It refused to tear. And momentum took Remo into the rippling fabric itself.
He bounced back, reached out a hand and grabbed a handy strut. Using it for leverage, he swung his sluggish body around.
This time he popped through the fabric. He kept going. The obverse side came into view, showing the qNM corporate logo.
Reaching back, Remo grabbed his tether, hauling himself back with both hands.
"Be careful!" Smith said sharply.
"I'm not exactly trained for this kind of work," Remo shot back as he regained the mirror.
And Remo started in on the Mylar envelope. With an open tear to work with, it was easy to make the rip wider. Silver Mylar fragments began floating away. Remo used the support strut as a kick point and launched himself toward the center, where the big lens sat like the spider in the mylar web. It was pointing down at the North Pole. Soon they would be over Siberia.
"Estimated burn in two minutes, twelve seconds," Harold Smith was saying.
Remo ripped methodically as he made his way along. All he was accomplishing was to inhibit the ParaSol from collecting future solar energy. The only way to disable it was to nail the lens.
"One minute, three seconds," Smith said, his voice tinny in the space-suit helmet.
Remo tried to shake a strut loose, but he had no leverage. His strength worked against him. The mirror orbited on.
"Twenty-two seconds..."
The lens began to flash.
Smith's voice became raw. "Target confirmed as industrial city of Magnitogorsk. You must not fail."
"Damn," said Remo. Gathering up coils of loose tether, he pulled in two directions. The cable snapped silently. And Remo whipped it around.
The broken end snaked around like a tentacle. It moved with agonizing slowness, while Harold Smith, useful as a Greek chorus, counted down the seconds to nuclear Armageddon.
"Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven..."
The lens shattered at four seconds to doomsday. There was no sound, of course, only glassy fragments tumbling in all directions. Some pierced the mylar web. Others spun toward Remo, catching starlight, reflecting it brilliantly.
"Good news and bad news," Remo said thinly.
"Yes?"
"ParaSol is dead. But I'm adrift."
"The shuttle will retrieve you."
"Glad to hear it."
Without warning, the ParaSol detonated.
Again there was no sound. Other than Remo's surprised curse.
"What is it?" Smith asked anxiously.
"It blew up! I gotta get out of here."
Reflexes kicked in. Remo tried to swim but he was in space. There was nothing to push against. The explosive wave radiated toward him like a metallic dandelion coming apart under a giant's breath.
Eerily tumbling shards of glass and metal and mylar foil billowed outward in all directions of space. As they came at Remo in a dense cloud of space-age shrapnel, he had only one cold thought: I'm dead.
Then Harold Smith was saying, "Remo, I am watching you. The debris will spread and expand outward the farther it gets from the point of detonation. Your primary survival tactic is simple. Dodge all debris. First, curl yourself in a ball."
Remo oriented himself toward the explosion.
Pieces of material arrowed at him. Very quickly, they were only inches from his vulnerable space suit.
In a way, it was easier than dodging bullets. He had six directions to dodge in. But nothing to work against.
The mylar he ignored. It was the metal struts that had the ability to pierce his space suit and expose him to the hostile environment of space.
But the metal was another thing. Remo moved his arms and lifted his legs to avoid tumbling shards. A chunk of strut came within reach. Remo grabbed it. It pulled him along, actually carrying him ahead of the oncoming storm. By redirecting its trajectory, he used it to bat away other threats like a ball player suspended on a string.
After a while, the last of the widening storm of shrapnel had passed by. Remo floated in a harmless sea of shining mylar.
When he was in the clear, Remo looked around and blurted, "Where's the shuttle?"
"Retreated to a lower orbit," Smith supplied.
"What about me?"
"There are no rescue procedures for an astronaut adrift amid so much dangerous space junk," Harold Smith said with a tinny flatness. "The Atlantis could be imperiled."
"That's it? No procedures? So end of story?" Remo asked incredulously.
"You knew you were expendable from the day you joined CURE."
A cold sensation settled in Remo's stomach.
"Smitty, you aren't going to leave me up here to die ...."
"I have no choice."
"Think of what Chiun will say."
Smith was silent.
"Think of what he'll do," Remo added.
"I am thinking .. . ."