Disclaimer: The art of Get Smart is quite dear to my heart, but in its creation I hadn't a part.

"Max," said Agent 99 as she and her partner re-entered Control headquarters, "if none of our agents on the outside saw anyone leaving the building – that means whoever stole the retrogressor gun is still in here!"

"Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking, 99," said Smart grimly.

"And that means that the thief is probably planning..." 99 began, when Smart suddenly knelt down and pressed his ear against the wall.

99 blinked. "Max, what is it?"

"Footsteps," said Smart. "Someone on tiptoe, heading for the Chief's office."

99 paled. "The spy?"

"I'd bet my shoe-phone on it!"

Hastily, 99 pressed the sides of her bracelet and raised it to her mouth. "Chief!" she whispered urgently. "The thief who stole the retrogressor is heading for your office. Duck into the secret tunnel underneath your ficus, or you're done for!"

"Acknowledged, 99," came the Chief's voice. "Thanks for the warning."

99 lowered her wrist, and turned to her partner. "Max, we have to follow those footsteps," she said. "It could be our only chance to catch the spy!"

"Right!" said Smart, and pulled out his gun. "Follow me, 99! We'll nab that KAOS skunk, or I'm not Smart!"

The two agents crept along the corridor, their ears firmly pressed against the wall. "I think we're closing in on him, 99," Smart whispered. "He's in the hallway just around this corner."

"Do you want to use the pocket disintegrator to cut through the wall?" 99 whispered back.

"No, that would give him too much warning," said Smart. "At all costs, we must keep the element of surprise on our side."

With these sage words, he returned his attention to the corner ahead of him – just in time to see a gloved hand sticking out around it and pointing Professor Windish's electro-retrogressor gun directly at him. "Or, failing that, there's always the element of panic," he added.

"Nice try, Agent Smart," said a muffled voice from behind the wall. "Have a nice childhood." And the hand raised the gun to fire.

"Max, no!" 99 shouted, and, with the lightning speed of a trained Control operative, pounced on her partner from behind and knocked him to the ground. As the two of them fell, she could feel, for one brief instant, the warmth of a strange radiation on her forehead; then she hit the floor, and blackness overcame her.

When Smart sat up dizzily about half a minute later, the corridor was empty except for him and 99. The thief must have bolted while I was still dazed from the fall, he thought. Too bad I didn't see who it was.

He rolled over and nudged his partner. "99!" he hissed. "Are you all right?"

There was no answer, and he realized that she had been knocked out in the fall. Hastily, he reached into his sleeve, pulled out one of the Speedy-Revival Tablets that he always kept sewn inside his left cufflink, and slid it into her mouth. The effect, once the tablet had had a few seconds to dissolve, was immediate: 99's eyes flew open, and she sat up sharply and gazed around the corridor with the expression of a child in an unfamiliar place.

"99?" said Smart. "Something wrong?"

99 stared at him. "Who are you?" she said.

While Smart was struggling to find an answer to that question, she added a second one that was arguably even worse. "And where's my mommy? She was supposed to take me to the zoo this afternoon."

"Ah," said Smart. "Your mommy. Yes. Well, she's... she's not here right now." He saw now what had happened, of course: 99, loyal creature that she was, had taken a retrogressor ray for him. He'd always said he had the best partner at Control – though what he was going to do with her, now that the only kind of spying she knew anything about was the kind you did with your little eye, was a good question. "Tell you what, why don't I take you somewhere safe, and you can wait for her to get back."

"I'm not supposed to go places with strangers," said 99. "My mommy says someone might steal me. She says there are all kinds of bad people in the world."

"Well, she's right about that," Smart acknowledged. "But I'm not just a stranger, I'm... uh..." He hesitated for a moment, trying to think of a good reason why his partner ought to trust him. Then inspiration hit. "I'm a policeman," he said. "Your mommy would let you go somewhere with a policeman, wouldn't she?"

99 looked dubious. "How come you don't have a uniform?" she said.

"Because I'm a secret policeman," said Smart. "Here, I'll prove it." He reached into his pocket, pulled out one of his business cards, and handed it to 99. "What do you think of that?"

