"Nice traveling outfit," Remo complimented.

  "It is not for travel," said Chiun.

  "Then you'd better change. It's back to Arizona for us."

  "Smith has work?"

  "Cosmo Pagan is Ruber Mavors. Smith wants us to shake him until something falls out."

  "At least it will be warm in Arizona," said Chiun.

  "Let's hope it doesn't get too warm," Remo responded.

  Chapter 38

  Dr. Cosmo Pagan had friends in high places. And not only the stars and the comets of the galaxy.

  He had friends in NASA, despite his critical opinions. As well as in the Air Force and other organizations where the heavens and what went on in them was of professional interest.

  Someone at Cheyenne Mountain called to whisper, "There's a mystery object in low Earth orbit."

  "Is it cometary?"

  "No. Man-made."

  "Oh," said Dr. Pagan, who only cared about manmade space objects if they were going some place interesting. Earth orbit was like taking a cruise to nowhere. Literally.

  "It'll pass over the continental US. tonight. If it stays on its current path, it will overfly your area."

  "Why should I care?" asked Dr. Pagan in a bored voice.

  "Because SPACETRACK thinks this is the thing that hit the Reliant. "

  The bored quality dropped from Pagan's manner like clothes falling off a hooker.

  "Can you slip me coordinates?"

  The coordinates came over the line in a hushed voice, and then the line went as dead as outer space.

  Dr. Pagan rushed to his thirty-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain refractor, punched the right ascension and declination into the on-board guidance computer, hit the "Go-to" command and waited patiently while the control motor toiled as it oriented the tube toward the northern quadrant of the night sky, the observatory dome rotating so the slit lined up with the scope.

  He was very interested in seeing what had caused the BioBubble to collapse into viscous glass and steel. Very.

  While he waited, he pulled a candy bar from one of his jacket pockets without looking. Absently he bit the wrapper off and chewed off a hunk of chocolate, caramel and nougat.

  "Nothing like a Mars bar," he murmured. "Unless it's a Milky Way."

  Chapter 39

  Finding Dr. Cosmo Pagan's Tucson home was easier than Remo had ever imagined. Harold Smith told him it was, on a secluded hill off Route 10, south of the city.

  The house was shielded from view by ponderosa pine and cottonwoods. But the private observatory showed clearly on the hill. It was as red as Mars, and it was crisscrossed by black lines suggesting Martian canals.

  "If this isn't the place, I'll eat my hat," said Remo.

  "You do not wear a hat," said Chiun.

  "Good point. Boy, if there were Martians living among us, I'd expect them to live in a creepy place just like this," said Remo as they pulled into the long circular driveway.

  They got out. Lights burned throughout the house. It was painted a very sedate maroon that looked almost brown in the dark. A carport protected a red Saturn and a vintage Mercury Cougar.

  "Front approach works for me," said Remo.

  Chiun girded his jet black kimono skirts, saying, "I fear no Martians."

  At the door, they simply rang the bell.

  Mrs. Pagan answered, took one look at Remo's FBI ID and said, "He's in the observatory. Quarter mile back in the woods on the hill. You can't miss it."

  "You got that right," said Remo.

  As they got back into the car, Mrs. Pagan called out, "Will you tell him those people from QNM keep calling?"

  "Sure."

  "Tell him they doubled the consulting fee again."

  "Sure thing," said Remo.

  The observatory looked even more like the planet Mars as they walked toward it. Its scarlet hue glowed under the light of the moon. The top was a bluish white, like a polar icecap.

  "This guy worships Mars like the ancient Greeks," said Remo.

  "The Greek did not call it Mars, but Ares," Chiun said.

  "What did the Koreans call it again?"

  "Hwa-Song. The Fire Planet."

  "Good name."

  "It is also considered an ill omen when in the sky."

  "I'll keep that in mind," Remo muttered as they picked their way through a stand of cottonwoods.

  The shuttered slit was open in the great red dome, and they could see the black end of the big telescope peering up at the night sky.

  "Looks like Pagan is Mars gazing. I say we just walk in."

  "You may walk in. I will enter another way," said Chiun.

