"Ridiculous!"

  "Both theories are ridiculous. But the two nations are so used to pointing the finger of blame at one another, all it will take for a global face-off to commence is one man giving the launch order."

  "My God! Could the Soviets be doing that now?"

  "Probably. And they are no longer the Soviets."

  "But they're still the Great Bear of the North. And that means I'd better get NORAD up to speed."

  Harold Smith's lemony voice was resigned. "You would be derelict in your duty if you did not, Mr. President."

  The Chief Executive's naturally hoarse voice turned to gravel. "When I took the oath of office, I thanked my lucky stars that I had become President in the post-Cold War period."

  "There are no eras that are not dangerous, Mr. President."

  "Keep me abreast. I mean it this time. I have to make a painful call."

  "Good luck, Mr. President," said Harold Smith.

  WITHIN THE HOUR, America's nuclear arsenal was placed on the highest state of readiness: Defcon One.

  This was not lost on the Kremlin, who then ordered their Strategic Rocket Force to go to the next state of readiness. High Red.

  When informed that there was no higher or redder state of readiness above the one in which they had already been placed, the president of Russia belched and said, "I will get back to you on this quandary ...."

  And the planet Earth spun on while, orbiting it, a closed ball of stealth-colored material waited for the next signal from its unknown master.

  Chapter 33

  When they landed at Sheremetevo II Airport in Moscow, Remo Williams told Colonel Radomir Rushenko, "Have this thing refueled and ready."

  "Ready for what?"

  "The flight back to the States."

  "You are going back to the States? This is impossible. It will not be permitted."

  "You're our insurance that it will be," warned Remo, leaving his seat.

  The Master of Sinanju accompanied Colonel Rushenko to make the arrangements while Remo fed kopecks into an airport pay phone. After a half hour of trying, he failed to get through to America.

  Returning to the aircraft, he informed Chiun of this unhappy fact.

  "We will call from a city possessing a telephone that works," Chiun said, eyeing Colonel Rushenko unhappily.

  "We should have never become friends," Rushenko lamented. "When we were enemies, we had motivation. Our phones worked. Our armies were feared and our space program was the envy of the entire world."

  "The Communist world," said Remo.

  "The entire world."

  "Who went to the moon and who didn't?" countered Remo.

  "The moon is only a rock. We had our eyes upon Mars."

  "Why Mars?"

  "It is the Red planet, is it not?"

  "No," interjected Chiun. "In my language, it is Hwa-Song, the Fire Planet."

  Colonel Rushenko shrugged. "It is the same thing. I can tell you this now because the world may soon end, and if it does not, Russians will not be going to Mars without space vehicles anyway. But when the U.S. achieved the moon landing, a twenty-year plan was drawn up to claim Mars for USSR. It would have been the ultimate expression of Soviet technological superiority. Anyone can land on the barren moon only three days away. But Mars, it is an authentic planet. We would have seized it, controlled the cosmic high ground and mocked you from its red glory."

  "What happened to this twenty-year plan?" asked Chiun.

  Rushenko shrugged. "What always happens. The quotas were not achieved, and it became a thirty-year plan, a forty and so on until it was forgotten."

  "You can have Mars, too. I'm sick of Mars," Remo growled.

  "No one will go to Mars now. It is a pity. All our dreams are rust and dust. Yours as well as mine."

  "Save it for the funeral," said Remo.

  "Whose?"

  "Yours if you don't get off the subject."

  Colonel Rushenko subsided. The Yak took off, heading west to Europe and the first refueling stop that had a working telephone.

  Chapter 34

  Dr. Cosmo Pagan was in his element. For some, that element was the earth. Others, the sky. Still others, the oceans of the world.

  Cosmo Pagan's element was nothing less than the media.

  The phones would not stop ringing. It didn't seem to matter to anyone that he gave confused and contradictory theories to the strange events that were troubling the blue earth.

  It certainly didn't matter to Cosmo Pagan. People read only one newspaper a day these days-if that. And they watched only one newscast a day. Since most people were creatures of habit, they stuck with what they liked.

