That was about the time Bolt snapped out of his fascinated daze and mustered the presence of mind to scream.

  The trouble was his lungs were the consistency of dead liver and there was nothing to scream with.

  His eyes saw their own reflection, then they were swallowed by the desk drawer and the drawer was slammed shut with a finality that failed to register on Reemer Murgatroyd Bolt's dead, squashed brain.

  REMO LOCKED THE DRAWER and told Chiun, "Assignment done. Time to call Smith."

  Harold Smith sounded relieved. "You are positive the device is inoperative?"

  "We got R.M., his technician and everything that looked electronic."

  "I have finished reading the e-mail files. This is a rogue operation. qNM is not corporately responsible. Exit quietly."

  "Will do," said Remo.

  Then Smith's voice turned sharp. "One moment." Smith's voice became raw. "Remo, I am looking at a real-time-feed visual of the device. It is opening again."

  "So? Maybe that means it's dying. Don't animals relax when they die?"

  "This is a machine. It was in shutdown mode. Now it is unfolding again."

  Remo said to Chiun, "Uh-oh."

  "What is that?" asked Smith.

  "Nothing," said Remo.

  Then Smith said, "It is deploying."

  Silence made the line hum.

  Then Harold Smith said hoarsely, "Remo, it just emitted another burst of concentrated heat. Stand by."

  It was the longest twenty minutes of Remo's life.

  Smith came back on the line. "Remo, it has struck Baldar Mountain in the Asgard Range."

  Remo groaned. "There goes Norway."

  "No. Antarctica. We were fortunate. It is uninhabited. Thousands of pounds of ice are now steam. That is all. But the ParaSol 2001 is not folding up. It's still tracking. It may strike again."

  "Probably a last gasp," Remo said hopefully.

  But it wasn't.

  "Another burst!" groaned Smith. "It is out of control."

  "Well, just shoot it down."

  "That is the problem. We cannot fire missiles into space."

  "Well, you can't just let it run amok."

  "I must contact the President at once."

  Chiun spoke up. "There is another way."

  "What's that?" asked Remo and Smith at the same tine.

  "A Master of Sinanju must ascend into the Void to deal with this scourge that is a sun dragon. So Salbyol foresaw."

  "You volunteering?" asked Remo.

  "Yes!" cried Chiun. "I will be the first Korean in space."

  "You're on," said Remo.

  Chapter 45

  Commander Dirk McSweeny couldn't believe his ears.

  "Launch? Today!"

  "The Atlantis is on the pad. The countdown's started. You go up in an hour," said the NASA flight controller in a breathless tone. He looked serious. And sane. But he couldn't be either. Space shuttles were not launched on short notice.

  "What about the mission? The package isn't ready."

  "Scrubbed. You have a new mission and a new payload."

  "What is it?"

  "Classified. You take the orbiter up. And deploy the payload."

  "You know it doesn't work that way. We have to train for a new payload."

  "Not this time. This time you're flying a glorified delivery truck."

  "What about payload-deployment procedures?"

  "Don't worry about them. It's self-deploying."

  "Self-"

  "You heard me."

  Within an hour, Commander McSweeny was being suited up, along with his mission specialists and what he saw was a severely reduced crew of five. That meant a military mission.

  "What the hell is going on here?" he yelled as they dropped his helmet over his confused face.

  "Just relax. It's a short mission. Up and back down the same day."

  As they were being escorted to the vehicle, lugging their portable oxygen tanks, McSweeny asked his flight controller, "Can you at least tell me what the payload is?"

  "Sorry. This run you're just a stick jockey."

  IN Moscow, FSK Major-General Stankevitch sat with the Cosmic Secret file sitting on his desk like a time bomb, his stomach burning with half a bottle of vodka. Upon his shoulders rested the fate of the world.

  "Get me the Kremlin," he told his secretary, and reached for the bottle. Very soon there would be no more vodka, no more air, no more water. For anyone.

  THE MASTER of SINANJU was beside himself with rage.

  "Never!"

  "You gotta," pleaded Remo.

