"The P is definitely lowercase," Harold Smith acknowledged.

  "Big deal," said Remo. "Chiun found a typo. What does that prove?"

  "Please stand by," said Smith.

  "We are instructed to stand by," Chiun told Remo. Remo pretended to be interested in the low-hanging planet Mars.

  AT FOLCROFT, Harold Smith purged his mind of all assumptions. He'd learned a long time ago that a fresh view could sometimes solve an otherwise intractable problem.

  Three letters. Capitals M, N and lowercase p. Two of them seemed straightforward. That was an assumption, he realized. He frowned. What if the Cyrillic N was not what it seemed? What if it was exactly what it first appeared to be-a backward N?

  Smith was looking at a digitized image of the photos the missing Travis Rust had taken seconds before the Reliant was destroyed. He had programs for everything. He initiated one that flopped the digitized image.

  Instead of the Cyrillic letters meaning "peace," he got three ordinary English initials: "qNM"

  It looked for all the word like a chemical formula. He wondered why the q would be lowercased like that.

  Recalling that he had an open line to Remo and Chiun, Smith said, "I have flopped the image."

  "Is that good or bad?" Remo wanted to know.

  "It comes out qNM, but the q is lowercased."

  "Makes sense. If it was a lowercase p before, it's a lowercase q now."

  "I do not know what qNM could mean," said Smith. "It makes even less sense than 'Mir.'"

  "You got me."

  "But not me," said Chiun, taking the phone from his pupil's hand so swiftly Remo could still feel it even though it was no longer there.

  "Emperor, before Pagan was liquidated, we carried to his ears a message from his wife."

  "Yes?"

  "An entity called QNM had called to increase his fee."

  "QNM? Did she say what it was?"

  "No, only that QNM had been calling incessantly."

  Remo added, "She said it was over a consulting fee."

  "Consulting! That means either media or a commercial firm," Smith said tensely. "One moment."

  He was not silent very long.

  "Remo."

  "I am here," said Chiun, turning so Remo could not seize the phone.

  "Listen," said Smith. "I have pulled up several QNMs. None are media outlets. But among the corporate names there is a company called Quantum Neutrino Mechanics. Their company logo is unusual. It features a lowercase q. "

  "Why would it do that?" Remo asked.

  "Trademark-registration concerns," Smith said flatly.

  "Bingo!"

  "qNM headquarters is in Seattle, Washington. Go there. Now. Remain in touch by telephone. I will dig deeper."

  "On our way," said Remo, hanging up so hard the receiver cracked like an ice sculpture.

  "Looks like we're back in the game," he told Chiun.

  "That is not enough. We must be ahead of the game."

  "Right now I just want to stay one step ahead of the next flock of stewardesses I meet," said Remo.

  Chapter 43

  It was a long way from sunny Massachusetts to rainy Seattle.

  For Reemer Murgatroyd Bolt, of Quantum Neutrino Mechanics, it was almost exactly eleven years, three thousand miles and four career changes ago.

  It had almost come to a crashing halt back at Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts on Route 128, the symbol of the Massachusetts Miracle. The Massachusetts Miracle had gone south somewhere around the time of the 1988 presidential elections, taking a certain Greek governor, the Bay State and America's Technology Highway with it, as Route 128 was known back then.

  The DataGen and GenData and General Data Systems that had dotted 128 back in the booming eighties were gone now. As was Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts. As was Director of Marketing Reemer Bolt, who got out before the sky fell and it all came crashing down.

  For a while, the entire world almost ended. And now history seemed to be repeating itself.

  In his office, with the eternal rain pattering at the Thermopane windows that kept out the winter chill, Reemer Bolt shuddered as his mind went careening back to those heady days in which the planet Earth came perilously close to being incinerated. All because Reemer Bolt had charge of a product whose utility at first eluded even a marketing genius like himself.

