"That's as phony a name as I've ever heard," said Remo.
"It's the name he gave me," Bulla insisted.
"He is telling the truth," Chiun confirmed.
"Yeah, I can hear," said Remo disappointedly.
"Hear what?" asked Bulla.
"Your heartbeat. If it accelerated, that would tip us off. It didn't, so you're telling the truth."
Bulla touched his heart as if to make sure it was still beating.
Remo went back to the telephone and filled in Harold Smith.
"A dead end," said Smith when Remo was through. "I will search through Bulla's telephone records. Something may turn up. You and Chiun leave immediately."
Hanging up, Remo rejoined the others.
Amos Bulla was kicking at the red sands of Arizona disconsolately. "Well, if that's the end of EPA's investigation, I guess I'm out of here-and out of a job, too. Unless Mavors wants to start from scratch." Bulla shot a sick parting glance at the flattened dome of rehardened glass. "Sure would like to know what caused this flop, though."
Everyone took a final look at the BioBubble, baking in the Arizona sun like a candy-glass flapjack.
"A sun dragon," intoned the Master of Sinanju. "Mark my words. A sun dragon is loose in the heavens and will strike again."
No one disputed him this time. The sheer size of the destroyed research station beggared any better explanation.
Chapter 9
The bad news came by e-mail:
To: [email protected] From: R Subject: Possible product failure Staff here in R t the situation in Arizona may be a by-product of current testing, which at first appeared to suggest product failure, but which now appears to be the result of a bug in the software.
Long pale fingers hesitated at the keyboard and, after a moment, typed a furious reply while rain beat a steady tattoo on an office window.
To: R From: [email protected] Subject: Your mail Explain software glitch. The reply was not long in coming:
To: [email protected] From: R Subject: Your mail Probable cause is defective Platinum chip unknowingly installed in guidance system.
Pale fingers typed swiftly.
To: R From: [email protected] Subject: Your mail. Defective chip installed where?
To: [email protected] From: R Subject: Your mail In working prototype.
And the pale hands went paler. They shook as they pecked out a response.
To: R From: [email protected] Subject: Ozone layer
Does product failure have any impact on ozone layer?
The reply: "Why do you always ask that?"
To which, the pale fingers shot back: "None of your damn business. Answer the question."
"None." The reply made the pale fingers relax.
Color slowly returned to the poised fingers. The owner cracked his knuckles and attacked the keyboard with renewed energy.
To: R From: [email protected] Subject: Your mail I am on vacation. I have been on vacation for two weeks. Erase this e-mail and all previous electronic communications. I will do same. Project ParaSol is defunded this date. Furlough all nonessential personnel. Remember-loose lips sink careers.
Chapter 10
The BioBubble event was the best thing to happen to astronomer Cosmo Pagan since he'd married his third wife. Or the Galileo flyby. Or maybe Shoemaker-Levy colliding with Jupiter. It was hard to say, on a cosmic scale. All were pretty spectacular events in the Big Bang that was his terrestrial sojourn.
Every time the heavens burst forth with a new wonder, or Cosmo Pagan fell in love, his career went up like a happy rocket. It was amazing. It was life affirming. It was exhilarating.
And it all started around the time the Viking 1 probe landed on the red sands of Mars and began transmitting pictures of the dead planet's arid surface.
Cosmo Pagan was an untenured astronomy professor in those days back at the University of Arizona. There, he met Stella, tawny, tenured and on the fast track, career-wise.
"So how does a guy get tenure in a place like this?" Cosmo asked on their first date at the Lowell Observatory on Mars Hill outside Flagstaff, where they took turns looking up at red Mars through the same refractor Percival Lowell had used to study the canals of the Red Planet a century ago.
"You earn it. Usually by publishing."
Cosmo swallowed. "That sounds like work. I'm a people person. I do better in front of a class than on the printed page."
"There isn't a back door to enter, you know," Stella reminded him.
But Cosmo Pagan found one. First he married Stella Redstone, then after two years of marital stargazing, he popped the real question. "Why don't we collaborate on your next book?"
"Why?"
"Because you have tenure and I need it."
Stella thought about it. She thought about it hard. She had a growing academic reputation to protect.
"We'll give it a shot," she said guardedly. "But you have to pull your own weight."
"Deal," said Cosmo, shaking hands with his wife of two years-three tops, if things worked out. He was already shtupping the occasional undergrad.
They started with a strict division of labor, just as they did with the household dishes. Stella did the research, Cosmo the first draft and she the polish.
But typing was not Cosmo Pagan's strong suit, and no one could read the smeary Sanskrit that passed for his penmanship.
So they tried alternating chapters. Cosmo kept getting sick when his turn rolled around. Or he made Stella redo her chapter before he tackled his. The project fell further and further behind schedule.