"You'll be back in pink before you know it."

  "It was Master Salbyol."

  "Who?"

  "Master Salbyol. He was Master when the sun dragon of three thousand years ago was seen."

  Remo lifted an interested eyebrow. "Any interesting legends go with him?"

  Chiun considered. "He was an indolent Master. Egypt was too far for him to travel, so he relied on Japan and China, who were not as rich as Egypt in those days."

  Remo shrugged. "The House got by, I guess."

  "There is no excuse for sloth," Chiun sniffed. "He blamed it on the arrow star, not himself."

  "Arrow star?"

  "The thing you call a comet was unknown in the Korean sky of the days of Salbyol the Indolent. It was called the arrow star because it flew like a feathered shaft through the slower stars, and was considered an evil omen. Much later other such stars appeared, and a wiser Master determined that the arrow star was no star at all, but a sun dragon."

  "How'd he come to that brilliant conclusion?"

  "Very simply, Remo. Every time a sun dragon rampaged among the Korean stars, a calamity would result. No arrow brought such bad luck. Therefore, it could only be a dragon."

  "You know, there probably isn't a time when there isn't a calamity somewhere."

  "What are you saying?" asked Chiun, eyes thinning.

  "Comets don't cause calamities. That's all. It's just superstition."

  "I agree with you. They do not."

  "Good."

  "They merely presage misfortune."

  Remo suddenly noticed the full-figured woman with the cloudy black hair and jade green eyes and said, "Excuse me."

  "Where are you going?" Chiun queried.

  "I promised myself I'd ask the next gorgeous woman I saw for a date and I just saw her."

  "She is fat."

  "Voluptuous."

  "Fat."

  "Catch you later," said Remo, unlocking his seat belt and moving back to the rear of the cabin.

  The woman sauntered as far as midcabin, where she began stretching in a way that made Remo look forward to their first date. That she would say yes was guaranteed. No woman ever turned down a Master of Sinanju. Remo sometimes thought the attraction was pheromones. The perfect grace of a body in harmony with itself might also explain the phenomenon. He'd once read that the human brain was programmed by nature to respond positively to a certain symmetry of form. Sinanju training had symmetrically harmonized Remo's body. Where most people had one eye or hand or side of their body larger than the other because the muscles were used more, Remo's form had achieved total symmetry.

  Women sensed this symmetry, even if they didn't perceive it on a conscious level. This was part of Remo's innate sexual attraction.

  Any way it was sliced, the green-eyed woman wasn't going to say no.

  "Hi," said Remo, putting on his best disarming smile.

  "Hello," she said, her voice smoky, like dry sherry. "My name is Coral."

  "Remo. Going to Boston?"

  "I live there."

  "Me, too."

  "That's great," she said, inching closer.

  "I have some free time tonight."

  "Me, too."

  "Why don't we get together, have dinner?"

  Coral was beaming now. "I'd love to." Her breath was a moist, inviting musk.

  "Great," said Remo, thinking this was the way to go.

  "Let me clear it with Fred first."

  "Sure. Who's Fred?"

  "I'll be right back"

  The cloudy-haired brunette brushed past him, leaving the scent of White Diamonds on Remo's lean body, and he tried to enjoy the fragrance while she went back to her seat. He ended up having to close off his olfactory receptors. The scent, though subtle, was too powerful for his highly sensitive sense of smell. He made a mental note to ask her to go scentless on their first date.

  The woman came back and said, "Fred's a little out of sorts, but it's okay."

  "He'll get over it," Remo said agreeably. "Who's Fred?"

  "My husband."

  "Husband?"

  The woman lifted her left hand and let the overhead lights play on a plain gold wedding band.

  "Why didn't you tell me you were married?" Remo said angrily.

  "Why didn't you look at my ring finger?" She was smiling as if it were no big deal.

  "Out of practice," Remo said dispiritedly.

  "I'll help you with that," she said brushing up against him with her bullet-shaped bosom.

