"No, and why are you shouting?"
"Habit," said Remo, lowering his voice. "The company is called ParaSol. One word. Capital P as in 'Paraguay.' Capital S-o-l. That's all I know."
Smith attacked his keyboard. "I am researching it now."
Remo's voice took on an awed quality. "Smitty, we were on ground zero when that thing hit three times."
"What did you see?"
"A hot time. Looked like a giant magnifying glass scorched the ground."
Smith paused. "You think it was solar?"
"We saw a sun dog before it struck."
"Solar..." said Smith.
"Mean anything to you?"
"A breakthrough in solar power could explain such a thing. The extreme, concentrated heat. The relatively compact size of the orbital device. If it takes its energy from the sun, it would need little in the way of on-board power."
"My money's on solar."
On Smith's screen, up popped a block of data.
"I have something on ParaSol," he said.
"What's it say?"
Harold Smith's voice sank. "The data is in Spanish. I will have to have it translated."
"Get to it."
"Hold the line, please," Smith replied, trying to type while cradling the blue handset against his shoulder and right arm. His rimless glasses slid off his patrician nose, and he miskeyed something, erasing his entire screen.
"Damn."
"What now?" asked Remo. "I gotta go soon. They're about done refueling the Yak."
"Where is your next refueling stop?"
"Wherever they'll let us set down. We're not particular."
"Call me from there."
"Will do," said Remo, hanging up.
Smith went to work recovering the data. In the middle of the automatic translation, his system alerted him of another broadcast of consequence. It came on automatically as Smith had programmed it to.
He found himself watching Dr. Cosmo Pagan lecturing the nation on comets.
"All comets come from a stellar marvel called the Oort Cloud way beyond our solar system. Our sun's gravitational pull yanks them toward it, and they slingshot around back into deep space. As they approach the orb of day, the pressure of solar winds on these dirty snowballs-as we astronomers like to classify them-creates the long ghostly tail that is so wondrous to behold. Hale-Bopp's tail promises to be the most spectacular of the century once it reemerges from its solar sleep. We are living in very interesting times, galactically speaking, with all these near-Earth objects booming by and falling to Earth."
Smith was logging off when the camera went to the woman interviewing Pagan.
She was an attractive, fortyish brunette. But Smith's bleary gray eyes weren't on her face, but on the identifying chyron at the bottom of the screen.
It read Venus Mango-Pagan.
The name Venus Mango rang a clear bell in Smith's steel-trap mind. Returning to his system, he punched in the name and hit Search.
He got his answer immediately. The name Venus Mango had surfaced on the phone records of BioBubble director Amos Bulla a number of times. All incoming calls. None outgoing. Many calls over a period of four years.
Smith brought up the file with precise finger pecks. The calls went back to the time the BioBubble had changed from a prototype Mars colony to its later, ecological-research incarnation. Exactly.
Smith's earlier search had revealed that Venus Mango was a CNN science correspondent. That simple fact had eliminated her as a possible BioBubble backer. Journalists are not usually wealthy people.
With a frown, Smith saw that he had been too hasty in his judgment. He had not delved deeply enough to learn that Venus Mango was the latest wife of Dr. Cosmo Pagan.
Energized by his discovery, Smith went in search of Dr. Pagan's financial records.
He found a flock of bank accounts, one of which showed large wire transfers going back to the BioBubble change of ownership. All to BioBubble Inc. The name on the account was Ruber Mavors Limited. Red Mars.
"Dr. Cosmo Pagan controls the BioBubble now," said Harold Smith in a voice of dead-level certainty.
He called back the CNN report.
Dr. Pagan was saying, "Of course I don't yet rule out a floating ozone hole. I'm an exobiologist, not a prophet. As for the Martian theory, I'm not partial to it because I like to believe that if there are Martians, they'd be friendly toward us Earthlings. Are we not going through the same eco-crisis that ravaged their beautiful world eons ago?"
Pagan smiled like a man in love.
"Still, you can never tell. In the interest of covering all permutations, I would like to share some interesting Martian trivia, if I may. The Soviets were the first to attempt to soft-land a probe on Mars. Their Mars 3 and Mars 6 spacecraft both mysteriously stopped transmitting before touching down on the Martian landscape. No one knows why. At the time, some thought mischievous Martians were responsible. Viking I transmitted back pictures of a Martian boulder that seemed to have the Roman letter B chiseled into it. Since then, we've captured some very puzzling images, including pyramids and what looked like a great Sphinx-like stone face looking coldly at us from the stark Martian surface."
"Do you yourself believe in Martians, sweetie?"
"If there are sentient beings on the Red Planet," Cosmo Pagan said solemnly, "they may have been driven underground by some great cataclysm such as an asteroid strike or the depletion of their own ozone shield. And these mysterious letters being reported in the sky may be a friendly warning to us Earth men. One day soon, we should get up there and find out."
"He's trying to throw America off the track," said Smith. "And whatever he's up to, it's pushing the planet toward nuclear confrontation. And this fool does not even suspect it."
Smith watched the segment to the bitter end, wishing he could drive his bony fist into Pagan's smirking face.
He was not normally subject to such violent impulses, but there was nothing he could do until Remo checked in again.
One positive thing had emerged. He now had a direction to point his Destroyer in. And a target.
Chapter 35