  Thus, Cosmo Pagan was simultaneously informing newspaper readers and TV viewers that the inexplicable events dominating the headlines were a direct consequence of ozone depletion, random asteroid strikes and the possible impact of cometary fragments from a hitherto-undiscovered invisible comet bypassing Earth.

  The comet theory seemed to go over biggest. At least, Pagan got the most media requests to tell the world about the dangers of passing comets.

  He got other calls, too. A zillion lecture offers. A bunch of new book offers. PBS was on the horn, too. They wanted to do a special on life on other planets. It was Cosmo Pagan's favorite topic. He had become an exobiologist chiefly because until proof of actual extraterrestrial life came along, he could just make stuff up. He didn't even need factoids.

  Cosmo accepted all offers. Except one.

  "Dr. Pagan," an anxious man asked. "I can't identify myself or my employer, but we're looking for a man just like you. You'd be our in-house consultant and company spokesman."

  Cosmo Pagan didn't need to know the who or the what. He had only one concern. "How much?"

  "A million a year."

  "I love that number! It's a deal."

  "Great," the suddenly relieved voice said. "But understand this will be an exclusive. You couldn't speak publicly on any subject in your field. In fact, we insist that you immediately halt all public statements on any subject until the contract is drawn up. Especially this asteroid and ozone scare-talk."

  "Out of the question. I don't do exclusives. Goodbye "

  The man kept calling back, upping his offer. But Cosmo Pagan was no fool. If his face wasn't before the public, he had no public. No public, no publicity. No publicity, no career. He stopped taking the nameless man's calls and got down to the serious business of informing his public.

  This time Pagan asked that his wife, Venus, interview him for CNN. In fact, he demanded it. The last guy had asked hard questions. And since Venus Pagan was still pretty sharp looking for her age, it was nice to show her off once in a while.

  The interview was conducted in his private observatory by satellite hookup. Cut down on commuting costs that way.

  "Dr. Pagan..."

  "Call me Cosmo. After all, we are man and satellite."

  Venus Pagan smiled with professional coolness. "In your view, are comets dangerous?"

  "When Halley came around in 1910, a lot of people thought so. They threw end-of-the-world-comet parties. Spectrographic analyses of the comet's composition showed traces of cyanogen gas, and for a while people worried our planet would be gassed to death when it passed through Halley's tail. Gas-mask sales boomed. But long-period comets like Halley and Hale-Bopp don't come very close to earth spacially speaking."

  It was in the middle of his dissertation that the first satellite images of the Baikonur Cosmodrome disaster were broadcast. It was supposed to be a military secret. But in the post-Cold War world, commercial satellites had the same global overviews as spy satellites. The brief bidding war for the pictures was won by CNN. The photos were rushed to the hot studio in midtelecast.

  "Dr. Pagan. I mean, Cosmo."

  "Call me honey, angel."

  "We've just been handed satellite images taken of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russian Kazakhstan. It's been scorched in three places. These images resemble satellite photos we've seen of the Bio-Bubble and Reliant catastrophes. Can you shed any light on this latest event?"

  Dr. Pagan accepted the photos, which were also broadcast in a floating graphic insert beside his head. He got very pale very fast.

  "I might be mistaken," he said, "but there appear to be three impact sites-if that is what they are-which suggests to me cometary fragments. Asteroids don't travel in packs."

  "No comet fragments were found here in the U.S.," Venus probed gently.

  "This may be a broken-comet phenomenon we are witnessing. Understand that Earth is always revolving. As was the case with Jupiter when those fragments struck. Though they entered the Jovian atmosphere in a straight line, they impacted in a string along the planet's surface because Jupiter moved between each impact. A similar string of eight ancient impact craters across the Plains states has recently come to light. They're lakes now."

  "If this is a broken comet falling to earth, could other pieces be speeding toward us now?"

  "Yes," Dr. Pagan admitted unhappily, "they could. And there's no telling where they could impact. Even on me."

  He looked sick at the very thought, and his fear was not lost on the American public he sought to reassure.