  "Be my guest."

  With that, Chiun was absorbed by the surrounding murk.

  The door, Remo discovered, was not locked. It gave at his touch.

  Carefully Remo eased into the cool, dark dome, all his senses alert. He sensed only one presence. That made it simple.

  Letting his eyes adjust to the dim interior, Remo saw the long telescope tube resolve itself first. Then the man seated on a tall stool at the narrow end of the telescope.

  Remo was approaching when, without warning, Dr. Pagan suddenly recoiled from the eyepiece of his telescope.

  The stool upset. Remo moved in, caught man and stool, righting them while Dr. Cosmo Pagan flailed his corduroy-clad arms wildly.

  "Easy," said Remo.

  Pagan grabbed his chest and pumped air into his lungs. "I just saw-saw-"

  "What?"

  A squeaky voice from above said, "Me."

  Remo looked up. "What are you doing way up there, Chiun?"

  "Looking down."

  And the Master of Sinanju leaped from the open aperture and slid down the telescope tube on both feet to alight with the ease and grace of a settling black moth.

  "I thought a space alien was looking back at me," Cosmo Pagan muttered as he dusted off his arms. "Who are you two?"

  "FBI," said Remo.

  "What does the FBI want with me?" Pagan said, frowning.

  Remo peered through the eyepiece. "I don't see Mars."

  "I don't always look at the Red Planet, you know. And you're both trespassing. Please leave. I don't do autographs. It's beneath me."

  Taking his eyes from the scope, Remo looked Pagan dead in the eye and said, "We know you're Ruber Mavors."

  Pagan swallowed hard and said, "That's Latin for 'Red Planet.'"

  "It's the name you go by when you're pumping money into the BioBubble. We need to know why."

  "I don't have to tell you anything."

  "Wrong answer," said Remo. And the Master of Sinanju reached up to take Pagan by the back of his neck. Chiun constricted his bony, long-nailed fingers.

  Cosmo Pagan sank to his knees before Remo, his face contorting and turning red as a beet. "I'm a world-renowned astronomer and exobiologist," he gasped.

  "Right now," Remo said, "you're doing a pretty good impersonation of a Martian."

  Pagan's features turned rubbery. "You can't do this to me."

  "Why not?"

  "It's un-American. I'm a cultural icon. I have tenure."

  "Why'd you take over the BioBubble? Let's start there."

  "Someone had to. They were jettisoning the Mars-colony phase of the project. It was the only thing keeping Mars before the public eye. I had to save it."

  "The Mars-colony idea went south when the Russian space program cratered," Remo countered.

  "You're thinking in human terms. In geologic time, a Mars landing is just around the corner. It's just that we twentieth-century molecule machines won't live to see it.

  "Speak for yourself, white," said Chiun, relenting enough that Pagan returned to a pinkish complexion.

  "I got behind it to keep the dream alive. No matter what it took."

  "Including pumping in oxygen and hot pizza?" said Remo.

  "Whatever it takes. It was my project and my money."

  "And when it became a laughingstock, you just fried it."

  "That wasn't me!"

  "Prove it."

  "I don't have the kind of money and technology to put that thing up there," Pagan protested.

  "What thing?" asked Chiun thinly.

  Pagan swallowed.

  "Hah!" said Chiun, squeezing harder. "The truth, Man of Mars."

  Pagan got even redder. His veins began to pop until his face started to display an unmistakable Martian cast. A Mars bar fell out of his pocket.

  "That is the truth," he gurgled. "All I know about the thing up there is what a friend at SPACETRACK told me. NORAD thinks it's an enemy satellite of some kind."

  Remo looked past Dr. Pagan's reddening features to Chiun's severe ones, and they both came to the same conclusion based on a reading of Pagan's hammering vital signs and inability to withstand pain.

  "He's telling the truth," said Remo.

  "Of course I'm telling the truth. Why would I destroy my own dream?"

  "We heard a Paraguayan company paid to have that thing launched through the Russian shuttle. Know anything about that?"

  "Did you know Buran really means 'blizzard'?" said Dr. Pagan.

