy sparked bright in Zipp Codwin's eyes. "But I will not," Mr. Gordons had finished.
The colonel's heart fell. "Why in the name of hot holy hell not?" Zipp asked.
"I have done so before," Mr. Gordons had replied. "To do so again would be uncreative."
And that ended all discussion on the subject. Zipp had to settle for simple robberies.
The past week's tests proved Gordons's mettle. Zipp Codwin had quickly decided that the nickel-and-dime stage was over. It was time to move on to bigger and better things.
That morning, he'd sent Gordons out to find an armored truck. Any would do. As for the how, where and when, the android had been left to his own devices.
When he saw the footage on the news, Zipp Codwin nearly had a stroke. There was Gordons-as big as life-crawling along the side of the armored car.
Fortunately for NASA, Mr. Gordons had improved on the design of the probe he had assimilated. Gone was the awkwardness of a wind-up toy. Gordons had given Virgil a fluidity of motion that it had never had before: He had also used a spider he had seen spinning a web in the lab as a template to remake his image. The Virgil probe was no longer merely reminiscent of a spider; it looked like the real dang thing. Furry legs, smooth body and all.
Zipp had been a little worried that the armored car stolen so publicly was making a beeline straight for him, but he soon found that Gordons had made some cosmetic alterations en route from Orlando. He learned this when he drove back from lunch and found a Mr. Coney ice-cream truck parked in his space.
"What the hell is this?" Zipp bellowed when he saw the ice-cream truck. It had an open counter with pictures of sundaes and cones painted on the side. There was no driver. "Security!" he howled. "There's a goddamn frozen-pudding peddler parked in my space!"
"Keep quiet," advised a voice that seemed to come from somewhere in the truck.
Zipp's face turned purple. "Who the hell do you think you're talking to, boy!" he screamed. He stuck his head in the open window. There was no one in the cab.
"I am talking to a human whose neck I will snap if he does not quiet down," said the now familiar voice.
It seemed to be coming from the dashboard. When Zipp looked closer he saw that, instead of a volume control knob for the stereo, there was an eye. It was looking at him.
"Oh," said Zipp, finally realizing to whom he was talking.
He ushered the truck to the building that housed Pete Graham's lab. There the Virgil probe detached itself from the vehicle. When it crawled up out of the open door in the back, Zipp Codwin's eyes grew wide. The floor of the truck was filled with sacks of money.
Operating capital. Gordons had gotten his first big score for NASA. And he'd managed to do it under the noses of every law-enforcement official in central Florida.
Suddenly, the possibilities that had been present in the earliest days of the space agency flooded back. In that moment images of lunar cities and Martian colonies and starships exploded bright and beautiful in Zipp Codwin's retired Air Force brain.
"Son," he said to the probe that stood patiently beside him, "if I wasn't so dang-blasted sure the current Mrs. Codwin would rake me over the coals in the settlement, I'd ditch her saggy old behind and hitch up with you!"
And, unable to keep his exuberance in check, he flung his powerful arms around the torso of the Virgil probe.
FOR SECURITY REASONS Colonel Codwin had kept knowledge of Mr. Gordons limited to a tight inner circle.
Graham's team, which had flown Virgil to and from Mexico, wasn't a problem. As far as they were concerned, its return from the depths of Popocatepetl had been nothing more than a bizarre malfunction. The only men other than Zipp himself aware of the probe's true nature were Dr. Graham himself and the PR guy, Clark Beemer.
When the time came to haul the money out of the ice-cream truck that had once been a SecureCo armored car, Graham and Beemer were conscripted to do the honors.
"I don't know if it's such a good idea to just stack it here," Pete Graham ventured. Panting, he dropped the last dirty sack onto the pile.
There was dried blood on the exterior of the bag. Graham tried not to think about how it got there. "This is NASA, boy," Zipp Codwin dismissed. He was sitting on a mound of sacks. Around his ankles he had dumped a pile of bills. "No one's gonna suspect we're involved in anything dirty. Hell, most folks'd probably be surprised to find out we were still around."
The Virgil probe was back in the corner of the room. The three men paid it no attention while they worked.
"I don't know," Beemer said worriedly. He used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his forehead. "This last robbery made a big splash on the news. Somebody might figure out that the spider doing all the stealing is ours. And if it does get out, I'm not sure we can spin our way out of it."
His voiced concern was met with a metallic shriek from behind them. All three men whipped around. The Virgil probe was reaching up to the ceiling with one of its slender spider legs. It had just ripped a security camera from the wall. The device tore free in a spray of bright sparks.
"Hush up, ya dagburn fool," Zipp hissed. "You're pissing him off." He rubbed the purple bruises on his neck, remnants of the last time Gordons had gotten upset.
But Virgil didn't seem to be paying attention to them. It was more concerned with the camera in its claw.
"What are you doing?" Graham asked.
"This one is correct," Mr. Gordons said. "I am incomplete. I have been concealing myself in a shape not adequate to camouflage. To maximize my survival I must adopt a form more inconspicuous."
The leg expanded until it enveloped the small camera. There was a grinding of metal during which some small parts fell to the floor. What remained when he was through, Mr. Gordons pressed to his face.
When he removed his makeshift hand, a second eye had joined the first. Both eyes looked at the three NASA men.
"Survive ...survive ...maximize survival...."
As he spoke, all eight legs folded up underneath the Virgil probe. Its torso floated to the floor like a metallic soap bubble. When it landed, the legs were immediately absorbed into the main body. At the same time, the body itself began to compress, collapsing in on itself.
It looked for all the world as if the probe were melting.
"How can he do that?" Beemer asked in wonder. "Virgil's got to be five times bigger than that."
"If you're measuring the actual distance from leg tip to leg tip and top to bottom, it's more like ten times," Pete Graham whispered excitedly. "But the components of Virgil are light and spread thin. He can somehow manipulate those components into a more compact unit. The mass remains the same. It's just formed into a different shape."
Zipp Codwin looked at the shrinking form of Mr. Gordons. "So it's like he's crushing the Virgil in one of those car compressors they have at junkyards?"
Graham nodded tightly. He was staring in rapt attention at the amazing transformation taking place before them.
It was obvious now what Gordons was doing. The shape had begun to grow familiar. Arms, legs. The head still remained as a command unit above the newly re-formed torso.
When Mr. Gordons stood a moment later, he was completely remade. Circuits blinked at strategic points around the metal frame. Clusters of multicolored wires were visible at all the major joints. But in spite of the high-tech gloss, the form he had taken on was clearly recognizable.
"My God," Clark Beemer murmured.
"Dang if he don't look human," Zipp breathed.
"Thank you," Mr. Gordons replied. "It is the optimum manner in which to conceal myself among you. According to my projections the human population should be well in excess of six billion by this time. This form will help me to blend in with greater success. In addition to this, my experience has taught me that my enemies have a lower degree of success recognizing me when I have assumed the human form."