There it was, the Red Planet, just as Lowell had described it in his notebooks over a century ago. Lowell saw a dying planet kept alive by a planetwide network of irrigation canals. His findings had fired the imaginations of H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and other great chroniclers of the Mars that had in turn ignited Pagan's youthful dreams.

  Regrettably the Mars of canals and princesses and four-armed, green-skinned giants had evaporated with the Viking and Mariner probes and subsequent discoveries.

  It was too bad. Even at his mature age, Dr. Pagan would rather green Martians than red deserts. After all, there were red deserts on earth, too. Here in Arizona. And in Mongolia, where the Red Gobi had an uncannily distinct Martian feel to it-not that Dr. Pagan had ever been to the Red Gobi. There were no news cameras in the Red Gobi. He never went anywhere where there wasn't the possibility of face timeor at least good black ink.

  Though discredited, Lowell hadn't toiled in vain, Cosmo thought. If not for him, there would have been no "War of the Worlds" or Warlord of Mars to set Cosmo Pagan on the road to his red destiny. By that reasoning, Percival Lowell had not lived in vain.

  And it was Cosmo Pagan's deepest wish to one night see the phenomenon that had caused a great astronomer to believe he saw Martian canals.

  His cellular phone shrilled as he was drinking in the sight of Mars, and without taking his eyes from the eyepiece, he flipped it open and began speaking.

  "Dr. Cosmo Pagan, world-renowned authority on the universe and everything under the heavens."

  "Dr. Pagan, this is the Associated Press."

  "Would you like a quote?"

  "Exactly."

  "The universe is transcendent in its awesome greatness. An ocean of stars in a whirling cosmic whirlpool whirling about, oblivious to the paltry human concerns of us mere molecular bio-machines."

  "That's great, but I was looking for a specific quote."

  "Right now I am looking at the Red Planet, Marsseat of war, according to the ancient Romans. But to me it is a place of peace and scarlet tranquillity. Some day man will set foot on Mars, but for all its grandeur it is but the steppingstone to the greater, grander cosmos."

  The AP man cleared his throat and tried again. "Dr. Pagan, do you think Martians are behind the shuttle meltdown tonight?"

  "I wish..." he breathed. Then, catching himself, he blurted, "Meltdown? What shuttle?"

  "The Reliant was turned to molten metal not twenty minutes ago."

  "Wonderful," Pagan breathed.

  "What?"

  "Mars. It seems to be looking back at me. The north polar icecap looks like the cool wink of a painted concubine. No canals, though. Lowell saw canals. I'd love to see the canals he saw, even if that turned out to be just lichen patterns."

  "So you think the Martians theory has credence?"

  "I think," said Dr. Cosmo Pagan, "the universe loves me."

  "Say again?"

  "Every time I have a lull in my lecture itinerary or I'm between specials, the universe conjures up an event to perpetuate my name."

  The AP man grew tense of voice. "Dr. Pagan, I'd like a comment on the shuttle disaster."

  "I regret the loss of our brave astronauts' lives."

  "No astronauts died. It was a prelaunch accident."

  "Then perhaps it was for the best."

  "Sir?"

  "Do you know how much vile carcinogens one of those thundering monsters puts out? The noise pollution alone is enough to deafen the manatees in the Straits of Florida. Migratory birds are driven away from their natural flight paths. And that doesn't even take into account the damage to the ozone layer. Do you know that at the rate we're depleting the biomass, our polar icecaps are going to start melting, raising the ocean level everywhere? Spaceship Earth could go the way of dead Mars. For all we know, we earthlings are repeating history. Martian history."

  "I thought you were pro-space flight, Dr. Pagan."

  "I am pro-peaceful exploration of space. One missile. One probe. The shuttles require a main external fuel tank and two boosters. That's three times the noise, three times the pollution and for what? We're only filling the near heavens with junk that falls to earth and might hit somebody. They go 125 miles up. Hell, Chris Columbus went farther than that in a wooden sailing ship. The human tribe needs to look beyond our Earth-moon ghetto to Mars, then the better neighborhood of the Jovian planets, and ultimately Alpha Centauri and beyond. That's using space to our advantage."