  They were in an all-white ready room at the Kennedy Space Center.

  "Never! I will not shear off my nails. It is bad enough that I am bereft of one. But to willingly abandon the others! My ancestors would be ashamed of me. They would shun me in the Void when my time came."

  And he inserted one hand into a white gauntlet. The long nails popped through like daggers.

  "Tough," said Remo. "You volunteered. You can't go up without a space suit, and they don't come with extralong fingers."

  Chiun folded his arms. "Have them sewn. I will wait."

  "That mirror just zapped a piece of the South Atlantic. Nobody got hurt, but it's all ready to power up for another burst. It's only a matter of time before it hits a populated place."

  "I cannot." Chiun looked up at Remo with imploring eyes. "Remo, you must go in my stead."

  "Me?"

  "It has been prophesied that a Master of Sinanju would battle the returning sun dragon. I can see now that it is not destined to be me. Therefore, it must be you."

  "I didn't volunteer."

  "I have volunteered the House. Since I am constrained by circumstances beyond my power to alter, you must go and uphold the honor of the House. Not to mention save precious humanity from this scourge."

  "Look, the countdown's starting. One of you has to go!" the flight controller implored.

  "One of us will," Chiun said. And he pointed his jade nail protector at Remo. "You. You will go."

  "I'll do it," said Remo angrily. "But you owe me, Chiun."

  Support personnel helped Remo into an atmosphere suit.

  "We need to brief you on how to go to the bathroom in space," the flight controller said anxiously.

  Remo shook his head. "No time. I'll hold it."

  "How to eat."

  "Give me a fistful of cold rice, and I'll be fine."

  "Emergency procedures."

  "That's up to the crew. I'm cargo."

  "At least try to understand MMU operations for your EVA."

  "If I can't understand what you just said," Remo shot back, "how can I understand what I'm supposed to understand? Just suit me up. I'll wing it."

  Support personnel blinked dazedly.

  "Just get him in the suit," the flight controller said resignedly.

  Remo eyed the Master of Sinanju. "Did Master Salbyol say how this would turn out?"

  "No," admitted Chiun.

  "Figures," said Remo as the gloves were snapped on.

  The last thing to go on was the helmet. The visor was blacked out so that Remo could see out but no one could see his face.

  Then he was being led to the huge white transport van.

  "This is a proud day. My son, the star voyager," said Chiun.

  "It's 'astronaut,'" grumbled Remo.

  "What do you think the word means, ignorant one?"

  "I just hope someone checked the O-rings on this thing," Remo muttered hollowly.

  Commander McSweeny was still cursing under his breath when the countdown reached zero and the thunder of the shuttle's multiple engines slammed at his tense spine and the sensation of leaving his stomach behind overtook everything. He had a big bird to fly. And if that was all NASA wanted this trip, they were going to get the best shuttle pilot who ever flew.

  MAJOR-GENERAL STANKEVITCH received the news with a weird mixture of anger and relief.

  "All lines to the Kremlin are tied up," his secretary reported.

  "These damn phones!" he exploded.

  "It is not the phone system. All lines are in use. There is something up."

  "Keep trying. The Motherland depends upon us. I will keep drinking."

  ONCE IN SPACE, Commander McSweeny was fed his instructions by ground control.

  "You are to locate and overtake solar mirror approximately a sixteenth of a mile in diameter."

  "That won't be hard to miss," McSweeny grunted.

  Maneuvering the orbiter, he found it.

  "Is that a qNM logo?" he muttered.

  "It is. They make great avionics."

  "Okay, what do we do now?" McSweeny asked Houston.

  "Pace it."

  The Atlantis fell in beside the slowly turning mirror.

  "Houston, Atlantis is flying right next to it." "Okay, Atlantis. Open payload bay doors."

  "Opening doors." A minute later it was, "Doors open."

  "Stand by, Atlantis. Your cargo is self-deploying."

  "What the hell kind of cargo is self-?"

