"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."