99 looked down at the card, and scrunched up her face in childish concentration. "'Ar-nold Kit-mus'," she sounded out laboriously. "'Fur-ri-er to...'"

"No, no, no," said Smart. "Here, like this." He took the card from her and raised it to the light. "Now try."

"'Max-well Smart'," 99 read. "'A-gent Eight-Six'. Oh, so you're a spy."

"That's right," said Smart proudly. "A secret agent, working tirelessly in the service of our country so little girls like you can sleep peacefully at night, unmolested by the forces of nastiness."

99 looked properly impressed. "Are you a good spy?" she said.

"Am I a good spy?" Smart repeated. "Would you believe that, only last month, I single-handedly saved Washington, D.C., from nuclear annihilation?"

99 frowned. "I dunno, that's kinda hard to believe," she said.

"Oh," said Smart. "Well, would you believe Pittsburgh?"

"I don't think so," said 99 with a grin.

"How about Hay Springs, Nebraska?"

99 laughed aloud. "You're funny, Mr. Smart!" she said. "I like you!"

Smart smiled. "And I like you, Ni–" He caught himself. "Uh... say, what is your name, anyway? Just your first name," he added quickly, as the who-are-you-trying-to-kidnap look came back into 99's eyes. "I have to call you something, don't I?"

99 stared at him for a long moment, then said, "Celia."

"Celia," Smart repeated thoughtfully. "I like that."

99 – Celia – smiled. "It was my grandma's name," she said. "She died a couple months before I was born, and Mommy and Daddy decided I should be named after her."

"Well, isn't that nice," said Smart, who had himself been named, at a mad-scientist father's insistence, after the discoverer of electromagnetism. (He had a sister named Tesla.) "Well, come with me, Celia. I'll take you to our Chief's office; it's just down the hall here."

The Chief glanced up as the two of them came. "Ah, 86, 99," he said. "I want to thank you again for your quick work in alerting me about the thief. I heard his footsteps over my head while I was hiding in the escape tunnel; I'm pretty sure he was looking for me. If it hadn't been for you two..."

"Oh, don't mention it, Chief," said Smart. "We got lucky, that's all." ("Celia, don't play with that," he added in a whisper, as his partner started toying with the barometer on the office wall.)

("Sorry," said Celia, folding her hands again.)

"Well, just the same, I owe you something," said the Chief. "If you hadn't been inside at that moment, I'd be reliving the third grade right now – and I hated the third grade."

"Really?" said Smart.

The Chief nodded. "Mrs. Ruud's class," he said, and shuddered. "I tangled with a KAOS agent once who reminded me of her. Didn't sleep for a week afterwards."

"I like my third-grade teacher," Celia commented. "She always gives me a gold star when I get an A on my math quiz."

The Chief blinked. "What?"

Hastily, Smart pointed his hand at Celia's temple and made a firing-gun gesture. To his relief, the Chief appeared to get the point. "Oh, I see," he said, and smiled paternally. "So you're pretty good at math, are you, Celia?"

Celia shrugged. "Okay, I guess," she said. "It's not my favorite, though. What I really like is in history, when Miss Beckert has us make paper dolls of the patriots and things. I think that's really fun."

"Do you, now?" said the Chief. "Well, I'll tell you what. I think I have some scissors and some nice, thick paper here (here he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a sheaf of memo sheets and a pair of Ginghers), so why don't you sit down and make me a Boston Tea Party while I have a little talk with Mr. Smart here?"

"Okay," said Celia agreeably.

She took the paper and scissors and settled herself down underneath the Chief's ficus, and the two adult-minded Control operatives moved over to the office doorway. "I didn't know you were so good with kids, Chief," Smart commented.

The Chief nodded. "Yes, if I hadn't gone into covert operations, I think I would have made a good nursery-school teacher," he said. "But that's not important right now. What did you plan to do with 99?"

"That's a very good question," said Smart with a frown. "I don't suppose her mother happens to be in town right now?"

"Idaho," said the Chief.

"Mm."

"And even if she was in Washington," the Chief added, "there's no guarantee 99 would recognize her. Imagine if your mother showed up in front of you, twenty years older than the last time you saw her."