  "What does that have to do with anything?" Remo growled.

  "I get paid heavy consulting fees for spouting neat factoids like that," said Pagan, retrieving the fallen Mars bar and pocketing it.

  "Not interested," said Remo. "Let him go, Little Father."

  "Thank you," said Dr. Pagan, adjusting his corduroy jacket and giving his red turtleneck a shake.

  Remo eyed the jersey and remembered the Shield secretary in Moscow who'd tried to kill him with an AK-47.

  "Ever hear of Shield?" he asked.

  "No. I've heard of the ozone shield, though."

  "How about Shchit?" asked Chiun.

  "Who hasn't? Although I personally shun language like that."

  "He never heard of Shield," said Remo.

  "If that's all you two want, I want to see that orbital device for myself. It's due to fly by pretty soon."

  "Be our guest. We have better things to do."

  "Up Uranus," muttered Dr. Pagan, climbing atop his stool and planting his right eye to the telescope eyepiece. By the time Remo and Chiun reached the door, he was all but oblivious to his surroundings.

  "By the way," Remo called from the open door, "your wife asked us to give you a message."

  "What's that?" Pagan asked absently.

  "The QNM people keep calling. They doubled your fee again."

  "Tell them I'm not interested."

  "You tell them. We're FBI, not messengers," said Remo, shutting the door.

  They walked back to the car in silence and got into it.

  On the way back to the highway, Remo said to Chiun, "Everywhere we go, we hit a dead end."

  "We should be looking for Martians."

  "If this keeps up, I might start agreeing with you. But I still think we're dealing with something solar."

  "When are you ever correct?"

  "Some of the time," Remo said as they pulled onto the highway and raced back toward Tucson and a flight he wasn't looking forward to.

  Chapter 40

  At SPACETRACK headquarters in Cheyenne Mountain, they watched Object 617 skim over the Eastern Seaboard in silence. And then gave a collective sigh of relief.

  No one's sigh was greater than the U.S. President's slow, hot exhalation of released tension.

  He had been about to have the thing shot down when CURE Director Smith had called to reveal that he now suspected Dr. Cosmo Pagan of being the mind behind the device.

  "Pagan? I can't believe it!" the President had said.

  "It is unproven. But my people are on the way to deal with him."

  "They won't kill him, will they?"

  "His survival depends upon his complicity."

  "He's a very popular guy. I read all his books."

  "I will keep you informed, Mr. President."

  Leaving the Lincoln Bedroom, the President had returned to the Oval Office and his defense secretary. "We stand down. For now."

  "I can't disagree with that decision," the defense secretary said, visibly relieved.

  Object 617 passed harmlessly overhead, and World War III was placed on temporary hold. Even if the planet never suspected it.

  When it came back on its next orbital sweep, it had shifted again. Farther west this time. It was overflying the American West now.

  All who were privy to this intelligence relaxed even more. The area it was passing over was relatively unpopulated. Montana to Arizona. There were missile silos there, all in sparsely settled areas. Most were slated for dismantling anyway.

  "We may get a break," the secretary of defense reported to the President. And they waited.

  BARTHOLOMEW MEECH WATCHED his monitors, his face the exact color of sun-bleached oatmeal, as he moved the small joysticks controlling nitrogen thrusters far, far above his ground station.

  Behind him, his computer screen displayed a message.

  To: R From: RM@ qnm.com Subject: No call back The SOB can't be bought and won't shut up. It's up to you.

  AT GEODSS, THEY WERE getting real-time optical feeds on the object. It showed as a dark ball, half in eclipse, the other half illuminated by the stark, high-contrast moonlight of space.

  But as it swooped low over Salt Lake City, abruptly it flowered.

  The dark struts that embraced the black ball of unknown material extended like a spider awakening. Hardly visible in its stealth mode, when it was partially open the inner core shone bright as a new-minted quarter.

  "What in God's name is that?"

  No one could venture a guess.

  Then the stealth sphere unfurled into a great disk.

  And in the center of the disk, three sharp-edged black letters showed clearly: "MNp."

  Then the overhead screen filled with such intolerable white light that the technicians were forced to pinch their eyes shut and look away.