  "One last question."

  "Go ahead."

  "Do you think the shuttle was destroyed by the same power that melted the BioBubble, and if so, why?"

  "Perhaps," Dr. Pagan said thoughtfully, "it has something to do with our thinning ozone layer. The way those shuttles tear through the ozone shield, it's a miracle we all don't have basal-cell scalp sarcoma."

  "Thanks, Dr. Pagan. That's just what I needed."

  "I'll send you a bill," Dr. Cosmo Pagan said smoothly. Hanging up, he exulted, "The universe loves me. It truly, truly does." Taking a last, wistful peek into the eyepiece, he sighed. "But I have eyes for only you, my scarlet hussy."

  IN CELEBRATION, FLORIDA, an always-running Compaq computer beeped twice, signaling an incoming e-mail message.

  Kinga Zongar heard it even in the early sleep of the sultry Florida night with the cold moonlight coming through her bedroom screens like cool fingers of silver and steel.

  Throwing off a scarlet satin cover, she strode nude to the system, whose color monitor splashed varicolored light against the sitting-room walls. Her long russet hair, brushed back from her high brow, fell back in a ponytail that swished with her every step.

  Accessing her e-mail file, she read the message in the Cyrillic language:

  To: AuntTamara@aol.com From: UncleVanya@shield.su.min Subject: Assignment Greetings from the Motherland. Consider yourself activated this date. Go now to Cape Canaveral, where an unknown force has reduced an American space shuttle to worthless, bubbling materials. This appears to be the same phenomenon which, as you may have read, similarly destroyed the BioBubble. Learn what you can. Report everything.

  Kinga erased the message from her system. She didn't know who Uncle Vanya was, other than the commissar of Shield-or whatever they were calling it this year. Neither mattered. Only her sacred duty to the Motherland.

  She dressed with brisk care, a demure maroon dress that bespoke casual professionalism. A notebook and press card completed her cover ensemble.

  It was amazing, Kinga thought as she claimed her blood-red Maxima GTE and sent it spinning out into the evening, how America allowed just anyone to obtain journalist credentials. Were journalists not de facto spies without portfolio? Yet this was how it was done in America.

  And since this was how it was done, this was how Kinga Zongar would do it.

  If it became necessary to resort to "wet measures," well, there were other slots in other newspapers for an expatriate Hungarian reporter, if Kinga the Bitch was forced to revert to type.

  Secretly she hoped it would come to that. It had been a long time since she had killed a man in the line of duty.

  Far too long, she thought, licking her very scarlet lips.

  Chapter 17

  Getting past the gate to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral was the easy part.

  The area was a crush of reporters doing stand-ups, supported by white satellite trucks and floodlights.

  Behind the gate, an eerie whitish exhalation arose from the spot where the shuttle Reliant had melted down like an ice-cream cone under withering sunlight.

  Remo and Chiun moved through the media throng as if they were two molecules slipping through a placer miner's pan.

  At the gate, there were two white-faced Air Force guards at a guard box.

  Remo presented himself and his ID. "Remo Cupper, NTSB. This is my assistant, Chiun."

  Chiun started to bow, then remembering his Western garments, nodded instead.

  "NTSB? What are you guys doing here?"

  "It was a transportation accident, right?" said Remo.

  "Technically."

  "Nobody can say NTSB isn't on the job, no matter where the trouble is," explained Remo.

  The two airmen exchanged dubious glances.

  "Let me kick this upstairs," said one. "Our orders are firm-keep all non-NASA personnel out."

  "Can't let you do that," said Remo, taking the telephone from his hand.

  The man stared at his empty hand as if doubting the evidence of his own eyes. His hand was still in clutch mode. It held only air and the vague memory of plastic contours. Yet he had gripped the handset tightly. He was sure it would be impossible to remove the handset without disturbing his grip. But there it was.

  The second airman sputtered, "What do you mean by this?"

  "It's not an investigation if the brass has a chance to cover this up," explained Remo.