"Well, there were some evenings when she did," commented Smart, whose mother had had something of a reputation as a town lush.

The Chief sighed. "Max," he said, "just because you were scarred as a child, that doesn't mean 99 has to be."

Smart nodded. "Right, right, of course. Sorry about that, Chief."

"I'll tell you what, Max," the Chief continued, checking his watch. "The delegates should be arriving right about now; if you'll go and meet with them – make my excuses, tell them I'll be there shortly – I'll arrange to have someone look after 99 until she recovers."

"You got it, Chief," said Smart, turning to leave the room. "Oh, just one thing," he added, turning back to the Chief. "How did you know 99's real name?"

The Chief stared at him. "I know all your names," he said. "I'm the Chief."

Smart, startled, paused to consider this. "That's right!" he said. "You are, aren't you?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Well, keep up the good work, Chief," said Smart, slapping his superior on the back. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a mole to catch."

He strode purposefully from the room, and the Chief rolled his eyes and turned back to his retrogressed agent. "Quite a fellow, that Mr. Smart, isn't he, Celia?" he said. "I sometimes wonder what he was like at your age. Not that different, I should..."

His voice trailed off; he was speaking to an empty room. Not fully empty, of course: there was still furniture, and artwork, and his private collection of deceased KAOS agents' sidearms – but of sultry, dark-haired secret agents with the minds of schoolgirls, not a trace.

"Celia?" he said, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Celia, where are you?"

"I'm sorry the Chief couldn't be here to greet you, gentlemen," said Smart, as he led the delegation to the conference room, "but he had some minor business to attend to. It seems there's been a slight security breach here at Control, and..."

"Security breach?" one of the delegates repeated, his already high-pitched voice rising half an octave.

"Oh, nothing for you to be concerned about, Dr. de Quadros," said Smart soothingly. "Just a minor internal matter. There's no reason for anyone to be the least bit nervous or... aah!"

The yelp with which he ended his sentence was perhaps not perfectly calculated to reassure the delegation, but he can hardly be blamed for that. When one sees one's partner, whom one thought one had left in the care of one's superior officer, climbing out of an air vent to one's immediate left, one must have particularly steady nerves not to violently express one's surprise.

"Hi, Mr. Smart!" said Celia brightly.

"Something wrong, Agent 86?" said Professor McCroskey, noticing the consternated expression on Smart's face.

Smart took a deep breath. "Uh... just a moment, gentlemen," he said, and took the once and future Agent 99 aside. "Celia, what are you doing here?" he whispered.

Celia shrugged. "Just exploring," she said. "When I sat down underneath that plant in your Chief's office, I must have joggled a lever or something, 'cause this door opened up in the pot with a secret passageway behind it. I just thought I'd see where it went."

Even in his distress, Smart had to admire her instincts. Born to be an investigator, he thought. Aloud, however, he said only, "Celia, you shouldn't be wandering around like that. This is a dangerous place for little girls like you."

Celia's face hardened. "You think I'm a scaredy-cat, don't you?" she said.

Smart sighed. "No, Celia, I don't..."

"Well, I'm not," said Celia. "I watched Dracula all the way through with my daddy last month, and I didn't have nightmares at all afterwards. Well, except for the one where my breakfast cereal came to life, but I don't think that was..."

"Celia," said Smart patiently, "this isn't about make-believe things like Dracula. There is an enemy spy in this building who's carrying a dangerous weapon, and he's planning to use it on the men behind us."

Celia frowned, and glanced at the delegation. "Why would he want to do that?" she said.

"Because..." Smart began, and then stopped. Why did the thief want to use the retrogressor on the delegates? Its effects weren't permanent, Professor Windish had made that clear – and what could be the use of turning six brilliant scientists into children for two or three hours? At most, it could just delay the conference...

A light-bulb went on inside Smart's head. Of course, that was just what it was supposed to do. For some reason, it was important to KAOS that one of the delegates not return home at his usual time that evening, and so they had instructed their agent inside Control to ensure that the conference was delayed by a few hours. Then, when Professor Windish had announced his completion of the prototype retrogressor gun, the spy had realized that here was the most effective mechanism possible to achieve that result.

