“What do you do now?” he said as he stepped out near the garage where he had parked his own car.

“Going home to play with a toy,” Jack-san said, and sped off.

6.

6.

Jack watched the little Rover race across his living room carpet and butt against the wall. The uptown wall. He was already farther uptown than Murray Hill, but apparently that wasn’t enough for the Rover. It wanted to go farther. Always uptown, always north.

Except out on Long Island. Then the little bugger had run off toward the northwest.

But where was the directional control?

Jack grabbed the truck, turned off the motor, and popped off the body. He checked that out but it was nothing more than molded black plastic.

The chassis was more complicated—wheels, undercarriage, electric motor, steering control, battery compartment, and antenna. Jack knew his knowledge of remote-control toys was rivaled only by his understanding of quantum mechanics, but he pulled out a magnifying glass and made like Sherlock Holmes.

No help. Just a bunch of wires.

As long as he was here, he should check the battery compartment to see what kind it took, just in case it ran out of juice. He popped the lid and saw that it took two AAs. But the battery slots were empty. Instead he found a silvery cylinder about half the length of his pinkie wired to the contacts.

“What the hell?”

He trained the magnifying glass on it, but all that did was make a little mystery bigger. No markings on the cylinder. The whole rig had a definite homemade look to it.

Jack felt a strange prickle along the back of his neck. Not fear… something else… a sense that he was looking at something enormously important. But what?

He knew he’d taken this about as far as he could. The next step was to take it to a guy who could dismantle and reassemble just about anything put in front of him.

7.

7.

“It doesn’t look like a battery, maybe,” Abe said, “but it’s a battery.”

The little Rover lay partially disassembled on Abe’s counter. The body was off, the battery compartment lay open in the exposed chassis.

Abe had a thing about the weapons he sold. He dismantled and reassembled everything that passed through his doors. He could break down and reassemble a Glock in a couple of eye blinks. Jack had asked him why, and Abe’s reply had been something like, “I shouldn’t know all about what I’m selling?”

“That’s not like any battery I’ve ever seen,” Jack said.

“So? You’ve seen every battery ever made? Look, it’s where a battery should go; it’s hooked up to the contacts that power the motor, and the car runs. It’s a battery. Even Parabellum would tell you that if he weren’t asleep.”