Encounter Group

Amanda Bull leaves John Schutz after their marriage fails and learns that her late father Edmond left her $1. She travels west, meets the Little Rock FOES chapter, and is recruited by a supposed extraterrestrial calling itself the World Master, who claims to come from near Betelgeuse and says Earth’s atmosphere is unbreathable. The World Master directs Preparation Group One to attack a Titan II installation; the attack kills and wounds people, and Amanda shoots a guard, but the group only damages the silo cover. In a later operation, Preparation Group Two attacks a different Titan installation in Oklahoma. Chiun enters the launch facility to neutralize the warhead, but Amanda shoots Captain Elvin Gunn and then tries the controls; a launch sequence starts while Chiun is still on the warhead.

It rises, falls back into its silo, and breaks apart without a nuclear detonation. Group Two later steals the surviving live warhead from a transport truck. A radiation-suited guard in that truck is found bleeding and dies. Ethel assumes Amanda hit him by accident, and Amanda replies, “I couldn’t help it,” but the source does not depict who caused the wound. Pavel Zarnitsa, a KGB officer monitoring Russian Aeroflot personnel, also investigates the incidents. The World Master kills reporter Thad Screiber with a blue beam and orders the warhead first for Oklahoma City, then Tulsa. The World Master is Chuzhoi Zarnitsa, Pavel’s younger GRU brother, using a constructed alien persona and craft.

He shoots Pavel, and Chiun kills him. Amanda, shot by Chuzhoi, tells Remo that the other members are dead and gives the Tulsa truck’s location before she dies. Remo and Chiun find the warhead there. Chiun disables its nuclear component, but the conventional explosive detonates and destroys the truck. Smith arranges a cover story and says safeguards will be added. His reconstruction of the craft as a small airship with ultrasonic and laser effects remains a hypothesis, not a demonstrated explanation.