But, then, in order to frustrate KAOS's plans...

Smart whirled back around to face the delegates. "Gentlemen," he said, "my partner here informs me that the Chief has postponed the conference until this time tomorrow. Permit me to escort you back to your vehicles."

There was an immediate outcry among the delegates. "Now see here, Agent 86!" said Professor Grek. "I missed an important lecture on quantum chromodynamics to be here today; if you're now going to tell me..."

"I'm sorry, Professor," said Smart firmly, "but it's for your own good. The safety of our nation may depend upon it."

Professor Grek snorted. "Right, sure," he said. "Every time the government snatches the rug out from under your feet, they tell you it's for the good of the nation."

"Is this because of that security breach you mentioned, Agent 86?" said Dr. de Quadros timorously.

"It's, uh, related, yes," said Smart. "Now, please, gentlemen, let's not have any trouble."

As the disgruntled scientists turned around and began to head back the way they had come, Smart turned to Celia, who was staring wide-eyed at him. "You know, Celia, you're a very smart girl," he said. "I think you're going to grow up into a fine woman someday."

Celia smiled shyly. "Um, thanks," she said. "So you don't mind that I wandered away from your Chief?"

"No, not at all," said Smart. "Though you should probably go back to him now; I'll bet he's wondering where..."

Then it occurred to him: what if the thief tried again? After all, the parking lot was seven secret entrances up from here – certainly long enough for a determined KAOS plant to intercept and waylay them. In which case, it might not be a bad thing to have an extra card up one's sleeve.

"Say, Celia," he said, "did you ever get into fights with other kids? You know, on the playground or something?"

Celia blushed, apparently thinking that Smart was attempting to gauge the extent of her natural naughtiness. "Well, yeah, I guess so," she said. "Not that I meant to, but, you know, sometimes..."

"Good," said Smart. "What's your best move?"

As Smart led the delegates to the elevator, he turned a corner and found himself face to face with a severe, dark-haired woman in a lab coat. "Oh!" he said. "Hello, Alma. Didn't see you there."

Alma Sutton, nonetheless, seemed to be the more surprised of the two. "86, what are you doing here?" she said. "I thought you were watching the conference room to make sure that no-one molested the delegates."

"Oh, that won't be necessary," said Smart. "The conference has been moved to tomorrow. These gentlemen need to get home and spend some time with their families."

Alma gave him a long, narrow look, then reached into her purse and pulled out the retrogressor gun. "No, they don't," she said.

Smart's eyes widened, and he crooked his little finger behind his back. "So you're the spy," he said.

"That's right," said Alma. "And if you don't want to take the delegates back to the conference room, I'm sure I can dispatch of them just as easily right here – and you, too."

"Just out of curiosity, Alma," said Smart, "what's so important about one of these delegates, that KAOS can't let him go home until late this evening?"

Alma stared at him for a moment, then seemed to decide that it would do no harm to tell him. "You see Dr. Khorey there?" she said, gesturing with the retrogressor to the elderly, white-bearded delegate. "He's working on a device that could fundamentally alter the balance of power in Western Europe. We'd rather he not be home when we break in and steal his plans."

"A-ha," said Smart. "And that's why you planned to retrogress the delegation. You knew that Control would simply postpone the conference until all the delegates recovered, since canceling it would mean surrendering to KAOS intimidation."

"Exactly," said Alma. "But now that you've anticipated me, I'll have to go with Plan B – B for 'Bye-bye, Agent Smart'." And she raised the retrogressor to Smart's head and cocked it to fire –

– and Celia, who at Smart's signal had cut around a neighboring corridor and crept up behind Alma while Smart had delayed her with his question, pounced on the KAOS spy and bit her on the left wrist.

Alma yelped, and kicked wildly behind her; her shoe collided with Celia's knee, and the latter was knocked to the ground. The distraction, however, had enabled Smart to seize hold of Alma's other hand; with one quick motion, he twisted her wrist just enough to loosen her grasp on the retrogressor, snatched it from her hand, and fired.