  "Did you know that the number of scientists scanning the heavens for deadly asteroids is about the size of the staff of a McDonald's restaurant?" he added in an uneasy voice.

  AT FOLCROFT, Dr. Harold W Smith was baffled. He was running on sheer nerve and Maalox as he grappled with the threat that seemed now to be directed at the space programs of two nations.

  He had told the President that the third strike would suggest a pattern. It did. One that suggested a rival space-faring nation.

  That left the Japanese, the French and the Chinese. Of these possibilities, the Chinese seemed the most likely culprits. But the technology-whatever it was-seemed beyond Chinese capabilities. This, in turn, made Smith flash on the Japanese. They were working on a space-shuttle program of their own. The first test flight had ended with the HYFLEX prototype sinking into the Sea of Japan. It was possible that that failure caused Nippon Space to turn to Russia's shuttle fleet for lift.

  But what would their motive for attacking the U.S. be?

  Smith was reconsidering French Ariane involvement when Remo called from Budapest with a possible answer.

  "Have you looked into the Paraguay thing yet?" he asked.

  "What Paraguay thing?" countered Smith.

  "People at Baikonur told us a Paraguay company hired that last Russian shuttle flight."

  "Paraguay?"

  "Want me to spell it?" asked Remo.

  "No, and why are you shouting?"

  "Habit," said Remo, lowering his voice. "The company is called ParaSol. One word. Capital P as in 'Paraguay.' Capital S-o-l. That's all I know."

  Smith attacked his keyboard. "I am researching it now."

  Remo's voice took on an awed quality. "Smitty, we were on ground zero when that thing hit three times."

  "What did you see?"

  "A hot time. Looked like a giant magnifying glass scorched the ground."

  Smith paused. "You think it was solar?"

  "We saw a sun dog before it struck."

  "Solar..." said Smith.

  "Mean anything to you?"

  "A breakthrough in solar power could explain such a thing. The extreme, concentrated heat. The relatively compact size of the orbital device. If it takes its energy from the sun, it would need little in the way of on-board power."

  "My money's on solar."

  On Smith's screen, up popped a block of data.

  "I have something on ParaSol," he said.

  "What's it say?"

  Harold Smith's voice sank. "The data is in Spanish. I will have to have it translated."

  "Get to it."

  "Hold the line, please," Smith replied, trying to type while cradling the blue handset against his shoulder and right arm. His rimless glasses slid off his patrician nose, and he miskeyed something, erasing his entire screen.

  "Damn."

  "What now?" asked Remo. "I gotta go soon. They're about done refueling the Yak."

  "Where is your next refueling stop?"

  "Wherever they'll let us set down. We're not particular."

  "Call me from there."

  "Will do," said Remo, hanging up.

  Smith went to work recovering the data. In the middle of the automatic translation, his system alerted him of another broadcast of consequence. It came on automatically as Smith had programmed it to.

  He found himself watching Dr. Cosmo Pagan lecturing the nation on comets.

  "All comets come from a stellar marvel called the Oort Cloud way beyond our solar system. Our sun's gravitational pull yanks them toward it, and they slingshot around back into deep space. As they approach the orb of day, the pressure of solar winds on these dirty snowballs-as we astronomers like to classify them-creates the long ghostly tail that is so wondrous to behold. Hale-Bopp's tail promises to be the most spectacular of the century once it reemerges from its solar sleep. We are living in very interesting times, galactically speaking, with all these near-Earth objects booming by and falling to Earth."

  Smith was logging off when the camera went to the woman interviewing Pagan.

  She was an attractive, fortyish brunette. But Smith's bleary gray eyes weren't on her face, but on the identifying chyron at the bottom of the screen.

  It read Venus Mango-Pagan.

  The name Venus Mango rang a clear bell in Smith's steel-trap mind. Returning to his system, he punched in the name and hit Search.

  He got his answer immediately. The name Venus Mango had surfaced on the phone records of BioBubble director Amos Bulla a number of times. All incoming calls. None outgoing. Many calls over a period of four years.

