"You volunteering?" asked Remo.
"Yes!" cried Chiun. "I will be the first Korean in space."
"You're on," said Remo.
Chapter 45
Commander Dirk McSweeny couldn't believe his ears.
"Launch? Today!"
"The Atlantis is on the pad. The countdown's started. You go up in an hour," said the NASA flight controller in a breathless tone. He looked serious. And sane. But he couldn't be either. Space shuttles were not launched on short notice.
"What about the mission? The package isn't ready."
"Scrubbed. You have a new mission and a new payload."
"What is it?"
"Classified. You take the orbiter up. And deploy the payload."
"You know it doesn't work that way. We have to train for a new payload."
"Not this time. This time you're flying a glorified delivery truck."
"What about payload-deployment procedures?"
"Don't worry about them. It's self-deploying."
"Self-"
"You heard me."
Within an hour, Commander McSweeny was being suited up, along with his mission specialists and what he saw was a severely reduced crew of five. That meant a military mission.
"What the hell is going on here?" he yelled as they dropped his helmet over his confused face.
"Just relax. It's a short mission. Up and back down the same day."
As they were being escorted to the vehicle, lugging their portable oxygen tanks, McSweeny asked his flight controller, "Can you at least tell me what the payload is?"
"Sorry. This run you're just a stick jockey."
IN Moscow, FSK Major-General Stankevitch sat with the Cosmic Secret file sitting on his desk like a time bomb, his stomach burning with half a bottle of vodka. Upon his shoulders rested the fate of the world.
"Get me the Kremlin," he told his secretary, and reached for the bottle. Very soon there would be no more vodka, no more air, no more water. For anyone.
THE MASTER of SINANJU was beside himself with rage.
"Never!"
"You gotta," pleaded Remo.
They were in an all-white ready room at the Kennedy Space Center.
"Never! I will not shear off my nails. It is bad enough that I am bereft of one. But to willingly abandon the others! My ancestors would be ashamed of me. They would shun me in the Void when my time came."
And he inserted one hand into a white gauntlet. The long nails popped through like daggers.
"Tough," said Remo. "You volunteered. You can't go up without a space suit, and they don't come with extralong fingers."
Chiun folded his arms. "Have them sewn. I will wait."
"That mirror just zapped a piece of the South Atlantic. Nobody got hurt, but it's all ready to power up for another burst. It's only a matter of time before it hits a populated place."
"I cannot." Chiun looked up at Remo with imploring eyes. "Remo, you must go in my stead."
"Me?"
"It has been prophesied that a Master of Sinanju would battle the returning sun dragon. I can see now that it is not destined to be me. Therefore, it must be you."
"I didn't volunteer."
"I have volunteered the House. Since I am constrained by circumstances beyond my power to alter, you must go and uphold the honor of the House. Not to mention save precious humanity from this scourge."
"Look, the countdown's starting. One of you has to go!" the flight controller implored.
"One of us will," Chiun said. And he pointed his jade nail protector at Remo. "You. You will go."
"I'll do it," said Remo angrily. "But you owe me, Chiun."
Support personnel helped Remo into an atmosphere suit.
"We need to brief you on how to go to the bathroom in space," the flight controller said anxiously.
Remo shook his head. "No time. I'll hold it."
"How to eat."
"Give me a fistful of cold rice, and I'll be fine."
"Emergency procedures."
"That's up to the crew. I'm cargo."
"At least try to understand MMU operations for your EVA."
"If I can't understand what you just said," Remo shot back, "how can I understand what I'm supposed to understand? Just suit me up. I'll wing it."
Support personnel blinked dazedly.
"Just get him in the suit," the flight controller said resignedly.
Remo eyed the Master of Sinanju. "Did Master Salbyol say how this would turn out?"
"No," admitted Chiun.
"Figures," said Remo as the gloves were snapped on.
The last thing to go on was the helmet. The visor was blacked out so that Remo could see out but no one could see his face.
Then he was being led to the huge white transport van.
"This is a proud day. My son, the star voyager," said Chiun.
"It's 'astronaut,'" grumbled Remo.
"What do you think the word means, ignorant one?"
"I just hope someone checked the O-rings on this thing," Remo muttered hollowly.
Commander McSweeny was still cursing under his breath when the countdown reached zero and the thunder of the shuttle's multiple engines slammed at his tense spine and the sensation of leaving his stomach behind overtook everything. He had a big bird to fly. And if that was all NASA wanted this trip, they were going to get the best shuttle pilot who ever flew.
MAJOR-GENERAL STANKEVITCH received the news with a weird mixture of anger and relief.
"All lines to the Kremlin are tied up," his secretary reported.
"These damn phones!" he exploded.
"It is not the phone system. All lines are in use. There is something up."
"Keep trying. The Motherland depends upon us. I will keep drinking."
ONCE IN SPACE, Commander McSweeny was fed his instructions by ground control.
"You are to locate and overtake solar mirror approximately a sixteenth of a mile in diameter."
"That won't be hard to miss," McSweeny grunted.
Maneuvering the orbiter, he found it.
"Is that a qNM logo?" he muttered.
"It is. They make great avionics."
"Okay, what do we do now?" McSweeny asked Houston.
"Pace it."
The Atlantis fell in beside the slowly turning mirror.
"Houston, Atlantis is flying right next to it." "Okay, Atlantis. Open payload bay doors."
"Opening doors." A minute later it was, "Doors open."
"Stand by, Atlantis. Your cargo is self-deploying."
"What the hell kind of cargo is self-?"
Then an astronaut who was not a member of the Atlantis crew came floating out on an EVA line. He carried no MMU thrust-pack. Only on a flexible tether, but somehow he gravitated toward the big solar mirror as if he were swimming through space. That, of course, was impossible. No one could swim through space. Not unless he could somehow glide along on the solar winds.
As McSweeny and his crew watched with utter fascination, the astronaut with the blackout visor moved unerringly toward the solar mirror that dwarfed them all into insignificance.
In space, it should have been impossible.
But there it was.
WHEN HIS SECRETARY Came back with the word that the Kremlin was still incommunicado, Major-General Stankevitch grabbed up the fateful file and announced, "I will take the file to them personally."
On the way out, he grabbed a fresh bottle of vodka, too.
REMO WILLIAMS HAD NO EYES for the beauty of the blue earth 120 miles below him. The stark starlight held no fascination, either. His dark eyes were fixed on the gigantic ParaSol 2001 slowly spinning before him.
He felt like a fly trying to catch a spiderweb.
The moment the great shuttle cargo doors had split open, Remo launched himself with a two-footed kick. He was amazed at his own lightness in zero gravity. But he had no time to enjoy the sensations of weightlessness.
The looming ParaSol was filling his field of vision. It gleamed like a plate made of soft aluminum foil, except for the gigantic black areas that spelled out three letters that had reignited the Cold War: "MNp."