But this was late-twentieth-century Russia, harried and abused by former satellites, NATO forces encroaching on her near abroad, her Black Sea fleet operating out of what now amounted to a foreign port, her major cities overrun by gangsters and capitalists, her aging babushkas supplementing meager pensions by selling their own medicines on street corners, while indolent teenagers guzzled Coca-Cola instead of homemade KVASS, which could hardly be found anymore, and grew fat on greasy fast food, and male life expectancy fell to third-world levels.

  He leaned back in his creaky chair and napped to relieve the tedium of his position. Outside in the former Dzerzhinsky Square, now Lubyanka Ploschad, traffic hummed and blared in a monotonous cacophony. One thing at least had not changed. The soothing sounds of Moscow.

  The answer came by midafternoon in the form of a manila folder stamped Cosmic Secret. To be Stored Forever.

  Accepting the folder, Major General Stankevitch frowned. "Cosmic Secret" was the old classification for the utmost secret possible.

  Untying the fading red ribbon that sealed the folder from all but the most elevated eyes, he pulled out the sheaf of papers.

  At the name Zemyatin, Stankevitch's eyes lost their bored look.

  Field Marshal Alexi Zemyatin was the grand old man of the Soviet Republic. He had been with Lenin. He was loved by Stalin. Khrushchev trusted him. As did Brezhnev. Andropov. And on down to the lastgasp Chernenko regime.

  He was a tactical and strategic genius who had disappeared off the face of the earth some eleven years ago under circumstances that suggested CIA involvement-except that the CIA would never have dared to liquidate him. Personally Stankevitch had suspected the historical criminal Gorbachev of the foul deed.

  The report detailed an incident that had taken place when Major-General Stankevitch was but a lowly KGB captain. He remembered hearing vague rumors. A Russian missile battery had been neutralized by an unknown agency. This was suppressed at the time, only coming out later. It was the later rumors that Stankevitch had overheard.

  This report in his hands explained the incident.

  An American superweapon had concentrated terrible energies, incapacitating the electronics of the missile battery. Many died horribly from hard radiation of unknown origin.

  World War III had nearly resulted. Only a cooperative effort by the USA and USSR-seeing these four initials made a lump of nostalgia rise in Stankevitch's throat-had averted global conflagration.

  The file ended with a disclaimer:

  Should such a weapon ever be unleashed upon Soviet soil again, an immediate retaliatory strike must be implemented without consultation or delay.

  The words stared at Major-General Stankevitch like a cold horror.

  Under current FSK rules, he was duty bound to report this to the Kremlin.

  On the other hand, if he did, some dunderheaded bureaucrat might actually implement it, triggering a US. counterstrike-or was it a countercounterstrike?-with the greatly shrunken and defanged Russia doubtless coming out a poor, smoking second.

  Swallowing hard, Major-General Stankevitch weighed his duty to the Motherland against his desire to live out his normal life span.

  In the end, self-preservation won out. The directive clearly specified action if such a weapon were directed against the USSR. It was not. It was directed against the US. Those two missing initials, Stankevitch grimly reflected, spelled the difference between the world going on happily or becoming a charred ball of charcoal.

  The thought then crossed his mind. What if the Americans train this weapon upon us next?

  Within five minutes, he formulated his response.

  The directive clearly said the USSR. There was no more USSR. Only a CIS, and Major-General Stankevitch decided he now loved those inelegant and weak-sounding initials.

  "I am a citizen of the CIS," he said. "I love being a citizen of the CIS. The Americans will never attack the CIS. What is there to gain? We have nothing anymore."

  When he had recited these reassuring words over and over like a mantra until they lowered his blood pressure, MajorGeneral Stankevitch picked up the butter-hued official phone and pressed the Cyrillic letter K.

  "Report," an officious voice said.

  "We have found nothing."

  "This is unfortunate."

  "Perhaps," Stankevitch said guardedly.

  "It may be that the KGB files in question were sold to the highest bidder during the chaos of the breakup."