  It was called the Fluorocarbon Gun. It shot fluorocarbons, chemicals that had been banned by most industrialized nations because they ate away at the ozone shield high in the atmosphere. Holes in the ozone allowed dangerous solar radiation to penetrate. One hole accidentally knocked out a Russian missile battery, precipitating an international incident that almost ended the world-and Reemer Bolt's promising corporate career.

  It was a huge marketing debacle. The biggest since the Edsel. ChemCon was forced into strategic bankruptcy.

  Through it all, Bolt remained unscathed. In fact, his corporate future improved. On the strength of a new resume that showed he had been in charge of a fifty-million-dollar project with global ramifications; Bolt moved from director of marketing of ChemCon to president of Web Tech. He knew nothing about Web Tech and, when he left to become COO of Quantum Neutrino Mechanics three years later, he knew even less about Web Tech. It didn't matter. No one ever got fired or laid off or punished for screwing up a billion-dollar corporation. They were handed golden parachutes, stock options and golden handshakes and wished well by anxious stockholders delighted to be rid of them.

  It was middle managers and workers who invariably ate failure in corporate America. Not the Reemer Bolts. No matter how high the tides rose, their necks always stretched farther and their chins always lifted over the lung-quenching flood.

  It was true that the corporate-downsizing mania threatened even the Reemer Bolts of the world. Somehow he got himself involved in the military-industrial complex. He didn't realize it for several weeks until he walked in on a Web Tech management research-and-development conference and saw the scale-model tank.

  "Who brought that toy in here? This is a place of business," he snarled, knowing that no one ever snapped back at a snarling executive, never mind questioned him. They were petrified for their jobs.

  "It's our next project," he was told by a more than brave technician.

  "Scrap it," Bolt told him.

  "Why? The Pentagon has accepted it."

  Bolt froze inwardly. This was in 1991. He knew that if there was one thing an executive never did, it was reverse a decision. No matter how disastrous. He had been caught. He could not retreat. To retreat showed weakness. Worse, it showed a complete and unforgivable ignorance of the product line. That simply would not do. Not in corporate America, where smiling, two-legged sharks circled the office water cooler hoping to take a bite out of an unwary coworker's ass.

  "It has Failure written all over it," said Reemer Bolt. "Scrap it."

  No one questioned the decision. It saved Reemer Bolt's high-six-figure salary and perks for three years, while Web Tech, six million dollars in development costs and a fat government contract down the drain, stumbled aimlessly until Reemer Bolt could smell the stench of decay seeping into his air-conditioned office and hired a head-hunting agency to find him a safer hole.

  At first, the interview with Quantum Neutrino Mechanics didn't go well. Then the interviewer noticed the blank spot in the resume.

  "The years 1984 to 1987 are blank."

  "Yes," Reemer Bolt said, knowing that he could not deny the obvious.

  "Were you employed at that time?"

  "Yes."

  "In what position?"

  "I cannot answer that," Bolt said in his most firm and sincere tone.

  The interviewer blinked. "Say again, Mr. Bolt?"

  Bolt cleared his throat and made it deeper. Much deeper. "I am contractually forbidden from, and cannot answer, that question."

  The man blinked again. This was unusual. Even in corporate America.

  "Was this government work?"

  "I cannot confirm that," Bolt said truthfully.

  "Did it-can you at least whisper something, Mr. Bolt? A blank spot does not look good"

  Bolt shook his head. Here was the difficult part. He knew that some resume blank spots reflected alcohol or cocaine addictions. If they jumped to either conclusion, he was dead.

  The interviewer looked around furtively. "Did this position by chance have anything to do with national security?" he breathed.

  It was a wild guess, and Reemer Bolt answered, not entirely untruthfully, "I can neither confirm nor deny that assertion."

  The interviewer relaxed. He leaned back in his chair. His entire face softened. "Mr. Bolt, I think I can say you've moved to the top of the list. Quantum Neutrino Mechanics is looking for a man like you."

  Bolt smiled. He was the kind of man who had progressed in life from his mother's breast to one easy teat after another. He knew the scent of fresh milk. He was smelling it now.

  The trouble was, the milk was running out for the defense industry, and since Quantum Neutrino Mechanics was courting Reemer Bolt, he never bothered to look into their product line. Only his personal package.

