The man stood poised by the scarlet Saturn, saw his arrival was unnoticed and slammed the rear door shut. The sound carried but made no impression. So he opened it again and slammed it harder.

  And this time heads turned. Gasps came from those turned heads, and as if the media had been sprinkled with magician's magic dust, they turned their attention from Amos Bulla to the media-friendly presence they all recognized.

  "Hey! Isn't that Dr. Pagan?"

  "He's always good for a snappy soundbite!"

  A concerted rush was made for Dr. Cosmo Pagan, who struck a pose by the scarlet Saturn. He was quickly ringed by a horseshoe of reporters straining their mikes and cameras in his direction.

  "Dr. Pagan, what can you tell us about this event?"

  "Is this the work of extraterrestrials?"

  "The BioBubble people say lightning. Can you refute this?"

  "I have not yet examined the site," said Dr. Cosmo Pagan in the singsongy voice that America had first experienced on a famous PBS special many years ago, and revisited on countless science and astronomy specials ever since. He stepped forward.

  The converging media abruptly backed up, parting like the Red Sea before a latter-day Moses.

  The glass video lenses tracked Dr. Pagan as if he were some kind of glass magnet. The media throng followed like iron filings trailing after a lodestone.

  Dr. Pagan walked up to the outer edges of the BioBubble mass, wearing a studious expression. He sucked on an unlit briar pipe. His corduroy coat had felt patches at the elbows, and the Arizona wind played at his hair like a mother's gentle fingers.

  "This is not the work of lightning," he announced.

  The hovering media crowded close, as if afraid to miss a single crumb of scientific wisdom. No one asked questions. No one questioned him at all. Such was the reverence in which Dr. Cosmo Pagan was held.

  "The absence of fulgurites confirms this," he added.

  Out of microphone range, Amos Bulla groaned to himself.

  Walking farther along, Dr. Pagan purposefully broke the thin-edged glass under his Hush Puppies as if it were a melting ice bank.

  "I see blisters and seeds and stones-things that occur when an impure mix is turned to glass."

  Geologist Tom Pulse drifted up to Bulla's side, and Bulla asked, "Is he making sense?"

  "Not as much as the press thinks. He's throwing glass-manufacturing terminology around. Not applicable here."

  "The black color is interesting," Dr. Pagan continued. "It reminds me of obsidian, which is glass produced in the intense natural furnace of erupting volcanoes."

  Tom Pulse snorted. "Arizona isn't volcanic."

  "But no volcano did this, of course," Dr. Pagan added thoughtfully. "The brownish tinge that glass has at its edge is very suggestive, however." Dr. Pagan turned to face the expectant cameras then. He looked them square in the eye. "Not many laymen know this, but in nuclear power plants, observation windows are forged of special glass because ordinary glass turns brown under exposure to hard radiation."

  The press seemed stunned by this pronouncement.

  "Hard radiation may be the culprit in this event."

  Someone found his voice and lobbed a polite question. "Dr. Pagan, can you speculate as to the source of this hard radiation?"

  "There are many possibilities. Billions and billions of them, in truth." Pagan paused. "Billions and billions," he repeated as if tasting the words. "They are endless in their complexity, in their richness, in their sheer wonderment."

  Taking the cold briar from his mouth, Pagan pointed to the eastern horizon of red sandstone buttes.

  "Not fifty miles in that direction lies Meteor Crater, where an unknown object from space fell, gouging out a rude cup in the hard stone of Earth's mantle that endures to this day."

  "Do you suspect a meteor strike?"

  "If this is a meteor-impact site," allowed Dr. Cosmo Pagan, "it is unlike any meteor strike ever recorded by man."

  "Then you're saying it's not a meteor strike?" another reporter prompted.

  Dr. Pagan shook his head slowly. "Too early to say. For many years, the Tunguska event in Siberia was an unfathomable mystery. Now we think we know that a comet or rocky asteroid exploded before it impacted with our fragile blue planet, flattening a zillion square kilometers of tundra forest. Nothing like it has been documented since."

  "Could a comet have done this?"

