The coordinates came over the line in a hushed voice, and then the line went as dead as outer space.
Dr. Pagan rushed to his thirty-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain refractor, punched the right ascension and declination into the on-board guidance computer, hit the "Go-to" command and waited patiently while the control motor toiled as it oriented the tube toward the northern quadrant of the night sky, the observatory dome rotating so the slit lined up with the scope.
He was very interested in seeing what had caused the BioBubble to collapse into viscous glass and steel. Very.
While he waited, he pulled a candy bar from one of his jacket pockets without looking. Absently he bit the wrapper off and chewed off a hunk of chocolate, caramel and nougat.
"Nothing like a Mars bar," he murmured. "Unless it's a Milky Way."
Chapter 39
Finding Dr. Cosmo Pagan's Tucson home was easier than Remo had ever imagined. Harold Smith told him it was, on a secluded hill off Route 10, south of the city.
The house was shielded from view by ponderosa pine and cottonwoods. But the private observatory showed clearly on the hill. It was as red as Mars, and it was crisscrossed by black lines suggesting Martian canals.
"If this isn't the place, I'll eat my hat," said Remo.
"You do not wear a hat," said Chiun.
"Good point. Boy, if there were Martians living among us, I'd expect them to live in a creepy place just like this," said Remo as they pulled into the long circular driveway.
They got out. Lights burned throughout the house. It was painted a very sedate maroon that looked almost brown in the dark. A carport protected a red Saturn and a vintage Mercury Cougar.
"Front approach works for me," said Remo.
Chiun girded his jet black kimono skirts, saying, "I fear no Martians."
At the door, they simply rang the bell.
Mrs. Pagan answered, took one look at Remo's FBI ID and said, "He's in the observatory. Quarter mile back in the woods on the hill. You can't miss it."
"You got that right," said Remo.
As they got back into the car, Mrs. Pagan called out, "Will you tell him those people from QNM keep calling?"
"Sure."
"Tell him they doubled the consulting fee again."
"Sure thing," said Remo.
The observatory looked even more like the planet Mars as they walked toward it. Its scarlet hue glowed under the light of the moon. The top was a bluish white, like a polar icecap.
"This guy worships Mars like the ancient Greeks," said Remo.
"The Greek did not call it Mars, but Ares," Chiun said.
"What did the Koreans call it again?"
"Hwa-Song. The Fire Planet."
"Good name."
"It is also considered an ill omen when in the sky."
"I'll keep that in mind," Remo muttered as they picked their way through a stand of cottonwoods.
The shuttered slit was open in the great red dome, and they could see the black end of the big telescope peering up at the night sky.
"Looks like Pagan is Mars gazing. I say we just walk in."
"You may walk in. I will enter another way," said Chiun.
"Be my guest."
With that, Chiun was absorbed by the surrounding murk.
The door, Remo discovered, was not locked. It gave at his touch.
Carefully Remo eased into the cool, dark dome, all his senses alert. He sensed only one presence. That made it simple.
Letting his eyes adjust to the dim interior, Remo saw the long telescope tube resolve itself first. Then the man seated on a tall stool at the narrow end of the telescope.
Remo was approaching when, without warning, Dr. Pagan suddenly recoiled from the eyepiece of his telescope.
The stool upset. Remo moved in, caught man and stool, righting them while Dr. Cosmo Pagan flailed his corduroy-clad arms wildly.
"Easy," said Remo.
Pagan grabbed his chest and pumped air into his lungs. "I just saw-saw-"
"What?"
A squeaky voice from above said, "Me."
Remo looked up. "What are you doing way up there, Chiun?"
"Looking down."
And the Master of Sinanju leaped from the open aperture and slid down the telescope tube on both feet to alight with the ease and grace of a settling black moth.
"I thought a space alien was looking back at me," Cosmo Pagan muttered as he dusted off his arms. "Who are you two?"
"FBI," said Remo.
"What does the FBI want with me?" Pagan said, frowning.
Remo peered through the eyepiece. "I don't see Mars."
"I don't always look at the Red Planet, you know. And you're both trespassing. Please leave. I don't do autographs. It's beneath me."
Taking his eyes from the scope, Remo looked Pagan dead in the eye and said, "We know you're Ruber Mavors."
Pagan swallowed hard and said, "That's Latin for 'Red Planet.'"
"It's the name you go by when you're pumping money into the BioBubble. We need to know why."
"I don't have to tell you anything."
"Wrong answer," said Remo. And the Master of Sinanju reached up to take Pagan by the back of his neck. Chiun constricted his bony, long-nailed fingers.
Cosmo Pagan sank to his knees before Remo, his face contorting and turning red as a beet. "I'm a world-renowned astronomer and exobiologist," he gasped.
"Right now," Remo said, "you're doing a pretty good impersonation of a Martian."
Pagan's features turned rubbery. "You can't do this to me."
"Why not?"
"It's un-American. I'm a cultural icon. I have tenure."
"Why'd you take over the BioBubble? Let's start there."
"Someone had to. They were jettisoning the Mars-colony phase of the project. It was the only thing keeping Mars before the public eye. I had to save it."
"The Mars-colony idea went south when the Russian space program cratered," Remo countered.
"You're thinking in human terms. In geologic time, a Mars landing is just around the corner. It's just that we twentieth-century molecule machines won't live to see it.
"Speak for yourself, white," said Chiun, relenting enough that Pagan returned to a pinkish complexion.
"I got behind it to keep the dream alive. No matter what it took."
"Including pumping in oxygen and hot pizza?" said Remo.
"Whatever it takes. It was my project and my money."
"And when it became a laughingstock, you just fried it."
"That wasn't me!"
"Prove it."
"I don't have the kind of money and technology to put that thing up there," Pagan protested.
"What thing?" asked Chiun thinly.
Pagan swallowed.
"Hah!" said Chiun, squeezing harder. "The truth, Man of Mars."
Pagan got even redder. His veins began to pop until his face started to display an unmistakable Martian cast. A Mars bar fell out of his pocket.
"That is the truth," he gurgled. "All I know about the thing up there is what a friend at SPACETRACK told me. NORAD thinks it's an enemy satellite of some kind."
Remo looked past Dr. Pagan's reddening features to Chiun's severe ones, and they both came to the same conclusion based on a reading of Pagan's hammering vital signs and inability to withstand pain.
"He's telling the truth," said Remo.
"Of course I'm telling the truth. Why would I destroy my own dream?"
"We heard a Paraguayan company paid to have that thing launched through the Russian shuttle. Know anything about that?"
"Did you know Buran really means 'blizzard'?" said Dr. Pagan.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Remo growled.
"I get paid heavy consulting fees for spouting neat factoids like that," said Pagan, retrieving the fallen Mars bar and pocketing it.
"Not interested," said Remo. "Let him go, Little Father."
"Thank you," said Dr. Pagan, adjusting his corduroy jacket and giving his red turtleneck a shake.
Remo eyed the jersey and remembered the Shield secretary in Moscow who'd tried to kill him with an AK-47.