"That was Travis 'Red' Rust, being carried off by three men purporting to be from the government. To recap, Mr. Rust snapped what may be the single most important photograph in the chain of events that began with the BioBubble disaster and progressed to the Reliant catastrophe. Just moments before the Reliant collapsed into a bubbling metallic mass, an ominous word appeared in the night sky. Consisting of three letters, two seemingly in our Roman alphabet, but the middle one looking like a reversed N. "

  The camera came in for a tight shot of the broadcaster's serious, sweat-dappled face.

  "Are these acts of sabotage warnings from a hostile intelligence from beyond our own atmosphere?"

  "Rubbish," said Smith, starting to reach for the hot-key that would restore normal computer functions.

  Then tape was played of the photo under discussion.

  Harold Smith froze. His gray eyes took in the three letters. They blinked. His firm mouth, normally compressed in concentration, made a round, bloodless hole just before his jaw dropped on slack muscles.

  "My God!" he croaked.

  Blindly Smith reached for the red telephone that connected him with the White House.

  THE PRESIDENT of the United States was conferring with his national-security advisers when the call came in.

  When he had first taken over the Oval Office and the previous Chief Executive had explained about CURE and the hotline, he said that he had set up a baby monitor in the Lincoln Bedroom two flights above so that when the red telephone rang, he would know it if he were anywhere in the White House.

  And the outgoing President had surrendered the portable baby monitor, saying, "It's your worry now."

  The thing was ringing now, and the President said, "Excuse me. Been sitting here so long, I gotta pee up a storm."

  His advisers were working the phones, trying to discover which-if any-agency was kidnapping journalists on live TV, and hardly noticed. They were pale and haggard of face and baggy of eye. The office TV was flickering in its cabinet niche.

  The tiny elevator took the Commander in Chief to the red telephone, which was still ringing. He snapped up the handset.

  "Go ahead, Smith."

  "Mr. President. There is a strange report on Fox News."

  "Yeah. I heard. Some goofball Enquirer photographer."

  "I do not think so."

  "They're talking up Martians."

  "The letters are not Martian, Mr. President. They are Cyrillic."

  "What's that?"

  "The letters of the Russian alphabet devised by Saint Cyril in the ninth century. They are based on the Greek alphabet, so there are many letters in common."

  Smith's voice was low and urgent and more than a little hoarse. The President decided to let him explain.

  "They show three letters," Smith continued. "M, a backward N, and a P."

  "Yes?"

  "In Cyrillic Russian, these letters are pronounced meer. "

  "How do you get meer out of 'MNP'?"

  "The backward N is pronounced double E. The M is equivalent to our M. But the P is actually an R. "

  "I'm with you so far."

  "Transliterated from the Russian, 'MNP' becomes 'MIR.' "

  "Mir, Mir..."

  "The word means 'Peace,'" supplied Smith.

  The President's voice brightened. "That's good, isn't it?"

  "Mir is the name of the Russian space station orbiting the earth even as we speak."

  "Uh-oh," muttered the President. "Are you saying the Russians are attacking our space program?"

  "I am saying that in the instant before the Reliant was obliterated, the Russian word for 'peace,' the name of their space station, appeared very high in the sky over the target area," said Harold Smith in a patient but tight voice. "No more, no less."

  "Oh, man," the President groaned. "I think I'd rather it be the Martians."

  "There are no Martians," Harold Smith said testily.

  "I wouldn't be so sure of that," the President confided.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I was watching the Fox telecast when those three goons claiming to be from Washington came and hauled that photographer off. We've checked with CIA, NSA, DoD, everyone I could think of. They all disavow sending any agents."

  "I fail to follow."

  The President lowered his voice to a hoarse hush. "Before Rust was dragged off, he was talking about men in black."

  "That term is not one I am familiar with," Smith admitted.

  "Men in black are these mysterious guys who go around confiscating UFO evidence. Some say they're CIA. Others that they're Air Force." The Chief Executive's voice dropped lower. "A lot of people think they're really space aliens."

  "I trust you do not believe the latter theory," Smith said thinly.