  "I do not think so," said Major-General Stankevitch sincerely, cold sweat breaking out on his brow. For he himself had sold some of those very files, as had many of his underlings. But photocopies only. He had no wish to be shot as a traitor to the motherland, now very much in her elderly phase of life.

  "Say nothing of this to anyone," said the voice from the Kremlin.

  "Da, " said Major General Stankeviteh, hanging up.

  With relief, he gathered together the manila folder and its contents and was in the act of retying the red ribbon before sending it back to its file cabinet, when he noticed the faded line at one end of the ribbon. An age mark. The ribbon was discolored where it had been tied once before. Tied and untied.

  Someone had consulted this Cosmic Secret file in the eleven years it had been under lock and key.

  There may have been good reason for this. Perhaps not. But it suggested the file had been duplicated-and not by Major-General Stankevitch, who made a point of consulting every file before selling its copy-for who knew whom some of the shady bidders represented?

  As he buzzed for the dull secretary to come to restore the file to its proper place in the old KGB archives, a chilling thought ghosted through MajorGeneral Iyona Stankevitch's bureaucratic brain.

  Who had the copy, and could that copy cause difficulties for Stankevitch and FSK in the near future?

  The worry haunted him all the rest of the working day, until he went home to his apartment directly behind Lubyanka Prison, which was well stocked with the imported, German-made Gorbatschew Vodka-so much better than the thin swill available in the kiosks and markets here in the capital of a dead and dying empire-and drowned his vague fears.

  Chapter 7

  They found Amos Bulla squatting in the red sandstone dust clutching his eyes and screaming inarticulately.

  Reaching down, Remo got his wrists and pulled him to his feet.

  Bulla kept screaming, so Chiun brought a sandaled toe down on his instep with excruciating pressure. Bulla took his tongue between his teeth and nearly bit it in half. The Master of Sinanju eased back on the pressure, and Bulla stopped howling.

  "What is wrong with you, loud one?" Chiun demanded.

  "Blind! I'm blind!" he burbled.

  "What happened?" asked Remo.

  "I can't see, you idjit!"

  "Before that."

  "The damn alien did it," Bulla wailed. "He burned out my eyes."

  "I'm looking at your eyes. They're still in your head."

  "But I can't see."

  "Settle down," said Remo, pressing on Bulla's other instep until the bones crackled. "What did you see?"

  "It looked like a Martian," Bulla gasped. "Had its back to me. I walked up to it, and it spun around real sudden-like. It had a rod in its hand. Damn thing flashed at me. Felt like hot needles jabbing my eyeballs." Bulla's voice cracked. "Now I can't see my fingers before my poor face."

  Remo and planetary geologist Tom Pulse exchanged glances while Bulla waved his hands in front of his blinking bloodshot eyes. There was so much red in the whites, the blue of his eyes looked purple by contrast.

  Pulse shrugged helplessly. "I can't vouch for him. We only met today."

  Remo looked into Bulla's sightless eyes and said, "Try closing them."

  "They are closed!" Bulla insisted, all evidence to the contrary.

  "Then open and close them."

  Bulla did. They got wider and, if possible, redder.

  "Any difference?"

  "No. I can't see, open or closed."

  "Keep them closed. Just relax. We'll figure this out."

  Bulla began walking around in aimless circles, moaning and blubbering.

  Remo sat him down and knelt beside him. "You said Martian?" he asked calmly.

  "Yeah. It was a Martian."

  "How do you know it was a Martian?"

  "It looked like a Martian," Bulla said.

  "You know what a Martian looks like?"

  "No. 'Course not. But he was man shaped. Wore a quilted space suit with a square black glass porthole in front of his face. Had gloves and boots on and was looking around the way the old Apollo astronauts used to poke around the moon. You know, careful and clumsy-like at the same time."

  "That doesn't make him a Martian," Remo declared.

  "He sure wasn't press!" Bulla said bitterly.

  Remo stood up and faced the Master of Sinanju. "Little Father, let's look around some more."

  "We will discover who committed this foul deed," Chiun squeaked.

  Remo called back to Tom Pulse, "Keep an eye on him."