  "Congress is backing away from Star Wars," Reemer was told one day a year or two after the Berlin Wall fell and he had been with qNM long enough to feel he could bluff his way through any meeting on any level of the company. He had all the latest buzzwords down. This year synergy and outsourcing were in vogue.

  "I have no problem with that," said Bolt in a brusque, take-no-prisoners-and-suffer-no-fools voice.

  The managers seated around the boat-shaped fumed-oak conference table hesitated. One finally gathered the strength to speak up. "It leaves us out in the cold."

  "Build a fire," Bolt said.

  "With what?"

  "Rub two sticks together. Or try a magnifying glass."

  Reemer Bolt forgot that last comment as soon as the meeting was adjourned. It was only an aphorism. Now known as R. M. Bolt because he thought the initials commanded more respect than being called Mr. Bolt, he was into managing by aphorism. He had good, imaginative people working under him. All they needed was the right kind of push.

  He remembered telling them to build a fire but forgot about the magnifying glass until R d him with the scale model.

  "Who left this disco ball in here?" Bolt snarled, pointing at the blackish gray ball sitting under the high-intensity lamps.

  "It's our future."

  "Disco is dead," Bolt said.

  "If you'd indulge us, R.M.," R ineer Bartholomew Meech said.

  Bolt went with the flow. Some days you pushed. Others you pulled. He was in a pulling mood that day. So he nodded.

  The presentation involved overhead slides, an animated videotape that had Walt Disney Corporation fingerprints all over the production values, while six different white-smocked technicians pointed out features with their red laser pointers. All spiced with impressive-sounding technical terms like aluminized mylar and photovoltaic panels.

  In the end, R. M. Bolt understood none of it. He found himself glowering at the disco ball to keep the dull lack of comprehension off his face.

  "Take it again from the top," he instructed. "So my grandmother would understand it."

  And they did.

  "It's solar-powered."

  "Orbiting continuously above the earth."

  "Where it will do the job America needs done."

  Reemer frowned. He wasn't getting it yet. Then someone said the word that touched his marketer's heart.

  "And it will promote the heck out of qNM," said Bartholomew Meech.

  "I like it," Bolt said.

  Smiles all around. Grins. Beaming ones.

  "One question," Bolt asked after the second impenetrable presentation.

  "R.M.?"

  "Will this have any effect on the ozone layer?"

  "Not unless we want it to." "I definitely do not want it to," Bolt declared with precise enunciation so that everyone understood.

  "Then it won't."

  "See that it goes right into production," said R. M. Bolt, leaving the room without understanding anything except that Quantum Neutrino Mechanics was still in business because now he had something to tell the stockholders.

  The memos coming back from R ouraging.

  Production was on schedule.

  Project was ahead of schedule.

  Ahead of schedule and under budget.

  Magic words, all of them. Each memo added an extra quarter to the period of Reemer Bolt's tenure at qNM.

  Finally Meech came and said proudly, "We're ready to launch it."

  "Go ahead," said Bolt, thinking of a marketing launch, not the other kind.

  Meech and his engineers looked momentarily confused. "We don't have a launch vehicle."

  "Find one," said Bolt, his marketer's instincts thinking that with television channels exploding exponentially, how hard could it be to secure advertising time?

  They came back with a six-page report-a marvel of business writing because they could have added a ream to the page count and increased their employment contracts by a solid year-outlining launch plans. That told Bolt one of two things: either they were fools or they were extremely enthusiastic about the project.

  That also told R. M. Bolt he should start exercising his stock options-qNM was here to stay. At least through the turn of the millennium-or whatever they were going to call it.

  The gist of the report was given to Bolt orally, relieving him of the tiresome responsibility of reading it.

  "The Chinese have the best price," Meech said enthusiastically. "The Japanese are too expensive. The French are impossible to deal with. And the Americans, of course, are out."

  "Of course," Bolt said, having no clue as to what the conversation was about. But he had given the staff affirmation, and the affirmation was coming back in the form of approving nods.

