"You can have Mars, too. I'm sick of Mars," Remo growled.
"No one will go to Mars now. It is a pity. All our dreams are rust and dust. Yours as well as mine."
"Save it for the funeral," said Remo.
"Whose?"
"Yours if you don't get off the subject."
Colonel Rushenko subsided. The Yak took off, heading west to Europe and the first refueling stop that had a working telephone.
Chapter 34
Dr. Cosmo Pagan was in his element. For some, that element was the earth. Others, the sky. Still others, the oceans of the world.
Cosmo Pagan's element was nothing less than the media.
The phones would not stop ringing. It didn't seem to matter to anyone that he gave confused and contradictory theories to the strange events that were troubling the blue earth.
It certainly didn't matter to Cosmo Pagan. People read only one newspaper a day these days-if that. And they watched only one newscast a day. Since most people were creatures of habit, they stuck with what they liked.
Thus, Cosmo Pagan was simultaneously informing newspaper readers and TV viewers that the inexplicable events dominating the headlines were a direct consequence of ozone depletion, random asteroid strikes and the possible impact of cometary fragments from a hitherto-undiscovered invisible comet bypassing Earth.
The comet theory seemed to go over biggest. At least, Pagan got the most media requests to tell the world about the dangers of passing comets.
He got other calls, too. A zillion lecture offers. A bunch of new book offers. PBS was on the horn, too. They wanted to do a special on life on other planets. It was Cosmo Pagan's favorite topic. He had become an exobiologist chiefly because until proof of actual extraterrestrial life came along, he could just make stuff up. He didn't even need factoids.
Cosmo accepted all offers. Except one.
"Dr. Pagan," an anxious man asked. "I can't identify myself or my employer, but we're looking for a man just like you. You'd be our in-house consultant and company spokesman."
Cosmo Pagan didn't need to know the who or the what. He had only one concern. "How much?"
"A million a year."
"I love that number! It's a deal."
"Great," the suddenly relieved voice said. "But understand this will be an exclusive. You couldn't speak publicly on any subject in your field. In fact, we insist that you immediately halt all public statements on any subject until the contract is drawn up. Especially this asteroid and ozone scare-talk."
"Out of the question. I don't do exclusives. Goodbye "
The man kept calling back, upping his offer. But Cosmo Pagan was no fool. If his face wasn't before the public, he had no public. No public, no publicity. No publicity, no career. He stopped taking the nameless man's calls and got down to the serious business of informing his public.
This time Pagan asked that his wife, Venus, interview him for CNN. In fact, he demanded it. The last guy had asked hard questions. And since Venus Pagan was still pretty sharp looking for her age, it was nice to show her off once in a while.
The interview was conducted in his private observatory by satellite hookup. Cut down on commuting costs that way.
"Dr. Pagan..."
"Call me Cosmo. After all, we are man and satellite."
Venus Pagan smiled with professional coolness. "In your view, are comets dangerous?"
"When Halley came around in 1910, a lot of people thought so. They threw end-of-the-world-comet parties. Spectrographic analyses of the comet's composition showed traces of cyanogen gas, and for a while people worried our planet would be gassed to death when it passed through Halley's tail. Gas-mask sales boomed. But long-period comets like Halley and Hale-Bopp don't come very close to earth spacially speaking."
It was in the middle of his dissertation that the first satellite images of the Baikonur Cosmodrome disaster were broadcast. It was supposed to be a military secret. But in the post-Cold War world, commercial satellites had the same global overviews as spy satellites. The brief bidding war for the pictures was won by CNN. The photos were rushed to the hot studio in midtelecast.
"Dr. Pagan. I mean, Cosmo."
"Call me honey, angel."
"We've just been handed satellite images taken of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russian Kazakhstan. It's been scorched in three places. These images resemble satellite photos we've seen of the Bio-Bubble and Reliant catastrophes. Can you shed any light on this latest event?"
Dr. Pagan accepted the photos, which were also broadcast in a floating graphic insert beside his head. He got very pale very fast.
"I might be mistaken," he said, "but there appear to be three impact sites-if that is what they are-which suggests to me cometary fragments. Asteroids don't travel in packs."
"No comet fragments were found here in the U.S.," Venus probed gently.
"This may be a broken-comet phenomenon we are witnessing. Understand that Earth is always revolving. As was the case with Jupiter when those fragments struck. Though they entered the Jovian atmosphere in a straight line, they impacted in a string along the planet's surface because Jupiter moved between each impact. A similar string of eight ancient impact craters across the Plains states has recently come to light. They're lakes now."
"If this is a broken comet falling to earth, could other pieces be speeding toward us now?"
"Yes," Dr. Pagan admitted unhappily, "they could. And there's no telling where they could impact. Even on me."
He looked sick at the very thought, and his fear was not lost on the American public he sought to reassure.
"Did you know that the number of scientists scanning the heavens for deadly asteroids is about the size of the staff of a McDonald's restaurant?" he added in an uneasy voice.
AT FOLCROFT, Dr. Harold W Smith was baffled. He was running on sheer nerve and Maalox as he grappled with the threat that seemed now to be directed at the space programs of two nations.
He had told the President that the third strike would suggest a pattern. It did. One that suggested a rival space-faring nation.
That left the Japanese, the French and the Chinese. Of these possibilities, the Chinese seemed the most likely culprits. But the technology-whatever it was-seemed beyond Chinese capabilities. This, in turn, made Smith flash on the Japanese. They were working on a space-shuttle program of their own. The first test flight had ended with the HYFLEX prototype sinking into the Sea of Japan. It was possible that that failure caused Nippon Space to turn to Russia's shuttle fleet for lift.
But what would their motive for attacking the U.S. be?
Smith was reconsidering French Ariane involvement when Remo called from Budapest with a possible answer.
"Have you looked into the Paraguay thing yet?" he asked.
"What Paraguay thing?" countered Smith.
"People at Baikonur told us a Paraguay company hired that last Russian shuttle flight."
"Paraguay?"