  Smith brought up the file with precise finger pecks. The calls went back to the time the BioBubble had changed from a prototype Mars colony to its later, ecological-research incarnation. Exactly.

  Smith's earlier search had revealed that Venus Mango was a CNN science correspondent. That simple fact had eliminated her as a possible BioBubble backer. Journalists are not usually wealthy people.

  With a frown, Smith saw that he had been too hasty in his judgment. He had not delved deeply enough to learn that Venus Mango was the latest wife of Dr. Cosmo Pagan.

  Energized by his discovery, Smith went in search of Dr. Pagan's financial records.

  He found a flock of bank accounts, one of which showed large wire transfers going back to the BioBubble change of ownership. All to BioBubble Inc. The name on the account was Ruber Mavors Limited. Red Mars.

  "Dr. Cosmo Pagan controls the BioBubble now," said Harold Smith in a voice of dead-level certainty.

  He called back the CNN report.

  Dr. Pagan was saying, "Of course I don't yet rule out a floating ozone hole. I'm an exobiologist, not a prophet. As for the Martian theory, I'm not partial to it because I like to believe that if there are Martians, they'd be friendly toward us Earthlings. Are we not going through the same eco-crisis that ravaged their beautiful world eons ago?"

  Pagan smiled like a man in love.

  "Still, you can never tell. In the interest of covering all permutations, I would like to share some interesting Martian trivia, if I may. The Soviets were the first to attempt to soft-land a probe on Mars. Their Mars 3 and Mars 6 spacecraft both mysteriously stopped transmitting before touching down on the Martian landscape. No one knows why. At the time, some thought mischievous Martians were responsible. Viking I transmitted back pictures of a Martian boulder that seemed to have the Roman letter B chiseled into it. Since then, we've captured some very puzzling images, including pyramids and what looked like a great Sphinx-like stone face looking coldly at us from the stark Martian surface."

  "Do you yourself believe in Martians, sweetie?"

  "If there are sentient beings on the Red Planet," Cosmo Pagan said solemnly, "they may have been driven underground by some great cataclysm such as an asteroid strike or the depletion of their own ozone shield. And these mysterious letters being reported in the sky may be a friendly warning to us Earth men. One day soon, we should get up there and find out."

  "He's trying to throw America off the track," said Smith. "And whatever he's up to, it's pushing the planet toward nuclear confrontation. And this fool does not even suspect it."

  Smith watched the segment to the bitter end, wishing he could drive his bony fist into Pagan's smirking face.

  He was not normally subject to such violent impulses, but there was nothing he could do until Remo checked in again.

  One positive thing had emerged. He now had a direction to point his Destroyer in. And a target.

  Chapter 35

  Over Paris, they were refused clearance to land, and while they loitered over Orly International, French Mirage fighters chased them away.

  Madrid wouldn't take them.

  Nor would Lisbon.

  Finally, as a humanitarian gesture, the British cleared the Russian Yak-90 to land at London's Gatwick Airport.

  The landing gear touched the tarmac just as the fuel-starved engines went cold. They rolled to an unpowered stop and were instantly surrounded by crack SAS commandos and ordered to evacuate the aircraft, for they were all being detained by the crown.

  This prospect raised Colonel Rushenko's lagging spirits considerably. "Do you hear? We are being detained!"

  "Don't think it doesn't mean you're not going to the boneyard of history," Remo warned.

  "If you kill me here, you will be arrested for a capital crime on British soil. I have done nothing to you."

  "You ordered us liquidated," reminded Chiun, looking out at the emergency vehicles, behind which crouched the dark bereted SAS with their Sterlings and their flat pistols.

  "Did you know that the British have a very secret agency called the Source?" Rushenko offered.

  "They can't thread a needle without sticking themselves," Remo said dismissively.

  "Oh. You did know..."

  "For years."

  "What is your secret agency called?"

  "It's not called anything. It doesn't have a name."

  "That is a very smart agency. I only wish I had realized this option sooner, then you would never have found me."