  "That leaves the Russians," finished Meech.

  "Doesn't it always?" said Reemer Bolt.

  Another nod. A short one. Bolt decided not to push his luck any more and just listen.

  "Their reusable launch vehicle is for rent. In fact, we could buy if it we wanted to sink a billion into it."

  "Why buy when you can rent?" said Bolt, quoting a local TV ad for a company that rented furniture to people with bad credit.

  "Exactly," Meech said as if having his view of reality reaffirmed.

  "The Russians are so hard up for cash we think we can negotiate them down," another engineer chimed in.

  "Do we have a budget for this?" Bolt asked calmly.

  "It's not in the current budget."

  "I'll authorize it."

  Everyone beamed. It was so infectious, R. M. Bolt beamed back. It was like love. There was no understanding it, no analyzing it and no denying it. But when it was happening, it was best to just accept it and return it, because it always came back with interest.

  Then came the catch.

  Bolt asked an obvious question. "What is our market?"

  They looked at him with dull, blank expressions.

  "R.M?"

  "Market," Bolt snapped. "Who can we sell this to?"

  Meech adjusted his taped-together glasses and shuffled his sneakered feet. "We explained all that."

  "Refresh my memory," Bolt ordered.

  "The Pentagon's not underwriting SDI R we launch a working prototype, we have their attention in a way never before seen. It's viable, and a PR coup that will put qNM in the forefront of planetary defense, which we feel will be the cutting edge for the new century, technological-application-wise."

  Bolt stared blankly.

  "And best of all, the energy is free!" Meech added.

  Reemer Bolt's scowl broke like the sun breaking through thunderheads.

  "You spoke the magic words." Then his voice darkened again. "Just make damn sure the Pentagon will buy it."

  "Oh, they'll buy it," Meech promised.

  "Make certain. It's our jobs."

  "I guess we can program it for planetary interventions. Not just defense."

  Some of the engineers went pale at that. Bolt ignored the not very subtle warning sign. "Do it."

  "No problem, R.M. We're on it."

  They started to return to their labs when Bolt stopped them. "Wait!"

  They hesitated.

  "Aren't you forgetting something? It needs a name."

  "We're calling it the Paraguay Project because that's where we assembled the components. It was cheap and offered the best security, patent-wise," said Meech.

  Bolt shook his head firmly. "'The Paraguay Project' won't cut it."

  "How about the Solar Harnesser?"

  "Sounds horsey."

  "The Sun Tamer, then?"

  "Reminds me of a cheap Western."

  "I know," offered a nameless engineer. "We can call it the ParaSol 2001."

  "What does that mean?" demanded Bolt.

  "Nothing, really. But people respect numbers. Especially big ones attached to futuristic-sounding words. I think it has something to do with math anxiety."

  Reemer Bolt's close-shaved face wavered between a scowl and a mere frown. Eventually realizing they were running into lunch, he said, "Makes sense to me. Go with it."

  And with that, Reemer Bolt turned his back on the project.

  It was many months later that he finally pieced together the bits of data that explained what the ParaSol 2001 actually was. He did this by pink-slipping an engineer and debriefing him while the man blubbered behind closed doors. That way, no one was the wiser.

  Bolt had to explain it to the board of directors; otherwise, he would never have bothered.

  "The ParaSol 2001 is designed to repel planet-threatening threats," Reemer Bolt said proudly as he stood before a wall chart that showed threat quantities and their H-bomb equivalents. It was a very frightening display. It even scared him.

  The board, as usual, cut right to the heart of the thing.

  "Who in their right mind is going to pay to defend the planet against external threats?" CEO Ralph Gaunt asked.

  "They'll pay if we're the only game in orbit."

  "Knowing the Pentagon generals, they'll appeal to our patriotism and expect us to do the job gratis to save our own butts," Gaunt scoffed. "No profit in saving the world, Bolt."

  "Already thought of that. It can be directed earthward to zap any military target on earth. No other Earth-based weapon has that feature."