The Spectrum Organization had realized early on that if it needed its personnel to be capable of facing any conceivable threat to world peace, then those personnel needed to know how to defend themselves without the use of the various weapons in its formidable arsenal. For there would be many times, in the course of personal combat, when those personnel had to be able to fight hand to hand against opponents who had access to weapons that simply outgunned them.

Some techniques taught for the purpose had not changed in centuries.

These techniques included the various martial arts that had come from Southeast Asia, most of whose countries, such as Mainland China, Island China, Japan, Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Kashmir, Bangladesh, and Burma, to name but a comparative handful, had consolidated themselves into the United Asian Republic as the World Government of Earth was being formed. One such martial art was judo, which derives from jujitsu and is of Japanese origin. Martial artists wear an outfit called a gi, meaning “uniform,” whose tunic is secured at the waist with a belt whose color denotes the wearer’s degree of skill in a martial art; the black belt is highest of these. Judo is no exception. Its black belt has ten dans, or degrees, each higher than the last. The fifth dan denotes absolute mastery of judo; the dans from six to ten, also called red-belt dans, are all honorary.

Martial arts instructors, called sensei, always hold black belts in the martial arts in which they are skilled. Spectrum Organization Angel Flight pilot Chan Akiki Kwan was no exception. Her black belt in judo was of the fourth dan, and as such, it qualified her as a sensei in judo. On this day, a Monday, she was carrying out such duty. Her students in the dojo, or training arena, were all members of the senior staff of Cloudbase, the Spectrum Organization’s mobile command headquarters, as she herself likewise was, and included its Supreme Commander-In-Chief, or CINCSPEC, who was its generalissimo-admiralissimo. These students were Paul Stephen Metcalfe, Adam Gregory Svenson, Bradley John Holden, Juliette Marie Pointon, Dianne Roberta Simms, Karen Judith Wainwright, Edward Michael Wilkie, and Charles Mason Gray, the last of whom was CINCSPEC. All wore gis.

Kwan was now addressing Holden, whose gi was charcoal gray.

“Captain Grey,” she was saying, using Spectrum’s reference to Holden, “will you please join me in demonstrating the technique we’ve been practicing?”

“As you wish.” Captain Grey got to his feet.

“Harmony,” said Svenson, who wore a blue gi, “this wouldn’t by any chance be a rematch of how you cleaned Grey’s clock the day Black evaluated us in preparation for our becoming senior staff of Cloudbase?”

Laughter from the others followed his remark. Kwan, whom Spectrum called Harmony Angel, could not keep from grinning herself.

“No need, Captain Blue,” she responded, using official Spectrum reference to the Massachusetts financier’s eldest son. “That was a score the two of us settled between ourselves four years ago, the year before any of us heard of the Mysterons for the first time.”

Gray, whom Spectrum called Colonel White, said with a twinkle in his blue eyes, “Really, Blue! Now’s not the time to hold grudges.”

“Especially not with a lesson to finish,” Harmony Angel said. She and Captain Grey bowed to each other. Then she rested her right hand on his left arm.

Gripping Harmony Angel’s left arm in his right hand, Captain Grey allowed her to approach him with a measure of suddenness. Then he used her leverage to upset her balance and, his arm crossing over her waist, brought her to the mat as per the training she had been giving him and his colleagues. That accomplished, he allowed her to get back on her own feet.

“Well done,” added she. “That finishes this lesson.”

Metcalfe was the first to rise from the floor. Untying the belt of his gi, which was a brilliant scarlet in color, he pulled off its tunic first, exchanging it for first a long-sleeved black turtle-necked tunic with roundels on its sleeve cuffs and then a sleeveless scarlet suede doublet with a ring-pull zipper that went all the way down its right front. Then he pulled off his gi’s trousers, revealing himself to be wearing, beneath them, tight black breeches with stitched-in permanent front creases, which were bloused over scarlet cotton hosiery. Pushing his feet into a pair of knee-high scarlet leather boots with outer metal side-zippers, cuffed-topped stove-pipe uppers, and wide leather bands across their vamps, he pulled the zippers closed in a way that bloused his breeches into the boots. Lastly, Captain Scarlet, as Spectrum knew Metcalfe, strapped a black leather cincture around his waist; hanging on this was a black leather holster with a semi-automatic pistol inside it.

Speaking for the first time, he said, “It’s been almost too quiet here on Cloudbase. The Mysterons are almost certain to strike somewhere.”

“Yes, they are, Captain Scarlet,” Colonel White agreed. “It’s just a question of two key factors. Where... and when.”