  Then an astronaut who was not a member of the Atlantis crew came floating out on an EVA line. He carried no MMU thrust-pack. Only on a flexible tether, but somehow he gravitated toward the big solar mirror as if he were swimming through space. That, of course, was impossible. No one could swim through space. Not unless he could somehow glide along on the solar winds.

  As McSweeny and his crew watched with utter fascination, the astronaut with the blackout visor moved unerringly toward the solar mirror that dwarfed them all into insignificance.

  In space, it should have been impossible.

  But there it was.

  WHEN HIS SECRETARY Came back with the word that the Kremlin was still incommunicado, Major-General Stankevitch grabbed up the fateful file and announced, "I will take the file to them personally."

  On the way out, he grabbed a fresh bottle of vodka, too.

  REMO WILLIAMS HAD NO EYES for the beauty of the blue earth 120 miles below him. The stark starlight held no fascination, either. His dark eyes were fixed on the gigantic ParaSol 2001 slowly spinning before him.

  He felt like a fly trying to catch a spiderweb.

  The moment the great shuttle cargo doors had split open, Remo launched himself with a two-footed kick. He was amazed at his own lightness in zero gravity. But he had no time to enjoy the sensations of weightlessness.

  The looming ParaSol was filling his field of vision. It gleamed like a plate made of soft aluminum foil, except for the gigantic black areas that spelled out three letters that had reignited the Cold War: "MNp."

  And in his helmet earphone, a familiar lemony voice intruded.

  "Destroyer."

  "Here," said Remo, acknowledging Smith's use of his rarely spoken code name.

  "You are looking at a disk of aluminized Mylar on a folding-strut frame. Do you see the focusing lens?"

  "Yeah."

  "That is your target. According to my estimates, it has been collecting solar radiation from its rear collectors and discharging energy every twenty-eight minutes. It is due to fire again in four minutes, twenty-eight seconds."

  "What's the situation on the ground?" asked Remo.

  "A mile-wide circular section of the Sahara has been turned to glass. No known casualties."

  "Our luck can't hold."

  "The President is on the hot line to Moscow, explaining the situation. The Russian leadership is wary but willing to listen. They are tracking the ParaSol, too. They expect results."

  "I'm floating as fast as I can."

  "Listen carefully. Its present orbit will take it over Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia. You must disable it before any of those nations are struck."

  "Almost there," said Remo as the great disk all but enveloped him in its shadow. It billowed and rippled like silvery Saran Wrap.

  "I am watching you in real time through my GEODSS link."

  As the tumbling mirror came within reach, Remo lifted his white-gloved hands to catch it. They grazed Mylar. Remo made two fists and began tearing the tough metallic fabric.

  It refused to tear. And momentum took Remo into the rippling fabric itself.

  He bounced back, reached out a hand and grabbed a handy strut. Using it for leverage, he swung his sluggish body around.

  This time he popped through the fabric. He kept going. The obverse side came into view, showing the qNM corporate logo.

  Reaching back, Remo grabbed his tether, hauling himself back with both hands.

  "Be careful!" Smith said sharply.

  "I'm not exactly trained for this kind of work," Remo shot back as he regained the mirror.

  And Remo started in on the Mylar envelope. With an open tear to work with, it was easy to make the rip wider. Silver Mylar fragments began floating away. Remo used the support strut as a kick point and launched himself toward the center, where the big lens sat like the spider in the mylar web. It was pointing down at the North Pole. Soon they would be over Siberia.

  "Estimated burn in two minutes, twelve seconds," Harold Smith was saying.

  Remo ripped methodically as he made his way along. All he was accomplishing was to inhibit the ParaSol from collecting future solar energy. The only way to disable it was to nail the lens.

  "One minute, three seconds," Smith said, his voice tinny in the space-suit helmet.

  Remo tried to shake a strut loose, but he had no leverage. His strength worked against him. The mirror orbited on.

  "Twenty-two seconds..."

  The lens began to flash.

  Smith's voice became raw. "Target confirmed as industrial city of Magnitogorsk. You must not fail."

  "Damn," said Remo. Gathering up coils of loose tether, he pulled in two directions. The cable snapped silently. And Remo whipped it around.

