Returning to the helicopter, Remo said, "You know what this looks like?"
"What?" asked the Russian.
"Like a giant magnifying glass was focused right on this spot."
Colonel Rushenko laughed at the thought.
Chiun said, "And you scoff at sun dragons."
"Well, that's what it looks like to me," said Remo.
The helicopter carried them to the operations building, where Colonel Rushenko found the Kazakh official who nominally controlled the site. In fact, it was a joint Russian-Kazakh command now that the former Soviet Union had found itself in the embarrassing position of having their primary space center sitting in a foreign country.
The Russian representative refused to accept Colonel Rushenko's request for information. But the Kazakh was only too happy to cooperate with a fellow Kazakh national.
They were shown to a windowless, soundproof room, and Colonel Rushenko spoke urgently as Chiun monitored the exchange of Russian and Kazakh for dark glimmerings of impending treachery.
Colonel Rushenko asked fewer and fewer questions as the exchange wore on. He got noticeably paler, though.
"This is unbelievable," he said as he faced Remo.
"Spit it out."
"According to this man, the Buran payload was not a Russian or an American satellite, but the product of a third country entirely."
"What country?"
"Paraguay."
DR. HAROLD W SMITH was shouting across more than a dozen international time zones.
"What?"
"Paraguay," shouted Remo.
"What did you say?"
"I said the Paraguayans hired the Russians to launch that thing up there!"
"What thing?"
"The space thing!" Remo shouted.
"Perhaps you should redial," Colonel Rushenko suggested helpfully.
"It took me an hour and a half to get this connection," Remo shouted back. "I'm sticking with it."
"Sticking with what?" Harold Smith yelled.
Remo bellowed, "Listen, Paraguay launched that thing!"
"Remo, you are breaking up."
"It melted the Soviet shuttle fleet."
Colonel Rushenko smiled nostalgically at the American's lapse.
Smith's voice grew shrill and nasal. "What?"
"The shuttles are all vaporized."
Harold Smith's reply was drowned in the cannonading boom that followed.
All eyes went to the nearest window.
Off to the north stood the spidery launch gantry, where the big Energia rockets lifted the Buran fleet aloft, approximately once every eight years.
The gantry stood in the column of searing light. It hurt the eye to look at it. The air made a dull boom, then the light seemed to withdraw back into the heavens.
There was no gantry on the spot where it had stood.
Instead, there was only a grayish haze of smoke that was being pushed outward by a spreading heat wave.
Even through the sealed window, they could feel the heat wave overtaking the operations building. Window panes crackled in their frames.
"That's never happened before," Remo said worriedly.
"What are you saying? It happened only ninety minutes ago," said Rushenko.
"It's happening twice in the same place. It's never happened twice before."
Chiun allowed a flicker of worry to touch his seamed visage. "This is not a good place to be. The dragon seems especially angry at us," he intoned.
"I do not accept the existence of dragons," said Colonel Rushenko bravely.
"Believe it or not, that thing up there is trying to wipe out all trace of Baikonur," said Remo.
"Leninsk. And I agree with you. We must go."
The helicopter shuttled them back to the Yak. The crew was back inside the aircraft, hiding in assorted lavatories.
Remo got them out and into their seats, and they took off into the sky ahead of a third white-hot column of sizzling heat from the sky. It was followed by another thundering boom that shook the aircraft.
Out the windows they could see what remained of the sprawl that was the Baikonur Cosmodrome complex.
There were three patches of blackness. All of identical size. In a staggered row.