A crackling on Cloudbase’s public-address system seemed to answer both questions. Captain Scarlet noted grimly, “It looks like we’re about to get our answer.”

And sure enough, a booming deep slow voice followed.

“This is the voice of the Mysterons. We know that you can hear us, Earthmen. We will continue to take our revenge for your unprovoked attack. Our next act of retaliation will be to throw Harmony out of tune. Hear us, Earthmen, and take heed. We will throw Harmony out of tune.”

Captain Scarlet spared a glance at the Harmony Angel. She had bowed her head.

“They’re after me,” she whispered. “I just know it. What I don’t know is how.”

Going to a bulkhead intercom unit, Colonel White said, “White to Control--Lieutenant Green, bring Cloudbase to yellow alert.”

“S.I.G.,” was the prompt response from Spectrum Organization CompOps Chief Seymour Roger Griffiths, Colonel White’s aide, whom he had addressed as Lieutenant Green.

“Right, let’s all get out of our gis and back into Spectrum uniform,” Colonel White snapped. “We have to figure out exactly what the Mysterons plan to do to Harmony--or her family.”

“There’s another consideration--do they plan to assassinate officials of Nippon’s government?”

“What is that supposed to mean, Harmony?” This from Captain Grey.

Her head still hanging, Harmony Angel explained, “The air-taxi service my parents used to operate before they passed it on to me has become essential to travel over the archipelago of Nippon. Officials of the various ministries make extensive use of it--”

“--and so does the Emperor of Japan, as well as the current Director-General of the United Asian Republic,” Captain Scarlet noted. “If any of the regular routes of Peking Taxi Service were to fall victim to the Mysterons while the Emperor and/or Prime Minister of Japan, or the United Asian Republic’s current Director-General, were aboard one of those taxis...”

He did not have to finish. The political repercussions could be disastrous, and the Kwans would “lose face” with the rest of Nippon society for allowing, or failure to prevent, such a tragedy. Already Captain Scarlet had failed, once before, to prevent the assassination of the previous United Asian Republic Director-General, a mission that had still proven his loyalty to Spectrum.

The Colonel’s jaw dropped in horror at the implications, and he snapped sharply, “Then all of you double-time it! You all know what this implies for Spectrum!”

Matsuo Tanaka, Prime Minister of Japan, had had a long conversation with the World Congress. This conversation had been entirely in English, a language he understood perfectly and spoke well. From what the Speaker of the World House Of Representatives had said to him, he had reason to fear that he and his Emperor were both under Mysteron attack. The Spectrum Organization would gain much face if it successfully protected either, most of all both.

Tanaka was not a defenseless man himself. He held a black belt of the ninth dan in judo, and one of the students of his dojo, which he had closed down to enter politics, had been a certain Chan Akiki Kwan. She had much face for both of her efforts to establish the world record for shortest time successfully circumnavigating Earth nonstop by air--first for aborting her effort to rescue people in trouble, and second for completing her flight.

The business her parents had operated before passing it on to her, Peking Taxi Service, was essential to Tanaka’s job, for he used its taxis extensively to travel from point to point on his native Honshu Island. Judging from what the World House Speaker had told him, he had reason to believe it might come under attack.

“Chan Kwan,” he said in English, “wherever you are, I hope you know that we need help.”

Harmony Angel was on her way to relieve Magnolia Blossom Jones, a.k.a. Melody Angel, from alert duty in the Angel alert interceptor when Colonel White, himself now back in uniform, called out to her. “Wait, Harmony!” said he.

“What?”

“You’ll be on your way back home, so to speak. I’m appointing you as temporary field commander of the Angel Flight for this mission. You’ll be reporting directly to Captain Scarlet.”

Stunned, Harmony Angel could muster no other response than the usual “S.I.G.” But she was in a daze as she acknowledged the newly-cut orders.

Captain Scarlet, himself in no such daze, snapped back, “Colonel, do you think that’s wise?”

“How do you mean?”

“The Mysterons have made personal threats against members of Spectrum before. For all we know, this could be one of them.”

“You heard me tell Harmony that she’ll report directly to you. Since you are our ’indestructible’ agent, it’ll be part of your job to see to it that she herself isn’t directly harmed.”

“S.I.G.,” Captain Scarlet acknowledged with a wry smile. “The trick will be figuring out exactly who’s in the hands of the Mysterons.”

The answer to Captain Scarlet’s question could have been found on Honshu Island, at the Tokyo base of Peking Air Taxi.