  The broken end snaked around like a tentacle. It moved with agonizing slowness, while Harold Smith, useful as a Greek chorus, counted down the seconds to nuclear Armageddon.

  "Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven..."

  The lens shattered at four seconds to doomsday. There was no sound, of course, only glassy fragments tumbling in all directions. Some pierced the mylar web. Others spun toward Remo, catching starlight, reflecting it brilliantly.

  "Good news and bad news," Remo said thinly.

  "Yes?"

  "ParaSol is dead. But I'm adrift."

  "The shuttle will retrieve you."

  "Glad to hear it."

  Without warning, the ParaSol detonated.

  Again there was no sound. Other than Remo's surprised curse.

  "What is it?" Smith asked anxiously.

  "It blew up! I gotta get out of here."

  Reflexes kicked in. Remo tried to swim but he was in space. There was nothing to push against. The explosive wave radiated toward him like a metallic dandelion coming apart under a giant's breath.

  Eerily tumbling shards of glass and metal and mylar foil billowed outward in all directions of space. As they came at Remo in a dense cloud of space-age shrapnel, he had only one cold thought: I'm dead.

  Then Harold Smith was saying, "Remo, I am watching you. The debris will spread and expand outward the farther it gets from the point of detonation. Your primary survival tactic is simple. Dodge all debris. First, curl yourself in a ball."

  Remo oriented himself toward the explosion.

  Pieces of material arrowed at him. Very quickly, they were only inches from his vulnerable space suit.

  In a way, it was easier than dodging bullets. He had six directions to dodge in. But nothing to work against.

  The mylar he ignored. It was the metal struts that had the ability to pierce his space suit and expose him to the hostile environment of space.

  But the metal was another thing. Remo moved his arms and lifted his legs to avoid tumbling shards. A chunk of strut came within reach. Remo grabbed it. It pulled him along, actually carrying him ahead of the oncoming storm. By redirecting its trajectory, he used it to bat away other threats like a ball player suspended on a string.

  After a while, the last of the widening storm of shrapnel had passed by. Remo floated in a harmless sea of shining mylar.

  When he was in the clear, Remo looked around and blurted, "Where's the shuttle?"

  "Retreated to a lower orbit," Smith supplied.

  "What about me?"

  "There are no rescue procedures for an astronaut adrift amid so much dangerous space junk," Harold Smith said with a tinny flatness. "The Atlantis could be imperiled."

  "That's it? No procedures? So end of story?" Remo asked incredulously.

  "You knew you were expendable from the day you joined CURE."

  A cold sensation settled in Remo's stomach.

  "Smitty, you aren't going to leave me up here to die ...."

  "I have no choice."

  "Think of what Chiun will say."

  Smith was silent.

  "Think of what he'll do," Remo added.

  "I am thinking .. . ."

  "Think fast," warned Remo. "It's not getting any closer."

  Then Smith said, "Can you see the Atlantis?"

  "Yeah."

  "Listen carefully. The mylar is composed of the same material that is used for solar sails. They catch the solar winds. One day man may be able to pilot spacecraft with gigantic solar sails as auxiliary propulsion. Can you reach a larger section?"

  "I can try. There's a ton of it around here."

  Actually it was more of a matter of waiting until a large enough piece floated to within grabbing range. Remo grasped and released two before he caught one that looked big enough.

  Taking one end in both hands, he lifted it over his helmet. His feet found a rip on the lower end and dug in. By stretching, Remo made the fabric taut.

  "Point yourself toward the sun," Smith instructed.

  Remo did. Not that it was easy. He felt like a moth riding a leaf.

  "Now what?"

  "Wait. You will not feel the push. But I can direct the shuttle to orient itself with its payload bay ready to catch you."

  "I can't see where I'm going."

  "Trust the shuttle commander."

  An eternity seemed to pass. Remo saw only the fabric before his face and occasional glimpses of stars. He had no sensation of movement. No sensation of time. He was using almost no energy, so he cut his air intake to six careful sips a minute. Enough to sustain life in this state.

  In the air-conditioned suit, he began to perspire.