  "No one on Earth knows. We simply don't have the knowledge. This is why our efforts to plumb the depths of space must go on. How can we confront the unknown if we have not ventured beyond our thin atmosphere to challenge it?"

  "Are you saying you don't know?" a more astute reporter wondered ahead.

  Dr. Pagan shrugged his corduroy shoulders and offered no reply.

  At the back of the pack, Amos Bulla nodded. This man knew his stuff. TV, like radio, abhors a vacuum. They would not broadcast his silence. And with it went the reporter's penetrating question.

  "Guy's amazing," he said with ill-disguised admiration. "A genius."

  Tom Pulse snorted derisively. "Hell, so far all he's done is spout some high-school textbook facts, hardly any of it in his specialty."

  "So how come he's famous and you're not?"

  "The cameras are pointing his way, not mine," Pulse drawled.

  "You got a point there."

  "So far, he hasn't offered anything useful you couldn't drag out of an Astronomy 101 student."

  Then Dr. Pagan gave the soundbite that led the evening news.

  "Visitors from the mighty cosmos can't be ruled out in this inexplicable event. Not with the Hubble telescope discovering new superplanets in distant galaxies every other week. Did you know that igneous meteorites from Mars have been landing on Earth for decades, blown our way by an unknown upheaval? One made planet-fall in Egypt in 1911, killing a dog. We are standing in a perfect approximation of the Martian landscape. Consider the sheer irony, the stupendous odds of a piece of Mars striking the beachhead of man's eventual conquest of the Red Planet. Gives new meaning to the term 'first strike."'

  Pagan took a thoughtful suck on his pipe and added, "It is my fervent hope that the BioBubble, despite its troubled past, will be reconstituted as the forerunner of man's first base on the Red Planet, Mars."

  That was it. The media began breaking down their sound equipment and putting away their cameras. The helicopters dropped in response to walkie-talkie summonses and, reloaded once more, they left the site like buzzing electronic locusts.

  Dr. Cosmo Pagan hopped into his waiting Saturn and departed, his interest in the BioBubble event seemingly as transient as the media's.

  "I don't believe it!" Bulla exploded.

  "What?"

  "No one cares."

  Tom Pulse looked back at the sealed tomb that was the BioBubble and summed it up in two words, "No bodies."

  "Say again?"

  "No bodies. If you had bodies sticking up from the glass, they'd stay with this story till April Fool's Day."

  Bulla shrugged. "I don't want bodies. I want the goddamn media out of my hair."

  "Now all you have to deal with are the Feds. And they're not going to accept the lightning-bolt hypothesis."

  "Screw them," Bulla snorted.

  Pulse lifted his white Stetson, replacing it at a cockier angle than before.

  "Whether you're the screwer or the screwee, I don't know. But history tells us the federal government has pretty much the upper hand in screwing folks. I'd be prepared for the worst."

  Then Amos Bulla felt a hard tapping on his shoulder, and a cold voice that made him all but jump out of his skin said in his ear, "Remo Kobialka, EPA."

  "Where'd you come from?" Bulla sputtered, whirling.

  "The taxpayers. They want some answers to some questions."

  "You just missed Dr. Cosmo Pagan," Bulla said, deciding to toss the ball into another court entirely. "He said it was aliens."

  "You believe that?" asked Remo Kobialka, who looked as much like an EPA investigator in his white T-shirt and tan chinos as Tom Pulse in his white Stetson and snakeskin. boots looked like a scientific consultant on earthquakes, volcanos and other Earth hazards.

  "I'm only a glorified PR agent. Dr. Pagan is a world-renowned expert," Bulla answered.

  "Who once predicted that the firing of the old wells in Kuwait would turn Africa into a winter wonderland," said Remo Kobialka.

  "Well, he was off his subject. If it's up in the sky, Pagan knows it inside and out."

  "What's your theory?"

  "Lightning."

  Behind Bulla's back, Pulse shook his head in a slow negative.

  "I want to talk to you," said Remo, picking Pulse up bodily and depositing him off to one side. like a barbershop pole.

  "You can't," Bulla insisted. "He's a hired consultant. Answerable only to BioBubble Inc."