Captain Black, who had once been Conrad Turner, was currently in the dispatcher’s office of that base, in the company of a woman who resembled the dispatcher in every detail. The original dispatcher, whose name was Tomoko Kobayashi, had a scratch at the base of her neck, and next to her was a black-finished shaken that had been dipped in doku, a poison that, after the long complex process of extracting it from chrysanthemums, could be used to kill quickly and silently. For it simulated the effects of a heart attack when injected into the bloodstream, and the smallest scratch was the most needed for the purpose. Both shaken and corpse rested on the office floor.

Tomoko Kobayashi was under Mysteron control.

Less than an hour before, Captain Black had thrown the doku-treated shaken, the tip of one of whose blade edges had scratched the neck of the original Kobayashi. As this had occurred whilst she was on a break, she had had no time to react or call for help.

In the deep slow voice of the Mysterons, Captain Black said to the Kobayashi likeness, “You know what you must do.”

The Kobayashi likeness said nothing. It was clear from her attitude towards Turner, however, that she fully intended the Mysteron instructions to be carried out.

Captain Black knew that Peking Air Taxi’s Tokyo base had arrays of x-ray cameras built into its internal security system. For his masters the Mysterons to carry out their plan to “throw Harmony out of tune,” which meant publicly discredit Chan Kwan, Harmony Angel of Spectrum, before Nippon’s people, whose culture took honor and reputations very seriously, they needed to deceive the Earthmen working there into believing Harmony Angel was a Mysteron when actually she was not. If Captain Scarlet came there with her, deceiving them into believing he was still a Mysteron would be easy; the retro-matter of his body was impervious to Roentgen radiation. Deceiving them about Harmony Angel would be the real trick. Captain Black knew that in order to do this, he had to make the cameras, when scanning for Mysterons, show false positive readings for her. Hence he had to set up the internal security cameras for takeover. In order to do that, he had to set up their central control operator for Mysteron takeover. Doing that, as he saw quickly, would be a pushover. The operator, named Fujio Sato, was grossly fat, and he often dozed off in his chair.

Captain Black scratched Sato’s carotid artery with the doku-coated shaken he had used on Tomoko Kobayashi less than half an hour before. In the second of death, Sato’s face momentarily twisted in pain.

Twin rings of green light swept Sato’s corpse, then traced a spot next to his chair. Within seconds, an exact likeness of Sato stood next to Captain Black.

Fujio Sato was now under Mysteron control.

“These are your instructions from the Mysterons,” Captain Black said to Sato’s likeness. And he went on to outline what the Sato likeness had to do.

Three interceptors of the Spectrum Angel Flight were skyborne; Harmony Angel, serving as Angel Leader, was in the interceptor that headed the formation. With her, serving as wing-pilots, were Juliette Pointon, the flight's Destiny Angel, who flew the port interceptor, and Karen Wainwright, called Symphony Angel, who was flying the starboard interceptor. Behind their wedge formation was a Spectrum Passenger Jet, with Captain Blue at the controls; Captain Scarlet was navigating.

“I don’t remember ever having visited Japan,” Captain Blue was confessing to Captain Scarlet. “Do you?” He had a C38 Mysteron detector hanging around his neck.

“No, Captain Blue,” Captain Scarlet responded. “I may be a trained historian, but I’m afraid my knowledge of the history of Southeast Asia, sad to admit, is rather sketchy.”

“As sketchy as your memories of your activities as a Mysteron?”

“No--those memories are detailed enough now. Thanks to Black.” Captain Scarlet shuddered.

“Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten. He restored your Mysteron memories when you joined International Rescue earlier this year.”

“He’d hoped to break my will to keep fighting them, and he failed. It makes me wonder....”

“What?” This from Captain Grey, the third passenger of the jet.

“Why do they handle their powers so well...and me, who used to be one of them, so poorly?”

“Well, your report on Mysteron psychology in layman’s terms certainly poses a possibility.”

The retro-metabolic human smiled at the idea. He was a likeness of the original Captain Scarlet who retained the personality of the original. That original was a World Army-and-Air Force general’s son who had earned degrees in technology and mathematics, in addition to history, in the University of his native Winchester, England. Then he had become the “First Captain,” or valedictorian, of his graduating class of the West Point Military Academy, from which he had enlisted in the World Army-and-Air Force as a buck private in order to earn a WAAF officer’s commission the hard way. Volunteering for the Special Forces, he had risen quickly through the ranks of the WAAF to become the youngest colonel in its history and its top weapons expert. In all that time, before the Mysterons had re-created their exact likeness of him, he had been presented with plenty of opportunities to observe combat psychology as a layman in the science.

As a pro-Earthman Mysteron, the Captain Scarlet likeness had actually become the real Captain Scarlet. With his power of retro-metabolism, which had made him virtually indestructible, had come an increased curiosity about the way the discorporate aliens inhabiting the Valles Marineris area of Mars viewed comparatively more primitive Earthmen. He had recently written his speculations into a treatise that had become required reading for Spectrum senior staff.