  "A smart President doesn't rule anything in or out when dealing with national-security issues. Especially one who watches 'The X -Files' faithfully."

  "I will look into the Russian aspects of this," Smith said unhappily.

  "How?"

  "If necessary, I will send my people to Russia."

  "I can't believe the Russians would attack us like this. And why advertise themselves?"

  "I do not know, but I take some of their recent space activity as very suggestive."

  "You mean that shuttle launch last month?"

  "Yes. It was strange that they reactivated their shuttle program. Buran 1 was retired after one unmanned orbital flight in 1988. Buran 2 orbiter was placed in storage years ago and never flown until now."

  "It was a colossal joke. The thing's so unsafe they don't dare send up cosmonauts in it."

  "To the contrary, Mr. President. The fact that the Buran could be launched and returned to Earth safely by robot is an advantage over U.S. shuttle technology."

  "None of this computes, Smith. Russians or Martians. Why would Martians attack us? We never attacked them."

  "I will get back to you," said Harold Smith, disconnecting.

  AT FOLCROFT, Smith searched the net for some link or database that would enable him to fix space station Mir's orbital position at the time of the Reliant disaster. He had a fling it wasn't going to be an easy task, so he called up his best brute-force search engine, set it to autosearch U.S. military data banks and moved on to other tasks.

  The phone rang not an hour into this process.

  It was Remo.

  "Smith. We're at a Holiday Inn near Kennedy. Looks like the same thing zapped the Reliant that popped the BioBubble. But there's no telling what it is except very, very hot. It turned the shuttle's tiles to tar."

  "It may be a Russian operation," Smith said.

  "Where do you get that?"

  "A photographer captured the Cyrillic word for 'peace' in the sky the instant before the explosion. That is the name of the Russian space station circling up there."

  "Isn't it a peaceful research station?" said Remo.

  "That is the story. But remember that Mir was launched under the old Soviet system. And it recently attempted to dock with the Russian version of the shuttle."

  "Last time that thing went up, they deployed a doomsday device."

  "Yes. The Sword of Damocles. You and Chiun dealt with that. There is reason to believe the Buran carried a new doomsday device to Mir."

  "They'd have to be crazy to attack us."

  "Facts do not fit the circumstances completely. I want you and Chiun to stand by."

  "Okay. But I have a hot date."

  "Excuse me?"

  "A date. You know, dinner and-"

  "With whom?"

  "Her name's Kinga Zongar. She's a reporter with the Orlando Sentinel."

  "I disapprove," said Smith.

  "Disapprove afterward. I don't think I'm going to get anywhere with her."

  "Allow me to run a background check."

  "On my date?"

  "It is a wise precaution."

  "Save it. I like surprises," said Remo, who then hung up.

  Smith returned to his multitasking. It was going to be a long night, and he expected nothing to make sense until dawn at the earliest.

  Chapter 20

  "It's the Russians," said Remo, hanging up.

  "I told you she was a Russian," spat Chiun.

  "I am Hungarian," Kinga said, an edge creeping into her cultured voice.

  "Not her. I just finished talking to Smith. Someone snapped a photo of the shuttle just before it blew. The Russian letters for Mir were up in the sky."

  "What is this!" Kinga flared.

  "It's on TV, according to our boss," Remo told her.

  Kinga turned on the Holiday Inn TV without asking and flipped the channels until she got a report that held her attention.

  "All America is asking one question-are these letters in the Martian alphabet?" a newscaster was saying. "If so, did actual Martians barge into this studio and haul off the only eyewitness to their handiwork on earth?"

  "If that was true," said Remo, "they'd have hauled your butt out of the room, too."

  "Hush," said Kinga, raising the volume until both Remo and Chiun winced from the sensory overload.

  Remo confiscated the clicker and lowered the volume.

  The broadcaster was saying, "Here again is the world-exclusive photograph that is sending chills up and down the spines of Fox viewers everywhere."

  Everyone watched. The screen showed a starsprinkled sky and the distinct white configuration of bizarre letters.