  "Sure thing."

  Starting off, Remo undertoned to the old Korean, "He could be making this story up."

  "Why?"

  "To get the heat off the project."

  The Master of Sinanju looked back at the rim of the BioBubble shimmering up heat waves under the broiling Arizona sun.

  "If so, he is far too late."

  "Not that kind of heat. You saw the way the press was acting when we pulled up."

  "Yes. It was good that we remained away from their noise and insanity. Otherwise, they would have committed some barbaric indiscretion, such as interviewing you instead of a more worthy person."

  "I don't believe in men from Mars," said Remo, walking with such care that his Italian loafers left no impression on the rust-colored Arizona sands. Chiun likewise disturbed nothing with his sandaled tread.

  "Is Mars not a world like this one?"

  "Yeah. But there's no air up there. It can't support life. It's a big red desert, kinda like this one."

  "If no man of Earth has ever been there, how can you know this?" asked Chiun.

  "We sent probes. They sent back video."

  "Television probes?"

  "Yeah."

  Chiun scrunched up his chin. His wispy beard stuck out from under his lower lip like a fluttering tendril of smoke.

  "And if there were men dwelling on the Fire Planet as there are Earth men, would they not have have seen these probes coming and showed them deceitful pictures of arid deserts and desolation to confound suspecting Earth men into thinking no one lived there?"

  "I don't think so," said Remo, frowning.

  They came to a set of footprints that trampled the sandstone ground with no discernible purpose or direction. The prints were humanlike, but heelless and corrugated for extra traction like a pair of running shoes.

  Chiun indicated this confusion of prints with the curved jade nail protector that protected his right index finger.

  "Behold, Remo. Proof!"

  "Of what?"

  "That a man of Mars stood on this very spot."

  "All I see are boot prints."

  "Examine the markings more closely. Do the heels not consist of the Greek letter Mu?"

  Remo looked closer.

  "Yeah, now that you point it out, the tread is a stack of M's. So what?"

  "Mu's. Men from Mars. Clearly the Martians are wearing Martian-made boots."

  "Come off it. If there were Martians, they wouldn't advertise their existence with brand-name boots. Besides that, the Martians don't use the English alphabet."

  "So you admit Martians do exist?" said Chiun loftily.

  "No, I don't."

  "Even with the proof etched in the red dust at your feet?"

  "Look, let's collar this guy and find out if he's a Martian or not."

  "I will agree to this. Let the Martian decide this argument."

  "Fine. Let's go."

  The footprints led through eroded red rock and sand until, without warning, they just stopped.

  "Where'd they go?" Remo said, looking around.

  Chiun frowned. "They stop."

  "I can see that. How is that possible?"

  "It is simple. The Martian entered his space chariot at this spot and was whisked back to his home desert."

  "No sale. It don't see landing-gear marks."

  "Further proof!" Chiun crowed.

  "Of what?"

  "That Martians truly exist."

  "How?"

  "You would not look for the marks of their space chariots if you did not secretly accept their existence," Chiun sniffed.

  Remo started to throw up his hands, decided against it and knelt instead. "Something's wrong here," he muttered.

  "That is obvious," Chiun sniffed.

  "No. This patch of ground. Feel it with your sandals."

  Chiun scratched at the red sand experimentally.

  "It does not shift like loose sand," he said, papery lips thinning.

  "Yeah. It's fixed. Like the sand grains are cemented down."

  Exploring with his hands, Remo found that the sand in a sizable rectangle had the feel and texture of coarse-grained sandpaper, and beyond a well-defined area, it became loose and granular again.

  "This isn't natural," said Remo.

  Then his questing fingers found the ring under a flat rock. It was literally a brass ring, except it was hand, not finger, sized.

  Stepping back, Remo lifted the ring up-and up came a long, rectangular trapdoor. The trap fell back, exposing a cavity that was lined with concrete. Remo looked down.

  "Looks like a secret tunnel. So much for Martians."

  "I accept nothing until it is proved or disproved," Chiun said aridly.