Alma's eyes went glassy for a moment; then she blinked, and smiled sweetly up at Smart. "Hello," she said. "Are you my new teacher?"

Fortunately, Smart didn't have to formulate an answer to this question, as a security guard appeared at that moment. "Something wrong, Agent 86?" he said. "I thought I heard some sort of struggle." He glanced down at Celia, who was sitting on the floor with tears welling up in her eyes, and added, "What's the matter with Agent 99?"

"Oh, she's just had a rough day," said Smart.

"Crybaby, crybaby," Alma taunted.

Celia scowled up at her and stuck out her tongue.

Smart coughed. "Listen, Fred," he said to the guard, "why don't you take little Alma here to a nice, maximum-security playpen? Then, when you're done with that, you can contact the Chief and have him send a detachment of agents to Dr. Khorey's house. Tell him Agent 86 got a tip-off from our friends at KAOS."

As the bewildered guard led Alma away, Smart turned on his heel and addressed the staring delegates. "Gentlemen," he said, "the conference has now been moved back to today. Please head toward the conference hall; I will be with you shortly."

Several of the delegates opened their mouths; then, deciding that protest was useless against this level of eccentricity, they closed them again, and the delegation as a whole turned and headed back down the hall.

Smart knelt down, and addressed his partner. "Celia, are you all right?" he said. "Where were you hurt?"

Celia sniffled, and pointed to her knee; Smart raised her skirt, and saw a nasty bruise beginning to well up where the heel of Alma's shoe had collided with Celia's leg. Considering some of the injuries the two of them had sustained, it wasn't that bad, but he supposed it felt different to an untrained eight-year-old.

"Hmm, that's too bad," he said. "Anything I can do?"

Celia hesitated, then said shyly, "You could kiss it."

Smart blinked. "Kiss it?" he repeated.

Celia nodded. "That's what Mommy does when I get a boo-boo on my knee."

Smart swallowed. "Okay, then," he said. "Fine." It wasn't something he had planned to do when he woke up that morning, but flexibility was the hallmark of a good Control agent.

He took a deep breath (which was a bad idea, given how much of his partner's perfume he inhaled in the process), and slowly lowered his lips to Celia's knee – and promptly received a judo-trained slap right across the lower mandible.

"86, what are you doing?" 99 demanded, shocked to the core of her being. "Have you forgotten all your agency protocol?"

The correct answer, at that precise moment, would have been "Yes". As a matter of fact, Smart had forgotten almost everything else he knew, as well; the only coherent thought in his mind, amid the surging waves of pain, was that Professor Windish might have had the decency to add some sort of warning signal when the retrogression period was ending.

"What are we doing here, anyway?" 99 added, looking around the hallway in puzzlement. "The last thing I remember is the thief pointing the retrogressor gun at you, and then..." Her eyes widened as she realized. "Oh!" she exclaimed, putting a hand to her mouth. "Oh, Max, I'm sorry!"

"Thassarah, Sheelee," Smart mumbled.

"What?"

With an effort, Smart wrenched his jaw back into place. "I said, that's all right, 99."

"Oh." 99 frowned. "Funny, it sounded like..." She paused, and shook her head. "Well, never mind. Did you catch the thief?"

Smart nodded. "Yes, that's all taken care of," he said. "And you were a great help, by the way."

99 blinked. "I was?" she said. "How did I help?"

"Well, let's just say that your fresh perspective was just what we needed," said Smart. "Out of the mouths of babes, you know."

"Oh," said 99, mystified but pleased. "Well, that's good."

Smart nodded, and checked his watch. "4:34," he said. "We've only delayed the conference by four minutes. Let me just go and open up the conference room; then, if the Chief gives us the okay, we can clock out and go home early."

"Can't we stop for ice cream first?" said 99.

Smart whirled his head around. "What?"

Then he saw the mischievous smile on his partner's face, and rolled his eyes. "Very funny, 99," he said.

"I thought so," said 99.

Smart shook his head, stood up, and reached for his ring of keys. Then he frowned. "Uh... say, 99," he said. "You don't happen to remember which of these unlocks the conference-room door, do you?"