  "It is Russian," said Chiun.

  "Of course it is Russian," said Kinga. "It means 'Peace.' "

  "That's the space-station name," said Remo.

  "Space station Mir is not responsible for these events," Kinga said heatedly.

  "How would you know?" Remo asked.

  Kinga said, "It is inconceivable otherwise."

  "You are very positive for a Hungarian," said Chiun, drawing near.

  "Easy, Chiun," Remo warned.

  Chiun inclined his shiny head in Kinga's direction. "I will grant you the privilege of interrogating this Russian."

  Remo stepped between Kinga and the TV and folded his lean bare arms. He was facing Kinga, his dark eyes intent. "What makes you so sure the Russians aren't behind this?" he asked.

  "It is illogical. If Mir is sending down death rays, why would they advertise their complicity by painting the sky with their own name?"

  "Maybe it's a computer glitch."

  "Pish! Mir is not designed to flash its name from orbit."

  "Only a Russian would possess such knowledge, Remo," Chiun said pointedly.

  "Stay out of this, Little Father," Remo said evenly.

  "These facts are commonly available. I am only stating the obvious." Kinga stood up. "I must go now."

  "What about our date?"

  "I will take rain check. I must file story with my newspaper."

  "We're not done yet," said Remo.

  "We are done with you," said Chiun, handing Kinga her purse.

  She took it quickly. "Thank you. I must go now."

  "Goodbye," said Chiun.

  Remo started to reach out for Kinga, but the Master of Sinanju deflected his hand with a hard blocking wrist.

  After she had gone, Remo confronted the Master of Sinanju. "Why'd you let her just go like that?"

  "For two reasons. She is not interested in you the way you are in her."

  "I don't know how interested I am in her. She's different from most other women."

  "And I have her wallet," added Chiun, producing a kid wallet from up his sleeve.

  Remo took it.

  Inside there was a driver's license, giving an address in Celebration, Florida.

  "You figure we should follow her?" Remo asked Chiun.

  "It is devious, but we are dealing with a devious person."

  "I didn't see any deviousness in her at all. She was perfectly direct. Too direct, maybe."

  "She did not throw herself at your feet."

  "So?"

  "Perhaps because she is not attracted to you."

  "I never met a woman who wasn't attracted to me."

  "Perhaps because she is not a woman of this world," suggested Chiun.

  "Oh, come off it. A moment ago, you were saying she was a Russian, when she's only Hungarian."

  "I said she smelled like a Russian. But her features are Magyar."

  "Meaning?"

  Chiun's eyes grew hooded of lid. "Perhaps she is a Martian who wears an imperfect mask."

  Remo rolled his eyes. "Look, let's see what we find at her place."

  "Be prepared to weep if you love this woman."

  "I don't love anyone," Remo growled.

  "That is regrettably true."

  "I didn't mean you, Little Father."

  "It is too late to call back the canard," said the Master of Sinanju, breezing out the door one step ahead of his pupil.

  Chapter 21

  In Cancun's Diamond Resort Playacar Hotel, the occupant of room 33-D sat nervously on the edge of the rumpled king-size bed, his laptop balanced on his hairy-legged lap, his eyes staring at the room TV, which was tuned to CNN. Moonlight streamed in through the half-closed curtains.

  On the screen, a steely-eyed anchor sat with a graphic floating beside his silvery pompadour. The graphic showed a starry sky against which floated three letters: "MNp."

  The newscaster was saying, ". . . obviously a hoax inasmuch as the purported alien letters are of earthly origin."

  "I don't believe it," the man on the bed said.

  "A hoax so shoddily constructed that the middle consonant was flopped," the newscaster added.

  "Thank God thank God thank God for flopping."

  The graphic was replaced by a shot of the shapeless blob of space-age metals and ceramics that was once a U.S. space shuttle.

  "At the Kennedy Space Center, NASA officials remain tight-lipped about the loss of the Reliant, which jeopardizes the International Space Station, whose first components were scheduled to fly on the Reliant next year and will not be completed until the year 2001."

  "Tough. Build another shuttle."