  "Look, I don't do married women."

  She ran long gold nails down the front of Remo's T-shirt and purred like a lion. "Fred will get over it. He always does."

  "Not the point. I don't poach on another man's preserve."

  "Hey, don't I get a say in this?"

  "Sure. You get to say goodbye. Goodbye," said Remo, retreating to his seat.

  "You have your date?" asked the Master of Sinanju blandly.

  Remo folded his arms. "Don't give me that. You overheard every word, you old reprobate."

  "I would prefer to hear the story from your own lips."

  "She's married."

  "I knew that."

  "Goody for you."

  "In this land, Remo, it is customary for a married woman to wear a gold circlet about the ring finger of the hand that is closest to the heart. This signifies a woman who is taken."

  "I know that!" Remo flared.

  "It is good that you did not take her."

  "There are other women."

  "You are going about this the improper way," Chiun warned.

  "Go grow your nail," growled Remo unhappily.

  "And you may jump over the moon as you chase your white cows," the Master of Sinanju said huffily.

  Chapter 13

  The director of operations for NASA's shuttle program was only too happy to answer reporters' questions.

  Shuttle flights were so routine the press didn't bother to cover them live anymore. There was always a token media presence, of course. The Challenger disaster guaranteed that. Everyone wanted tape if another in-flight catastrophe shook the world. So the national media duly sent a sprinkling of bored reporters each and every time an orbiter was launched.

  This time it was the newest of the shuttle fleet, the Reliant. It was to be her maiden voyage. Task-deploy a National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite, name and mission classified.

  Usually the reporters showed up the day before launch and waited. Sometimes the wait stretched out over three or four days, and they grumbled. They always grumbled. They especially grumbled when the launch went off without a hitch. Sometimes they cursed and complained bitterly that the pictures were "always the same."

  "What do you want?" the director once asked a CBS reporter. "Another Challenger?"

  Without hesitation, the reporter said, "Hell, yes."

  The director of operations walked away rather than clean the man's blue-bearded clock.

  Today the Reliant stood on the gigantic crawler-transporter that moved her toward the launch pad, and the reporters were already here. In droves. The weather had been cold for Florida in late December. Maybe they had hopes of a catastrophic failure, the director thought angrily.

  The media assembled in the director's office, which looked down over the most reinforced road in the world, with Launch Complex 39-A in the background. The crawler-transporter was rumbling along. It was a 2500-ton battleship gray converted surface coal-mining machine as big as a baseball diamond moving at a sedate three and a half miles per hour on four double-tracked tractor units. Each of the shoes that made up one of the massive treads was capable of exerting thirty-three tons of crushing force. Strapped to the gigantic external tank and flanked by the dual rocketlike boosters, the shuttle sat upright as if poised for launch, as it was borne to the launch pad.

  It was an impressive sight, but since it wasn't spewing smoke and flame, the press showed no interest in it.

  "Are you afraid for this mission?" asked one reporter.

  "Why should I be?" the director shot back.

  "If Martians did fry the BioBubble, wouldn't NASA be high on their target list?"

  "There are no Martians, and there is no target list. Get off it."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because I saw the Kking and Mariner probe pictures. It's a dead world."

  "Then why is NASA talking about going there in thirty years?"

  "It's not completely dead. There are probably lichen. Maybe some microbes or one-celled organisms."

  "How do we know one-celled microbes aren't advanced enough to point death rays at Earth?" a seasoned science reporter asked.

  "Because," the director of operations patiently explained, "a one-cell organism doesn't have a brain. It's a primitive lifeform." He swallowed his biting Like reporters, only smarter.

  "We don't know what a one-celled Martian might be like. Maybe the cell is all brain."

  "Yes, a giant brain," a reporter piped up from in back.

  "If he was all brain," the director of operations said with ill-concealed impatience, "then he wouldn't have hands to point his death ray with, now would he?"