  "Let's go," Remo said, dropping into the hole.

  It was a tunnel. The beaming sunlight illuminated it for a dozen yards, and then it became as dark as the jungle tunnels Remo used to infiltrate during his Vietnam days.

  They advanced through the zone of light into shadow, the visual purple in their eyes compensating until they could see shadows and shapes. Ultimately the details of the tunnel resolved as clearly as if they were in gray twilight.

  Odors began drifting to their sensitive nostrils.

  "I smell stuff," said Remo.

  "Food," said Chiun.

  "Yeah. That, too. But a chemical smell, too."

  "Skulking Martians," suggested Chiun.

  "Not having the faintest clue what a Martian smells like, I take a pass on the argument."

  "Therefore, I win," said Chiun.

  The tunnel right-angled once and then again. It was taking them unerringly in the direction of the collapsed BioBubble.

  After the second turn, the space opened up, and the smell of potatoes and lettuce and other familiar foodstuffs filled their noses. The familiar humming of ordinary refrigerators made the still air vibrate.

  The vast, shadowy area was crammed with familiar appliances.

  Remo stopped, blurting, "Looks like a restaurant kitchen."

  They moved among the stoves and refrigerators and meat lockers, opening them. They found prime rib in plastic, frozen TV dinners and assorted bottled beverages, including thirty gallons of whole milk under refrigeration.

  "Still in code," said Remo, replacing a gallon and slamming the refrigerator shut. He went to a big black range and turned on a burner. Blue gas flames whuffed up. A stainless-steel range hood collected the heat and waste gas.

  "It is a Martian secret base," said Chiun.

  "A food dump?" Remo said incredulously. "Come off it. It's the secret kitchen of the BioBubble. This is where they make their forbidden pizza. This probably explains why the air levels have been screwed up. They cook with gas, and it eats up their oxygen."

  "I see no Martian. Nor do I smell one."

  "Looks like they get some of their heat from the stoves," said Remo, studying the acoustical-tile ceiling. "There's gotta be a way up into the BioBubble from here. Come on."

  Leading the way, Remo found a simple folding aluminum step-ladder. It stood under a submarine-style airlock hatch. It was up in the closed position.

  "BioBubble's directly above," he said.

  "So, too, is the Martian foe," Chiun said sternly.

  Remo climbed the ladder, undogging the hatch with a twirl of his index finger. The hatch squealed in protest, then dropped like a hungry steel mouth. Remo made it look effortless, but three bodybuilders with a monkey wrench couldn't have budged it.

  Remo poked his head up into the open space. It smelled of sulphur.

  "What do you see, Remo?"

  "Looks like the inside of a melted marble. Stinks, too."

  "You cannot smell the Martian?"

  "Unless his body-odor smell leans toward glass and plastic, no," Remo called down.

  Twisting around on the ladder, Remo tried looking in different directions, then said, "I'm going in."

  "I am following," said the Master of Sinanju.

  Chiun floated up the ladder and joined Remo in what appeared to be a distorted air pocket that had formed when the BioBubble settled and cooled. There were weird flowing tunnels going in three directions from the central pocket.

  "Pick a tunnel, any tunnel," said Remo.

  Chiun sniffed the air delicately. "I smell nothing that smells like a man of Mars, therefore I pick this tunnel."

  "Why that one?" Remo pressed.

  "Why not?" And the Master of Sinanju padded into it.

  Remo took the adjacent tunnel and ducked in. It was only five feet high at its highest point, and he moved along it carefully.

  The walls were mostly glass. Dimly Remo could make out streaks of color and at one point a skeletal human hand, scorched to black bone, evidence of a BioBubble inhabitatant having been cooked in a cauldron of molten glass. He saw an aluminum chair, bright as the day it was forged, suspended in a glass matrix.

  It was like walking through a weird aquarium of rippled glass and bizarre objects. There were an awful lot of bugs. Mostly roaches, their feelers wilted.

  The ceiling dropped lower and lower. Remo was about to turn back when he detected a muffled heartbeat. It was pounding.

  He froze.