  "With us now, by satellite from his private observatory, is renowned astronomer and exobiologist, Dr. Cosmo Pagan of the University of Arizona's Center for Exobiological Studies. Dr. Pagan, what motive would anyone have for destroying a U.S. space shuttle?"

  Dr. Pagan appeared on one side of the split screen, his face sober, his voice sonorous, his speaking cadence strange, the accents falling on improbable syllables and words.

  "Brad, we cannot rule out an asteroid strike. A small impactor, not a Tunguska-size bludgeon. Otherwise, we would have lost Florida, and not an unimportant shuttle. You see, striking asteroids pack the punch of a nuclear device. Recently we sky watchers have begun to classify them, threat-wise. They include the aforementioned ten-megaton Tunguskas, hundred-megaton regional bludgeons capable of obliterating a continent, hundred-gigaton, hemisphere-demolishing small extinctors, and the Tyrannosaurus rex of asteroids, the great extinctors."

  "How serious is this threat?"

  "Quite small. We can expect a ten-megaton impact once every century. So this event, coming ninety years after Tunguska, is about on schedule."

  "Earlier in the day, you were quoted by AP as pointing to the ozone layer."

  "An ozone-layer rupture is also a possibility," said Dr. Pagan.

  "You say this, but the phenomenon appeared in two highly localized spots thousands of miles apart. How would an ozone hole account for both events?"

  "Perhaps we are looking at a floating hole in Earth's ozone shield," Dr. Pagan said without skipping a beat.

  "In other words, you really don't know?"

  "I know the possibilities. The universe is ruled by mathematical possibilities. Billions upon trillions upon zillions of possibilities. I am merely enumerating them. I am a scientist, not a seer."

  "Pick a damn theory and stick with it!" the occupant of room 33-D railed at the unheeding screen.

  "I see," said the CNN anchor. "Dr. Pagan, let's address the question of sabotage. Who would profit from the shuttle's destruction?"

  "Besides my career, you mean?"

  The laptop beeped, and the occupant of room 33-D looked down at his liquid-crystal screen.

  "You have mail!" the system was flashing.

  Calling it up, the man read quickly as the singsong voice of Dr. Cosmo Pagan evaded the question artfully.

  To: RM@qnm.com From: R Subject: New problem Last-quarter report is out, and firm lost big. Heads are rolling. Upper management is on our backs for a progress update on ParaSol. And they're looking for you for stockholder-impact report.

  "Damn," said the man in 33-D.

  He pecked out a reply.

  To: R From: RM@qnm.com Subject: Re: New problem Do they know where I am?

  He hit Send and went back to watching Dr. Pagan, who had somehow gotten on the subject of comets.

  "A comet is nothing more than a dirty snowball locked in a perpetual orbit around our mundane sun. Comets rarely strike Earth. But asteroid strikes are very common. A great extinctor created the Chicxulub crater in Yucatan, which threw up so much obscuring dust it blocked out the sun and set off the eco-chain reaction that killed the late, lamented dinosaurs. I would be more concerned with a nameless asteroid landing on Washington than Hale-Bopp or some future comet that's merely booming by our planet."

  "Shut the eff up," the occupant of room 33-D snarled. "Do you want the board to hear you?"

  The reply from research and development was succinct: "Unknown."

  Then the system flashed the new-mail signal, and it popped up automatically.

  To: RM@qnm.com From: Evelyn@qnmxom Subject: Mr. Gaunt Mr. Gaunt asked me to request that you make yourself available for early-morning meeting at your hotel. He is en route.

  "Shit! That pencil-necked bean-counter is coming here. What do I do? What do I do?"

  On CNN, Dr. Cosmo Pagan was into his biography.

  "I owe it all to Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. G. Wells and Ray Bradbury. They all wrote about Mars. Not the Mars that's up there now but the Mars of imagination. The Mars of the human spirit. Someday soon, lowly man will walk on the Red Planet, and that day will be a glorious one. Let me urge NASA to launch a crash Mars-colonization program before mankind succumbs to the next great extinctor."