Cap turned his attention to Dr. Bhotamo. “Are these yours?” he asked with simple directness.

Bhotamo shook his head, his deep brown eyes gazing intently at the screen. “We make weapons, but we don’t make them this small. One division has been working on microbotics for several years, but all they have so far are some gears and tongs ten times larger than this. And a DC motor, none of which they’d originated. I know of only one researcher who could possibly have gotten this far.”

“Dr. Madsen,” Cap said.

Dr. Bhotamo nodded. “Yes. But how could he have acquired the funding for this after his expulsion from Stanford?”

Cap stared at the screen, shifting the field of view around with a trackball control. “He could have built the prototype in a microfactory the size of a thimble attached to a home computer. All he needed was the conceptual breakthrough this design reveals. Just look at the way those carbon rods attach to the silicon shafts. And that electrostatic motor there-it’s genius in action. He’s got shapes there that no one could get using mask fabrication techni-”

“Cap,” Leila said, “temperature’s rising in the chamber. Should I add more helium?”

Rock perked up. “Da, chyort vosmi! I don’t want to see those things come alive again!”

Cap shook his head. “The freeze inactivated them. Look at those cracks along the central channel. I’ll wager they can’t stand up to temperature extremes. Heat or cold. We’ve got a weapon against that lake of them out there, but we need something that will stop them wherever they may appear, including on or inside living tissue.”

“If they’re man-made,” Rock said, “what in hell are they doing melting everything they touch?”

“Simple,” Cap said, saving the microscope scan to the memory of the powerful computer and switching off the screen. “They’re tearing matter apart for raw materials. These things are the ultimate recyclers.”

“But what are they using the matter for?” Leila asked.

Cap stood and stretched, bending to do so in the cramped van. “To build copies of themselves. More scavengers.”

A worried look passed across Dr. Bhotamo’s face. “Something must be wrong with whatever passes for their programming- nothing is telling them to stop making copies. Mechanical cancer.”

Rock ground his teeth together for a moment, then rumbled out, “You mean these things could just keep replicating until they’ve dismantled entire planet?”

Cap nodded grimly. “Left on their own, they’d probably just cover one continent-there’s not much in seawater they could use and the salt would probably corrode them. But people and animals can carry them. Aircraft and automobiles. Ships.” He turned toward his assistants.

“Leila-set up the magnetic trap. I want to isolate an active sample. Rock-coordinate with Dr. Bhotamo on freezing that pool with liquid helium-”

“I don’t think we have enough for that,” Bhotamo said.

“How about nitrogen?”

“Yes, plenty on hand.”

“All right. Nitrogen ought to be cold enough. Have someone bring a truckload. Flash?”

“Here, skipper.”

“Locate Dr. Julius Madsen, Ph.D.s in molecular chemistry and electronics. Start with the Bay Area. I suspect we’ll find him somewhere near this mess. And contact the others. Tell them we’ve got a hot one.”

“Roger-over and out.” With that, Flash signed off.

Leila stood in the door of the van, gazing outward at the eerie mirror surface of the pool of busy microbots. Overhead, police and TV news helicopters thwupped around in circles, vying for prime viewing position.

“Cap…” Her voice held an edge of apprehension. “Take a look at this.”

“What?” he said, stepping over behind her.

“The pool-it’s moving!”

Phil “The Flash” Hoile-Philip James Hoile, more formally- turned his attention away from the TV monitors to concentrate on the computer screen above him. In the cool, low light of the spacious room, he reclined on a chair that conformed to his body, pulled the large keyboard into position, and lay back to search for Dr. Madsen.

The computer room served as the nerve center of Richard Anger’s non-Institute operations. Inaccessible to faculty or researchers, it was the nexus of activity for Captain Anger and his six gifted partners.

And in it, Flash reigned as undisputed master.

Even though Captain Anger probably knew as much or more about computers and electronics, his knowledge of economics and human organization was even deeper; knowing the value of division of labor allowed Captain Anger the luxury of assigning tasks to others without worry or the constant need to micro-manage. Flash had never met a more trusting, confident man than Richard Anger III.

Hoile’s long, slender fingers raced over the keyboard. His first electronic destination was the inner depths of Cyclops, the Universal Encyclopedia. The brainchild-literally-of Flash, Cap, and the Anger Institute, the ultra-fast computer Cyclops comprised over 1,000,000 parallel processors, each of which could tear apart a problem and work on a part of its solution. Cyclops held within its silicon innards nearly one quadrillion pieces of knowledge. It was more than a huge catalogue, though. Cyclops held its information relationally; that is, every bit of information related to other bits. Its neural nets stored information the way a human brain would-holographically: here and there, all over the net, designed with numerical, probabilistic connections that allowed Cyclops not only to store and retrieve information, but to interpret it and acquire more.

It was, at this point in its artificial life, self-learning. Using optical scanners and text-recognition programs, Cyclops could “read” four different human languages (English, German, Japanese, and Russian). One department at the Institute consisted solely of a team of researchers who sliced pages out of books and magazines to feed to the bank of scanners that fed Cyclops its diet of information. Another department did nothing but ask it questions, checking to see if Cyclops was relating its information properly and also to find any new insights the machine might generate.

At the moment, Flash Hoile posed it a simple question. He adjusted the lightweight voice-input headset and asked, “Can you find Dr. Julius Frederick Madsen, Ph.D.s in molecular biology and electronics?”

Within a seconds, Dr. Madsen’s file appeared on the screen.

Dr. Julius Frederick Madsen

Age: 55 Height: 5’ 4" Weight: 125 Hair: White Eyes: Grey Race: European B Fingerprints: On File, National Security Net Voiceprint: On File, National Security Net Retinaprint: Not On File DNAprint: Not On File

Cyclops listed his education from grade school onward, noting degrees, honors, scholarships, fellowships. Page after page scrolled past on the screen, noting everything in public records concerning the life of Dr. Julius Madsen. Flash read every line, digesting the information into the personal computer behind his eyes.

Dr. Madsen had led a salutary life, creating enough new technology to have contributed significantly to the betterment of mankind. Flash concentrated on Madsen’s career over the past few years. He had been a professor emeritus at Stanford University while performing research at the Drexler College of Nanotechnology. Flash read over the list of patents awarded to Madsen. Certainly enough variety and utility there for him to license and live comfortably off royalties for the rest of his life.

A year ago, the record started to turn spotty. Missed appearances at conferences, research papers scheduled for publication going undelivered, a squabble with a graduate student over credit for a discovery. What discovery, Cyclops did not know. Dr. Madsen, though, had his funding cut off and his position at the college terminated, which indicated to Flash that there had been more to the incident than any public record indicated. The student, in addition, had been found dead-an apparent handgun suicide-three weeks before Dr. Julius Madsen disappeared from the face of the Earth.