  "Maybe some of his Martian comrades are just hands. Or feet. They gang up and make a whole person. Nassau'd be a sitting duck."

  "It's NASA, not Nassau," he returned, correcting a sacrilegious mispronunciation reporters had been committing since the halcyon days of the Mercury Program. "And the program is not at risk. Take my word for it."

  "You don't mind if we film the crawl?" one said.

  "Be my guest."

  Cameras were set up all around the giant transporter. They recorded every laborious inch and foot as the gigantic treads crept along. It typically took a full day to move a shuttle from the launch-assembly hangar to the pad. The media dutifully committed to tape every millisecond of the transfer.

  Somewhere past midnight, after the launch director had gone home for the evening, the tireless cameras recorded the biggest disaster to strike NASA since the Challenger dropped into the Atlantic Ocean.

  Floodlights bathed the gleaming white shuttle. The crawler crawled along the crawlerway with painful ponderousness, making a low mutter.

  Without warning, night turned to day.

  There came a white-hot flash, a thunderous baroom, and the space shuttle Reliant was instantly consumed, along with her wilting twin solid booster rockets. The big, empty external tank fed the blaze, its thin orange skin turned black in the instant before it collapsed utterly.

  Shuttle, tank, boosters and transporter were fused into a single hot blob. Most of it melted down into molten metals arid sublimed rubber and other toxic fumes. Heat-resistant ceramic tiles rained down-literally rained. They came down as white-hot liquid precipitation that made smoking black teardrops on the ground.

  The remote cameras were also consumed, so there was no footage.

  Except for one still camera.

  A National Enquirer photographer, denied admission to the facility on general principles, happened to be shooting from a vantage point in the marshes outside of NASA property.

  He was taking shots of the Reliant silhouetted against the moonlit sky, clicking the shutter rapidly, not paying much attention, knowing that at least one good shot would emerge from the roll.

  The image in the viewfinder was so small he missed seeing the important phenomenon in person. It was only after he developed the roll, looking for the "before" shot to go with the "after" image of the cataclysmic disaster he had captured, that the faintly glowing letters in the sky were discovered.

  Because of what they spelled, all hell would break loose on both hemispheres.

  Chapter 14

  The President of the U.S. was awakened from a sound sleep by the urgent voice of his chief of staff.

  "The new shuttle blew up, sir."

  The President roused from the rosy haze of his dream life.

  "Shuttle?"

  "The Reliant. It went the same way as the BioBubble."

  "Damn. Don't tell my wife. She'll find a way to blame me."

  A stern kick to his ankle reminded the President of the U.S. that he happened to be in bed with his wife-contrary to his interrupted dream.

  "Sorry. Didn't recognize the new hairdo," he muttered, throwing off the bed covers.

  His chief of staff followed as the Chief Executive hurried from the room, tying a blue terry-cloth robe with the Presidential seal about his waist.

  "You have to give a speech to reassure the nation," the chief of staff said anxiously.

  "Have it written," the President snapped.

  "We have to come up with a plausible explanation that won't trigger nationwide panic."

  "I'll leave that up to you," the President said, stepping into the tiny White House elevator.

  The chief of staff started to step aboard but a pudgy Presidential hand pushed him back.

  "Meet me in the Oval Office. Ten minutes."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Upstairs."

  "Oh."

  The elevator took the President to the Lincoln Bedroom, where he got the tireless Smith on the line. Smith sounded sleepy for almost five seconds, then the lemonade started coming out in his voice.

  "Smith, the space shuttle Reliant was just destroyed. It looks like whatever melted the BioBubble got it."

  "I will look into it."

  "I thought you were looking into it."

  "I did. My people came up with nothing tangible. Although I am pursuing leads."

  "How do I explain this to the American people? It looks like Martians are attacking the space program."

  "The BioBubble was not part of the space program," Smith clarified.

  "Try convincing the American public of that. With Dr. Pagan telling everyone space aliens are angry at us, they're sure not going to believe me. I don't have his credibility."

