Egg helped Solo, who could scarcely stand. Rip draped the other arm over his shoulder, and the two men moved Solo to the door.
Thank you. Egg, Rip and Charley heard the unspoken words in their head.
Charley brought the saucer close to the edge of the cliff, turned it around and backed it up until the rocket nozzles were resting right against the stone.
They charged out, Charley in the lead. She climbed onto the saucer’s back and helped Uncle Egg and Rip get Solo aboard. “Don’t look down, people,” she warned.
Once again, Egg was struck with how precarious their position was on top of the mounded-up saucer shape, with nothing to hang on to except the now-dry, smooth, warm, dark surface of the spaceship. In other words, nothing at all. As they lay down and spread themselves, the saucer began to move, gently, almost imperceptibly.
As they moved away from the cliff, Egg scrunched his eyes tightly shut.
He opened them again when he heard the thumps of bullets hitting the ship and the zings of bullets flying off. Then the reports. Someone was shooting an automatic weapon at the saucer.
“Assault rifle,” Rip shouted and raised his head to see where the fire was coming from. Whump, whump, whump, and howling whines as the bullets ricocheted away. “Climb, Charley! Show them the belly.”
“I can’t. We can’t climb any higher without the rockets. We’ll fall off.”
Rip scanned the top of the mesa. Saw no one. Then he looked toward the place the sniper had been on the rim. Saw a man standing there … muzzle flashes.
The guy was no marksman. He squirted another magazine full of bullets at the saucer, and maybe half of them struck.
When the guy emptied his weapon, Rip got to his knees and cut loose with the Winchester as fast as he could work the lever.
“Go at him, Charley,” he shouted. “Fast as you can.”
Adam Solo writhed uncontrollably.
A feeling of intense pain shot through Rip, Charley and Uncle Egg. Horrible pain. Egg almost lost his grip on the saucer as he groaned.
Adam Solo began to slip. Slowly he went down the side of the saucer toward the edge. The pain paralyzed Rip. He could do nothing but watch helplessly as Solo slid to the edge and went over without even trying to arrest his descent.
Someday I’ll see you on the other side.
Then the pain stopped.
Shaken, without thinking, Rip pulled two more shells from his pocket, stuffed them into the rifle, worked the lever and took careful aim as the saucer closed the distance to the rim of the canyon. A hundred yards now, then seventy, then fifty. The guy showed himself and Rip fired. Knocked him off his feet.
Charley had the saucer moving at perhaps twenty knots. The cold wind was in their faces.
The saucer crossed the rim and bore down on the shooter, who was struggling to scuttle away.
Rip recognized the man. Johnny Murkowsky.
Johnny Murk screamed as the saucer approached. He disappeared under the nose and the scream stopped abruptly.
Now Charley brought the saucer to a stop and lowered the landing pads.
It sank to the ground. “Come on, Uncle Egg,” she said. “Let’s get inside. Rip, watch for anyone who wants another shot at us.”
They scrambled down, and Charley went under the saucer to open the hatch.
Rip saw what was left of Johnny Murkowsky, squashed like a road-killed squirrel. As he scanned about, he saw Harrison Douglas’ corpse and the body of a man in a camo outfit lying in blood-spattered snow. A bolt-action rifle with a scope lay beside him. That was probably the sniper. They were obviously dead, no doubt victims of the antimatter weapon. He saw no one else.
Rip was the last to crawl through the hatch. He pulled it shut and latched it.
Charley adjusted the headband in the pilot’s seat.
“They killed Solo,” Rip said. “Why did he have to die like that?”
“He was dying anyway, and he knew it,” Egg said flatly. “I think he intentionally let go up there. Did you feel that pain?”
“Yes,” Rip said, trying to hold back his tears.
Charley sat for a long moment with her head in her hands.
After a bit she felt Rip’s hands on her shoulder. She looked up and saw that he had tears streaking his face.
“We can’t leave his body in that canyon,” Egg said.
Charley Pine nodded and the saucer lifted off.
They swung around over the mesa and examined the carnage. Indeed, one helicopter had blown up. Bodies lay scattered about in the thin snow. Charley eased the saucer over every body she saw, squashing them in the saucer’s antigravity field, just in case someone was playing possum. She was feeling rather vengeful just then.
In the first shelf, a thousand feet below the rim, they found Adam Solo’s body. Charley had to proceed for several hundred yards before she found a flat place to park the saucer. All three of them hiked back to the body. Solo’s head was smashed, and shards of bone protruded from his clothing. He had obviously hit the scree fan and rolled for hundreds of yards.
The cliff above them seemed to rise into infinity. Behind them was the mesa with the small shelf that contained the old Anasazi cliff house. They could just see the front of it from here. The canyon was silent except for the whisper of the wind. The rock faces and flats were broken by stark sunlight and shadows; sunlight glistened on the snow on the rims. Above them in the cerulean blue two hawks soared.