  "What are you getting an hour?" Remo asked Pulse.

  "One-fifty."

  "Not bad. I pay five hundred. Up front."

  "Sold."

  They left Amos Bulla sputtering.

  "What's your take?" asked Remo, drawing the man closer to the BioBubble remnant.

  "You got me. It's not lightning. It's not a meteor impact or any of that stuff. Something up there turned a ray or force of something very, very hot on the BioBubble complex."

  "How hot?"

  "Somewhere between 1400 to 1600 degrees centigrade."

  "Where do you get that figure?" Remo wondered aloud.

  "Steel melts at between 1400 and 1500 centigrade. To turn raw sand to glass like this, you're talking anywhere in the 1400 to 1600 range. Those are the BioBubble structural components with the highest melting points. Of course, it could be higher."

  Remo looked around the site, frowning.

  "What's EPA's stake in this?" Pulse wondered aloud.

  "The BioThing was full of different environments, right?"

  "Yes, but-"

  "EPA watchdogs the environment. Something like sixteen pocket environments just went the way of the dodo. This is exactly what the taxpayers pay us to investigate."

  "It is?"

  "Today it is. Tomorrow we may be giving mouthto-mouth to the spiny dogfish or doing other important rescues."

  The US Geological Survey expert looked Remo up and down, taking in his white-light-deflecting T-shirt and freakishly thick wrists and was about to remark that Remo wasn't exactly dressed for the Arizona heat, when an even more unlikely apparition came fluttering around from the other side of the BioBubble. An ancient Asian with a face like a reanimated mummy's.

  "Uh-oh," Pulse muttered. "Looks like the advance man for the harmonic-convergence crowd. I was wondering when the Dodona loonies would start showing up."

  "That's Chiun," said Remo.

  "You know him?"

  "Consultant."

  "What's his specialty?"

  "Figuring out stuff I can't," said Remo, walking up to the tiny Asian.

  If Remo was dressed for one season, Chiun was attired for another. His brocaded kimono was heavy and swayed thickly as he moved. Neither man sweated, which was amazing.

  "Find anything?" asked Remo.

  "Yes. Melted glass and steel."

  "Funny. Besides that, I mean."

  Chiun looked around with eyelids slowly compressing until only black pupils showed. "A terrible force did this, Remo."

  "No argument there."

  "One not of this earth."

  Interest flickered across Remo's high-cheekboned face. "Yeah..."

  "It can be but one thing."

  "What's that?" asked Remo.

  "A sun dragon."

  "Sun dragon?"

  "Yes, unquestionably a sun dragon wreaked this terrible havoc."

  "I know what a dragon is, but I don't think I've heard of a sun dragon."

  "They are rare, but they appear in the heavens in difficult times, presaging calamity. I myself have seen several in my lifetime. One famous sun dragon twice, at the beginning of my life and again more recently."

  "You saw a dragon?"

  "A sun dragon, which is different from a landcrawling dragon."

  Tom Pulse listened to this as if they were making perfect sense.

  "Back up," said Remo. "What's a sun dragon?"

  "There is a Western word for this. Stolen from the Greek, of course."

  "Yeah?"

  "The word is 'comet.'"

  "A comet did this?"

  "Yes. For they breathe fire, as do certain species of land-dwelling dragon. Only sun dragons breathe fire from the tail, not the mouth."

  Remo gave Chiun a skeptical look. "A fire-farting dragon?"

  Chiun made an offended face. "Is there not one lurking in the heavens even now?"

  Remo shrugged. "Search me."

  "He means Hale-Bopp," said Pulse, joining the conversation.

  "He does?"

  "Comet Hale-Bopp has been visible most of the year. It's on the other side of the sun right now, but it's still up there. When it reemerges, they say its tail will be a sight to see. Brighter and better than Comet Hayakute II was."

  "It is not lurking behind the sun," Chiun snapped. "It has pounced upon this place, melting it with its withering breath as a warning to Westerners to mend their ways."

  "What are Westerners doing that would upset a comet?" asked Remo.

  Chiun composed his face thoughtfully. His hazel eyes narrowed in interesting ways. "They are mistreating Koreans, that is what."

