And that was the last the public saw of Travis Rust until the world had been dragged to the brink and beyond.
Chapter 19
Dr. Harold W Smith was toiling under the shaky fluorescent lights of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. His computer beeped at him, alerting him of a mission-pertinent story moving on the wire.
It was out of AP. They were carrying a report that Fox TV was broadcasting a live interview with a news photographer who had snapped critical shots of the Reliant disaster.
The touch of a hot-key transformed Smith's amber monochrome screen into a color TV set. He got the local Fox affiliate by entering another code.
The picture resolved just as Travis Rust was being escorted from the studio by three faceless men in dark sunglasses and dull black business suits, calling out something about men in black.
"What are men in black?" Smith wondered aloud.
Putting the question aside, he watched as the stammering Fox broadcaster tried to fill the dead air now that he was alone in the studio facing an empty guest's chair that still spun from the velocity with which Travis Rust had been taken away.
"That was Travis 'Red' Rust, being carried off by three men purporting to be from the government. To recap, Mr. Rust snapped what may be the single most important photograph in the chain of events that began with the BioBubble disaster and progressed to the Reliant catastrophe. Just moments before the Reliant collapsed into a bubbling metallic mass, an ominous word appeared in the night sky. Consisting of three letters, two seemingly in our Roman alphabet, but the middle one looking like a reversed N. "
The camera came in for a tight shot of the broadcaster's serious, sweat-dappled face.
"Are these acts of sabotage warnings from a hostile intelligence from beyond our own atmosphere?"
"Rubbish," said Smith, starting to reach for the hot-key that would restore normal computer functions.
Then tape was played of the photo under discussion.
Harold Smith froze. His gray eyes took in the three letters. They blinked. His firm mouth, normally compressed in concentration, made a round, bloodless hole just before his jaw dropped on slack muscles.
"My God!" he croaked.
Blindly Smith reached for the red telephone that connected him with the White House.
THE PRESIDENT of the United States was conferring with his national-security advisers when the call came in.
When he had first taken over the Oval Office and the previous Chief Executive had explained about CURE and the hotline, he said that he had set up a baby monitor in the Lincoln Bedroom two flights above so that when the red telephone rang, he would know it if he were anywhere in the White House.
And the outgoing President had surrendered the portable baby monitor, saying, "It's your worry now."
The thing was ringing now, and the President said, "Excuse me. Been sitting here so long, I gotta pee up a storm."
His advisers were working the phones, trying to discover which-if any-agency was kidnapping journalists on live TV, and hardly noticed. They were pale and haggard of face and baggy of eye. The office TV was flickering in its cabinet niche.
The tiny elevator took the Commander in Chief to the red telephone, which was still ringing. He snapped up the handset.
"Go ahead, Smith."
"Mr. President. There is a strange report on Fox News."
"Yeah. I heard. Some goofball Enquirer photographer."
"I do not think so."
"They're talking up Martians."
"The letters are not Martian, Mr. President. They are Cyrillic."
"What's that?"
"The letters of the Russian alphabet devised by Saint Cyril in the ninth century. They are based on the Greek alphabet, so there are many letters in common."
Smith's voice was low and urgent and more than a little hoarse. The President decided to let him explain.
"They show three letters," Smith continued. "M, a backward N, and a P."
"Yes?"
"In Cyrillic Russian, these letters are pronounced meer. "
"How do you get meer out of 'MNP'?"
"The backward N is pronounced double E. The M is equivalent to our M. But the P is actually an R. "
"I'm with you so far."
"Transliterated from the Russian, 'MNP' becomes 'MIR.' "
"Mir, Mir..."
"The word means 'Peace,'" supplied Smith.
The President's voice brightened. "That's good, isn't it?"
"Mir is the name of the Russian space station orbiting the earth even as we speak."
"Uh-oh," muttered the President. "Are you saying the Russians are attacking our space program?"
"I am saying that in the instant before the Reliant was obliterated, the Russian word for 'peace,' the name of their space station, appeared very high in the sky over the target area," said Harold Smith in a patient but tight voice. "No more, no less."
"Oh, man," the President groaned. "I think I'd rather it be the Martians."
"There are no Martians," Harold Smith said testily.
"I wouldn't be so sure of that," the President confided.
"What do you mean?"
"I was watching the Fox telecast when those three goons claiming to be from Washington came and hauled that photographer off. We've checked with CIA, NSA, DoD, everyone I could think of. They all disavow sending any agents."