Without a word, the three of them picked up Adam Solo and carried him in stages to the saucer. They shoved the body up through the hatch as gently as possible, then climbed aboard themselves.
“Do you want to give his body to the aliens?” Charley asked the two men.
“No,” Rip said. “A volcano, I think.”
“That’s right,” Egg muttered. “This planet was his adopted home. We’ll keep him here.”
They fueled the saucer in Lake Mead. An hour after the battle in the canyon, the saucer rose on a column of white-hot fire and the roar of the rocket engines washed over Las Vegas and the revelers who packed it. The exhaust plume gradually faded to a burning speck in the sky, then to a star, then winked out altogether. The echo of its engines also faded, more slowly, until finally the murmur was also gone.
In Las Vegas, the party resumed.
17
The flight back from the volcano on the island of Hawaii gave Charley Pine plenty of time to think. She again tapped into Solo’s memories that were embedded in the saucer’s computer. She saw Solo as an Indian, killing enemy wounded and the wounded of his own tribe who were too grievously hurt to travel. Too grievously hurt to survive. She saw him gun German airplanes in World War I, saw them fall in flames, and felt his emotions. She forgave him. Forgave him everything.
It was after midnight when she landed the saucer in front of Egg’s hangar in Missouri and Rip dropped through the hatch to open the hangar door. Inside, she set the saucer down and secured the power. She and Egg eased themselves through the hatch.
Rip closed the door, and the trio climbed the hill to Egg’s house. Turned on lights. Egg busied himself in the kitchen making a meal. Rip went upstairs, found another box of cartridges, filled the Winchester’s magazine and his pockets, grabbed an empty grocery bag and trekked off to Egg’s mailbox by the front gate. It was full. In the darkness of a Missouri night, listening to the night sounds, alert for anything, Rip emptied the mailbox into the sack and walked along the road through the woods back to the house.
In addition to all the usual mail, there were dozens of letters from children addressed to Adam Solo, in care of Arthur Cantrell. Rip and Charley read a few of them, then had to quit. Their emotions were too raw.
After a quiet, subdued meal, the three of them went to bed. Charley found she wanted and needed Rip badly. With his rifle propped against the dresser, they made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
* * *
P. J. O’Reilly briefed the president about the saucer going into orbit
from Lake Mead. The National Guard in Phoenix had had two helicopters stolen the day before, and they were seen on the ramp of the Grand Canyon Airport when a chartered 747 dropped the pharmaceutical titans. The president told him to have the National Park Service look around the canyon when the sun came up.
Just before he went to bed, the president was told about the saucer arriving in Hawaii and soon departing. An aide woke him up later to inform him the saucer was back in Missouri at Egg Cantrell’s farm.
The president lay in the darkness thinking about things. He suspected the pharma moguls had been outmaneuvered and perhaps outfought by Rip Cantrell and Charley Pine. Now there was a pair to draw to. It seemed logical to the president that those two thought Douglas and Murkowsky were no longer threats or they wouldn’t be hiding in plain sight at the Cantrell farm. Along with Adam Solo. The self-proclaimed alien. The guy who stole the Roswell saucer after it was raised from the Atlantic, stole it right from under Harrison Douglas’ nose.
He reviewed the few moments he had spent with Adam Solo … what, ten days ago? It seemed like ten years. Yet he remembered that humorless face, the eyes that bored right into you, almost as if the guy were reading your thoughts. Solo … the guy who got the whole world fired up.
A pox on him!
Ah me.
When are these damned aliens going to arrive? The spring is getting wound tighter and tighter. That starship is circling the earth, almost every whacko, nutcase, screwball and nincompoop who doesn’t live near Washington is on his way here, the politicians are over the edge of sanity promising their constituents a Fountain of Youth pill … and the people most responsible for this state of affairs are probably in bed in Missouri sleeping like babies.
As it happened, he was right about the sleeping.
* * *
Late the next morning Uncle Egg, Rip and Charley awoke to the sound of rain on the windows. They snuggled a while in bed, then finally dressed and went downstairs. The smell of coffee and bacon frying assaulted them as they descended the stairs. Uncle Egg was busy, busy, busy, wearing an apron and wielding a spatula.
Rip leaned his rifle in a corner; then he and Charley dived into fried eggs and potatoes, bacon and sausage. There was no bread. Egg apologized. The bread had gone moldy and he had thrown it out for the squirrels and birds.
The television in the corner blared away. The White House had announced that the people in the starship had talked to them and were going to land tomorrow, the announcer said. The president, the first granddaughter, and all the members of her fourth-grade class, plus a delegation of scientists, would meet the intergalactic voyagers. Tomorrow, the announcer assured his audience, would be the most historic day in the history of the planet. Tomorrow.