  Chapter 41

  It was Chiun who spotted the letters in the sky first.

  "Remo! Behold!"

  Remo braked and got out.

  He saw the three letters that meant 'peace' in the Russian language, and then he was dropping to the ground covering his head and eyes because he knew what was coming next. Chiun followed suit.

  They heard the boom as the world turned bright through their pinched-shut eyes, and they remained on the ground as a sizzling pressure wave rolled over them, scorching and wilting nearby foliage as if touched by a demonic exhalation.

  "Stay low, Little Father," Remo warned.

  "It has passed," said Chiun.

  "There may be a second hit."

  There wasn't. Remo and Chiun jumped up at the same time. They looked back down the road and saw the up-curling smoke from the hill on which Cosmo Pagan had been. The hill was still there, but not the trees and observatory. It looked like a smoking compost heap.

  "It got Pagan," said Remo.

  "Why?"

  "That," said Remo, "is the question of the hour."

  They drove back as far as they could. A circumference of about a sixteenth of a mile had been turned into black burned sand and earth. Glass had formed in smoking lumps. A few surviving old-growth tree stumps smoked like cauldrons. It was very hot. They couldn't get as close as they wanted.

  But they got close enough to know that Dr. Cosmo Pagan, his house, his observatory and his wife had all been turned to mingled smoke and fumes that was now rushing up to meet the stars.

  Overhead, a tiny dot of light hurtled past. The three ironic Cyrillic letters seemed to dwindle and shrink. Then they were gone, and so was the fleeting dot of light.

  In the hot silence of the Arizona night, Remo Williams mumbled words he never expected himself to speak. "Maybe Martians are behind this after all," he muttered.

  "You have just taken the first path to wisdom," intoned Chiun.

  "Which is?"

  "Agreeing with me," said the Master of Sinanju.

  Chapter 42

  Dr. Harold W Smith took the news well, given the extraordinary circumstances.

  "Pagan is dead?" he blurted.

  "Zapped," said Remo.

  Smith's mouth turned to metal as he absorbed the import of Remo's telephone report. He had a paper cup brimming with water at his elbow. He swallowed it in one gulp. Then, as an afterthought, took two generic-brand painkillers with one extrastrength AlkaSeltzer.

  His stomach bubbled and fizzed as he groped for a response. "Pagan must be connected to Object 617."

  "He swore he wasn't, and believe me, if he was, Chiun and I would have wrung it out of him."

  "Why would the power behind the device seek to kill him?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine, Smitty. But we're at another dead end."

  "We cannot accept defeat. We are dealing with a man-made phenomenon. It must have a solution."

  "Unless it's Martian-made," said Remo.

  "There are no Martians."

  "We know it's not the Russians or Pagan or the Pentagon. And I'll bet the ranch it's not the Paraguayans-or whatever they're called."

  "Perhaps Pagan was silenced because he was getting too close to the truth," Smith said slowly.

  "Earlier you were saying he was behind it because his theories were all over the sky."

  "Hmm," said Smith.

  "It is not the Russians," declared Chiun.

  "We already know that, Little Father," Remo said.

  "Russians would know how to spell 'peace' correctly," added Chiun.

  "What is that?" asked Smith.

  "Nothing. Just Chiun putting in his two cents."

  "The word in the sky is not Russian," said Chiun. "Tell Smith this."

  "You hear that, Smitty?" asked Remo.

  "Yes."

  "He heard, Chiun. Now leave it alone. Smitty's trying to think."

  "Put Chiun on," Smith said in a suddenly urgent voice.

  "Why?"

  "I want to hear what he has to say," said Smith.

  Shrugging, Remo surrendered the line to the Master of Sinanju.

  "Repeat what you just said, Master Chiun," asked Smith.

  "I saw the letters in the sky. They did not spell peace."

  "What do they spell?"

  "Nonsense. The P was not a Greek P."

  "What was it?"

  "It looked like a P. But an inferior p. The others were capital letters. The P was not. Its tail hung too low."

  Remo said nothing. His face was a frown with cheekbones.