  "Do your best. I will put my people on it."

  The President lowered his voice, knowing the First Lady's office was just down the hall.

  "Do you think someone is out to crush our space program?"

  Smith cleared his throat. "The possibility cannot be excluded."

  "The Russians, maybe. They're getting shirty again."

  "Except for the Mir space station, their space program is in the doldrums."

  "And they're on short rations up there ever since their shuttle failed to dock with Mir last month."

  "Exactly. Russian involvement makes no sense. Should they have an emergency on Mir, their best rescue option rests with our shuttle fleet."

  "Guess you're right. We can scratch the Russians off our short list."

  "The French, the Chinese and the Japanese all have active commercial space programs and are trying to compete with NASA," Smith continued, "but I cannot conceive any of those nations targeting our space agency. The technology is beyond them."

  "The Japanese have been pretty mad at us lately. I'm not even sure why."

  Smith said nothing to that. He knew why. He had ordered Remo and Chiun to punish a certain Japanese conglomerate for acts of commercial sabotage the President knew nothing about. The Japanese understood America had been behind the dropping of a steam locomotive on Nishitsu headquarters in Osaka, but couldn't complain without exposing their own complicity in an attempt to destroy the U.S. rail system.

  "I will be back to you, Mr. President," Smith said, terminating the conversation.

  The President hung up, knotted his bathrobe and shuffled in his fuzzy slippers to the White House elevator. Just once he'd like a major crisis to come in the afternoon. He hated being pulled out of bed at these ungodly hours. If he didn't get his ten hours' sleep, he was out of sorts all day.

  HAROLD W SMITH HAD excused himself from his marital bed, and was rewarded by a brief interruption in his wife's steady snoring before taking the briefcase containing his satellite uplink to the CURE telephone line. It was the only weak link in his direct line to the White House. When he wasn't at Folcroft, the call was forwarded through his computer system to the briefcase, which also contained his laptop connection with Folcroft.

  Of course, the line was scrambled. But a conversation that was relayed from a ground station to an ordinary communications satellite and down again could be intercepted. Theoretically it could be unscrambled-if one had the correct technology and perhaps five years in which to untwist the conversation. By that time, the conversation would be moot, Smith assumed. Thus, he felt reasonably safe with this emergency-only link.

  After he terminated the White House call, Smith hit the autodial button to Remo Williams's Massachusetts home. He was a gray man with gray eyes and hair, the complexion of weathered, unpainted wood and a matching personality. Even in his CIA days, more than thirty years ago, he was known as the Gray Ghost.

  Smith waited patiently, knowing that the Master of Sinanju would ignore the ringing and Remo would, depending on his mood, also ignore it because Chiun was ignoring it, or possibly break the telephone and keep on sleeping.

  It was an unlisted number. Neither man had anything remotely like a social life, but these days telephone salesmen were unafraid to call at the most ridiculous hours, and Remo had no patience for such interruptions.

  Fifty rings later, Remo answered, clear as a bell but slightly peeved. "If you're selling something, I'm going to spoonfeed you the contents of your scrotum."

  Smith cleared his voice. "It's me."

  "Me who?"

  "You know my voice," Smith said carefully, knowing this was an uplinked call.

  "I know a lot of voices."

  Smith decided to skip the game-playing. "The space shuttle Reliant was destroyed on its transporter midway between the launch-assembly building and the launch pad."

  Remo's voice sobered instantly. "Anybody killed?"

  "Unknown at this time. But no astronauts were aboard." Smith paused. "Remo, it was hit by a bolt from the night sky, turning it to slag."

  "Damn. Somebody's trying to wreck the space program."

  "The BioBubble wasn't part of the space program," Smith said testily.

  "Maybe whoever's doing this doesn't know that."

  "It is possible."

  "Speaking of which," said Remo, "any luck on tracking down the mystery guy who funded the BioBubble?"