“Well, I am a trained historian, true enough,” was all Captain Scarlet said aloud. “But I’m not that good a xeno-psychologist.”

The Mysteron likeness of Fujio Sato was working to prepare a computer program for the security cameras that would generate false positive readings of given individuals, and to gear that program for Chan Kwan. As he did this, the Mysteron likeness of Tomoko Kobayashi was at work on carrying out her own instructions from the Mysterons.

Captain Black watched them work, then nodded to each as they finished.

Later, in an employees’ lounge, he was explaining to the two employees his masters had taken over, “Even if Spectrum personnel do successfully evade our blockade, we will still be able to throw Harmony out of tune. The Prime Minister of Japan makes extensive use of this air-taxi service for much of his travel.” He unfolded a route timetable printed in both Japanese and English, and laid it out on the table in front of which the likenesses were also sitting. “You know his itinerary,” he said to the Kobayashi likeness. “Indicate the route that he is most likely to take to reach his current destination, according to his travel plans.”

Without a word, the Kobayashi likeness pointed to a series of numbers.

“The flight crew for that air taxi consists of three members,” Captain Black went on. “I will arrange for their takeovers.” He rose from his chair and walked over to a coffee machine. “Would you care for some coffee?”

Less than fifteen minutes later, three men in flight crew uniforms were drinking coffee Captain Black had offered them.

Half an hour later, twin rings of green light swept the doors to three recessed bunks on a wall of another lounge, inside which were the corpses of the flight crew members. They had taken naps on the bunks within the two hours before they were due on the flight deck. Thanks to a bland poison and a massive overdose of sleeping medicine Captain Black had brewed into the coffee, they would never awaken.

The same twin rings traced empty chairs in the lounge to bring the flight crew under Mysteron control, re-creating exact likenesses of the original flight crew members.

Captain Black entered with the Mysteron likenesses of Kobayashi and Sato. The flight crew likenesses were drinking coffee as though nothing were wrong. Something, of course, was VERY wrong. The Mysterons had taken over five employees of Chan Kwan’s old firm.

Of the six who were now seated in the lounge, only Turner spoke.

“Today,” he said in the deep slow voice of the Mysterons, “we will throw Harmony out of tune.”

Matsuo Tanaka was in conference with Emperor Matsuhiro. Their conversation was conducted in Japanese, the first language of both men, and Tanaka had his amanuensis--not a machine, but his own secretary--sitting nearby to transcribe it.

“I wonder if we should cancel our planned trip to Kyoto this afternoon, given the possible harm that the Mysterons can do to us or our honor,” Tanaka was saying.

“Matsuosan,” the Emperor retorted, “we cannot change plans at the last minute simply because we may fall victim to what a Mysteron can do. The Supekutoramu--” he used that phrasing to refer to Spectrum because both supekutoramu and bunkou both mean “spectrum” in Japanese, but to use bunkou would have been too vulgar for someone like him-- “can protect us against Mysterons; that’s what it does.” He smiled. “If it eases you, I would prefer to change my plans. But that we cannot do. The Mysterons, besides, will only harm us if it will harm your former student or her fellow Supekutoramu.”

“It will,” Tanaka said. “They do not announce an attack without making such an attack. I lost one of my good friends, the Director-General of the United Asian Republic, to what the Mysterons did.”

“Then we will have to see to it that Supekutoramu Ninja is on our flight with us. That is all.”

Tanaka and the amanuensis both bowed and left.

At the Tokyo base of Peking Taxi, Captain Scarlet, Captain Blue, Harmony Angel, and Captain Grey were all under drawn weapons and being led into the building at gunpoint. No sooner, however, were all four inside it, along with their armed escorts, than a series of alarms went off.

“That female Bunkou member is a Mysteron--hold her!” the burliest and tallest of their escorts said in Japanese.

“What did they just say, Harmony?” Captain Grey asked.

Harmony Angel’s voice was filled with horror when she answered. “They think I’m a Mysteron!”

“WHAT??”

The next moment, they were surrounded on all sides with drawn semi-automatic pistols.

The office of the Security Chief, Takashi Uchida, was next to that of the dispatcher.

Captain Blue had handed over his Mysteron detector to Chief Uchida. “Use it on Harmony only,” he said. “Captain Scarlet is exempted from having it used on him--even though I’m not allowed to explain why he is.”

“How do I use it?” Chief Uchida said in English.

“You know how to take pictures, don’t you?”

“Hai,” said