  Remo threw up his hands. "I should have seen that one coming."

  "Do not become upset, Remo. Doubtless the comet has not taken notice of your existence. You are safe. Especially if you remain dutifully at my side."

  "Comets are millions upon millions of miles out in space."

  "If this is true, why can they be seen from Earth?" countered Chiun. "If they were so far away, they would be unfindable to all but the keenest of eyes."

  "They're very big and they glow. No mystery there."

  "So is the den of inequity called Las Vegas. It is not so very distant from here. Yet I cannot see it. Can you?"

  "No," Remo admitted.

  "Nor can I see many-towered Boston, a mere three thousand miles east."

  "That's because of the curvature of the earth."

  "A myth. I look in all directions and I see flatness. I look into the sky and I see no so-called comet, though many beheld its fiery tail in the sky not very many weeks ago. Therefore, it has descended to earth."

  "Comets when they get too close to the sun are hard to see," Remo argued.

  "They are dragons which live in the sun and venture out to punish the wicked. One swooped down upon this very spot, wreaking justice and righteousness."

  "It killed thirty people."

  "Deserving people," countered Chiun. "Were they not imprisoned for an allotted period of time?"

  "Look, let's just save this for another time," said Remo in an exasperated voice. "For right now, all you have to offer is a comet sideswiped this place?"

  "Yes. There can be no question."

  "Fine. Put that in your report. I'm going to look around some more."

  But before Remo could act on his decision, a wrenching scream pierced the dry desert air from the other side of the flat silicon pancake that had been the BioBubble.

  "Sounds like Bulla! " Tom Pulse said tightly.

  Chapter 6

  When the butter-colored official telephone jangled discordantly, Major-General lyona Stankevitch picked it up without thinking.

  The butter-colored direct line to the Kremlin was forever ringing these days, what with rumors of plots and putsches and coups in the offing. Most were spurious. After all, who would want Russia in its present state?

  "Da?" said Major-General Stankevitch.

  "General, there is a report out of the United States that a space-research dome was reduced to molten metal in the dead of night."

  "Yes?"

  "There is talk of lightning. But according to our best scientists, no lightning could produce this catastrophe."

  "Yes?" repeated the general, vaguely bored. Who cared what happened in the faraway U.S. when Mother Russia was crumbling like old black bread?

  "There are two schools of thinking here. That the Americans are testing a new superweapon of destructive power, or that some unidentified power is testing it on US. targets, and Washington will naturally blame this event upon us."

  "Why would they do that?"

  "It is the historic reality of the relationship between the two superpowers."

  The general started to point out that Russia-he refused to say Commonwealth of Independent States-was no longer a superpower. But if the leadership insisted upon clinging to dashed illusions, who was the director of the former KGBnow known as the FSK, or the Federal Security Service-to tell him otherwise?

  "I see your point," said the general politely.

  "That idiot Zhirinovsky is on NTV, warning that the Americans now have the dreaded Elipticon."

  "There is no Elipticon. Zhirinovsky made up this conceit to frighten the credulous West."

  "And now he is trying to frighten the East by ascribing its awesome power to Pentagon warmongers."

  Stankevitch sighed. He hated the old, stale phrases. They suggested an inability to face geopolitical realities. "What would you have me do?"

  "Search your files. Try to discover what this weapon might be and who controls it."

  "Search my files?"

  "It is a first step. Once I have your report, we will issue a directive for action."

  Shrugging, the general hung up the butter-colored handset and buzzed his secretary.

  "Have all available clerks search all available records for a weapon of destructive power."

  "We have no weapons on file," the dull-witted secretary said stonily.

  "I meant for intelligence on such a device," MajorGeneral Stankevitch returned tightly.

  "Then why did you not say this in the first place?" The secretary harrumphed, disconnecting.

  Settling back in his seat, Major-General Stankevitch closed his Slavic green eyes to the lowly state to which he had sunk. If the clock could only be turned back, he could have the dull, impertinent secretary stood before a firing squad and the answers to his inquiry would be on his desk before the body thudded to the bloodstained brick.