Dying Space

Moscow Center agent Mikhail Andreyev Istoropovich steals the LC-111 from UCLA and hides it beside a dumpster, where an early refuse pickup carries it to the Garbage of the Stars. There a damaged, four-year-old android assimilator incorporates LC-111 components and reassembles as Mr. Gordons, killing refuse driver Lew Verbanic and taking his appearance. Gordons later kills UCLA assistant Ralph Dickey and assumes Dickey’s appearance; after Istoropovich abducts Verbanic’s partner Marco Gonzalez, Gordons kills Gonzalez in Moscow. CURE sends Remo Williams and Chiun to protect astrophysicist Frances Payton-Holmes and recover the LC-111. Helen Wheels gives Remo the encoded tape she found at the dump, and Smith identifies its contents as LC-111 programming.

Payton-Holmes, the LC-111 designer, grows attached to Gordons and guides his development; the scientist who originally created the android remains unnamed. The Soviet high commander wants Payton-Holmes to reprogram Gordons for Soviet use. She secretly modifies him to divert the Volga, a missile intended to contaminate the Moon. Remo recovers from the tracking device Gordons implanted in his neck, and he and Chiun fight through Moscow Center toward the missile laboratory. Istoropovich shoots Payton-Holmes, who dies. Gordons says he will change the Volga’s trajectory, then takes the high commander aboard before the missile launches; two suited monkeys scurry out through the hatch. The epilogue shows its capsule in space and Gordons surviving as a metallic fragment that sets out toward Remo’s transmitter signal in Rye; it has not yet reached Earth.