  "Nobody's covering up anything. It's all over the-"

  "Just open the gate," said Remo, handing the phone to Chiun, who broke it in two and returned the pieces to the airman who was still trying to figure out the physics of Remo's telephone trick.

  "Very well, sir," the man said, handing over a pair of clip-on passes. "But you didn't have to break the phone."

  "Next time, don't try to cover for your bosses," retorted Remo.

  "Nor impede the wrathful agents of the NAACP," added Chiun as the gate rolled aside electronically.

  The press, seeing an opening, decided to take a run at the gate, figuring that once they were in, there would be too many of them to throw out.

  Remo and Chiun slipped in, and the guard threw the gate into fast reverse. A female reporter got her boobs caught in the closing gate and shrieked a protest that could be heard on the moon-if anyone up there had ears.

  This gave the others their opportunity. All the guards converged on the moving wall of press, and no one paid any attention to the pair of NTSB investigators who had been passed through.

  REMO AND CHIUN WALKED unnoticed to the accident site. If the BioBubble resembled a glass pancake, this was more like a metallic waffle. Chunks and lumps of unmelted matter protruded from the rehardened crawler that was now spread out like a stepped-on aircraft carrier.

  Amazingly they were unchallenged by the emergency crews and frantic blue-coated managers scurrying around. Some wore gas-and-particle-filter masks against the chemical fumes of the destroyed shuttle.

  The 165,000-pound space plane was no longer recognizable as the most ambitious feat of engineering ever accomplished by man. Remo recalled that shuttles were so complicated that it was a miracle every time one went up without a hitch. When they landed intact, it was considered another miracle.

  Personally, Remo thought, he would rather drive a Yugo against traffic in the Indy 500 than go up in one of those things, but he was risk averse, being only a professional assassin.

  "What do you think, Little Father? And don't say dragon."

  "I will not say dragon. But I am thinking dragon."

  "Don't even think it."

  "Too late. I am thinking it."

  A beefy-faced manager whose sweat had nothing to do with the humidity of the night noticed them and demanded to know who they were.

  Remo did the honors.

  The manager read the ID card and exploded, "NTSB? What the hell are you guys doing here?"

  "We came for the black box," Remo said in a measured voice.

  The manager looked perplexed for all of a minute.

  Remo could tell by the dull gleam in his eyes that he was middle management and had no idea if there was a black box, or whether the NTSB could legally lay claim to it if there was.

  This conclusion was confirmed by the man's next words.

  "I gotta take your request up with my immediate superior."

  "You do that," said Remo politely, knowing that his superior would take it to his superior and so on up the line to who knew how many redundant management layers.

  By the time a possible no thundered back down the chain of command, Remo figured it would be Christmas again.

  Moving among the packed NASA personnel, Remo flashed his NTSB ID card and asked repeatedly, "Anybody see the incident?"

  A fresh-faced technician in what Remo at first thought was an Izod smock but quickly realized that impression was merely the result of sneezing without benefit of a handkerchief said, "I did."

  "I want to hear all about it," Remo said sharply.

  "The transporter was-"

  "What transporter?"

  The man looked at the gargantuan pile of hardening metal and ceramic, and a dazed expression spread over his face.

  "It was incredible. The shuttle transporter is the largest piece of machinery of its type ever built. The shuttle was riding atop her. The most complicated machine ever built riding the biggest one ever constructed. And just like that, it was turned into solder."

  "What did it?" asked Remo.

  "Lord alone knows. I saw a cone of white light. It bathed the machine, then went away. The heat must have been fierce. Glass melted in the observation room. Glass doesn't melt easily, you know."

  "Lately it does," said Remo.

  The man went on. "The light evaporated, then came the pressure wave."

  "Yeah?"

  "It sounded like thunder. But it couldn't have been thunder. What I saw wasn't lightning. Not forked lightning, bolt lightning and certainly not ball lightning. I know lightning. It's one of our biggest concerns when we're taking the spacecraft out of the launch-assembly building."

  "Look like a ray to you?" asked Remo.

  "If it was a ray, it was the biggest ray ever generated."

  "Makes sense. The biggest ray to knock out the two biggest machines ever built, right?"

  Chiun nodded as if this made perfect sense to him.

  The technician's voice became hollow. "It was also as hot as the surface of the sun. We're finding black droplets we think are the shuttle's heat-resistant tiles. They're supposed to protect the orbiter from reentry heat and are designed to withstand temperatures up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. They came close to being sublimed. That means turned to gas."

  "Sounds hot," said Remo.

  "We're looking for any carbon-carbon from the nose and leading-edge wing insulation. Carbon-carbon will withstand 1,600 degrees. But so far, there's no trace."

  "Sounds superhot," said Remo.

  "You know," the technician said, looking up at the red dot that was Mars high in the Florida sky, "I got into the space business because I used to read a lot of science fiction when I was a kid. You grow up, you shake off a lot of wild notions. Space men. UFOs. All that foolishness. But after what I saw tonight, it all came back at me like that past fifteen years never happened. I look up at the stars now and I'm reminded how small we are and how insignificant. Makes a man shiver deep into his soul."

  "You shiver for both of us," returned Remo, "I have work to do."

  They left the technician staring up at Mars with his mouth hung half-open.

  "You will see that I am correct," intoned Chiun, examining the pile of mixed molten metals that had been the Reliant.

  "I will admit you're right when there's no other way to go."

  "Why stumble through the maze of doubt when the true way has been shown to you?"

  "I like doing things my way."

  "I give you my permission to stumble about blindly and confused. Meanwhile, I will stand here and guard against malevolent Martians."

  "Try to capture the next one alive, okay?"

  "If he does not force my hand," Chiun said, thin of voice.

  MOVING AWAY from the Master of Sinanju, Remo retreated to get a longer view of the situation. The air was sticky, and interior floodlights made the tall launch-assembly building down the marsh-bordered road look as if it were about to launch itself into orbit.

  From farther back, the shuttle was even more impressive somehow. What remained of it.

  Remo was thinking that something very, very powerful had done this when he almost bumped into one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.

  She was tall yet shapely. Her long hair reminded Remo of a chestnut mare the way it hung down to the small of her back in a long ponytail, twitching skittishly. The color of her intelligent eyes was mahogany. She filled out her dress exactly the way Remo thought a woman should.

  Remembering a promise he'd made to himself, Remo put on his most disarming smile and said, "What's a gorgeous girl like you doing in a place like this?"

  "I am not a girl," she said in a severe accent.

  "Woman. Sorry. The question stands."

  "I am journalist."

  "Remo Cupper, NTSB." He flashed his card.

  Cool interest made her intelligent eyebrows bunch together. "You are investigating this tragedy?"

  "Yeah."

  "Then I will consent to interview you. Even though you are impertinent."

  Remo frowned. He tried again. "Trade you an interview for a late dinner?"

  "I am here to work, not eat."

  "I meant dinner as in let's get to know each other."

  "I am here to work, not make new friends," the woman retorted.

  Remo blinked. Normally women didn't act this coolly toward him. He decided to take the direct approach. "Did I say friends? I really want to jump your bones."

  "I do not know this, please."

  "I want to kiss you all over."

  The woman made a disapproving face. "This does not appeal to me, thank you."

  "Suit yourself. But your interview is walking away." And Remo turned to go.

  "Wait. I am hasty. I will consent to have Beeg Mek with you."

  "What's that?"

  "Delicious American fast food."

  "You mean a Big Mac?"

  "Yes, we will share Beeg Mek and much information. It will be of mutual benefit to us."

  Remo shrugged. "It's a start."

  "It is the best I will do to accommodate you. What is your name, please?"

  "Remo."

  "I am Kinga Zongar."

  "Nice name for a-"

  "I am sometimes known as Kinga the Butch."

  "That explains it," said Remo.

  "Although I do not consider myself a butch," Kinga added.

  Remo blinked. "You mean bitch?"

  "Perhaps that is correct term. In my language it is szuka."