Rip finished his breakfast and went over to the coffeepot for a refill.
“Too bad Adam Solo won’t be around to see it,” Rip said sadly.
Uncle Egg paused in his kitchen duties and watched the raindrops smear the kitchen window. After a moment, he shook his head and went back to scrubbing a frying pan. From where she sat at the counter Charley Pine could see that he was weeping.
“Hey, you two,” she said. “Adam Solo lived a long life, a life filled with living and love and adventure. Stop the moping: He would tell you that. He told you that someday he would see us on the other side. Let’s rejoice. All of us will come to our end eventually, and after that … well, he had faith. We should too.”
Egg swabbed at his eyes. Rip put his coffee cup on the counter and hugged Charley. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”
Egg dried his hands on a towel and said, “I’m thinking of going to town. Going to visit the local television station and tell them what happened in the Grand Canyon. Tell the world that Solo is dead.”
Rip nodded his concurrence. “Someone is going to find that shot-up chopper and those bodies on the mesa before long,” he mused. “Might be better getting our version out there before the FBI swoops down and arrests us.”
“Charley?” Egg asked. “What do you think?”
“Better put on a tie and jacket, Uncle Egg. We’ll hold the fort and watch you on the tube.”
So Egg suited up, got into his pickup and drove away.
Charley poured herself another cup of coffee and began opening random letters to Solo. After reading two or three, she passed them to Rip with the comment, “Someone should answer these.”
“Let’s each pick one to answer,” Rip suggested. “Then I need to refuel the saucer and clean it out, just in case we have to boogie again.”
Charley took back a letter from a girl who said she was twelve years old. She wanted to know how Solo liked living on earth, and if he was looking forward to going home.
With paper and a pen, Charley sat for a moment composing her thoughts, then wrote:
Dear Sophie,
I am writing to you in answer to your letter to Adam Solo, who died yesterday. I got to know him well in the few days we spent together, so I think I know how he might have answered you.
He was marooned here on earth many centuries ago. I think he not only came to appreciate the people of earth and their accomplishments, I think he grew to love them. He was naturally optimistic. Life, he thought, was a grand adventure, and he certainly lived it that way. I hope you will too.
Sincerely,
Charlotte Pine
* * *
Charley was still answering letters an hour later when Rip scampered into the kitchen and turned on Egg’s counter television and flipped the channel to the one he wanted.
There was Uncle Egg. The caption below his visage read ARTHUR CANTRELL.
The local host was wise enough to stay out of the picture and merely let Egg tell it, which he did. About Adam Solo coming to the farm, about the president and the Big Pharma moguls, about Canada and Australia and the Grand Canyon.
Uncle Egg described the battle of the canyon in detail. He gave Charley and Rip all the credit. He explained about burying Adam Solo, who fell to his death after being shot again by Johnny Murkowsky, in a cauldron of molten lava in the Kilauea volcano on the island of Hawaii.
When Egg ran out of things to say—the interview took forty-five minutes—the off-camera questioner prodded him on his thoughts about the aliens’ visit tomorrow to Washington. Egg begged off. “I am not the one to comment on that,” he said. “The event will speak for itself.”
That was about it.
Rip flipped channels and found that the networks had shared the feed from the Missouri small-town station. Fox was running the entire interview a second time.
Rip turned the television off and sat staring at his toes.
“What are you thinking, Ripper?”
“I think the comfortable little world you and I grew up in is gone forever,” he said slowly. “I am not sure whether that’s good or bad. I’m going to miss it, though.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Charley shot back.
The doorbell rang. Rip glanced out the kitchen window. “It’s a television crew.” He snatched up the Winchester, checked that there was a round in the chamber and went to open the front door.
“Mr. Cantrell,” the female reporter said as a male with a camera on his shoulder stood so he could get them both in the picture, “we’re with WXYZ-TV. I wonder if you would be so good as to show us your saucer?”
Rip glanced over his shoulder at Charley, who was standing behind him in the kitchen doorway. She shrugged.
“Sure,” he said without enthusiasm. “It’s in the hangar. Follow me.” He led them down the hill on the path he had trod since he was a boy.
* * *
The president was hastily summoned from a cabinet meeting by P. J. O’Reilly to watch the Arthur Cantrell interview on television. The president motioned Petty Officer Third Class Hennessey to sit beside him, and together they watched Uncle Egg.
“So Solo’s dead,” the president murmured.
“And Johnny Murkowsky and Harrison Douglas,” O’Reilly said. He p
assed the president a message from the Department of the Interior. One stolen National Guard helicopter had been found damaged and abandoned at the Grand Canyon Airport. The totally destroyed carcass of the other was on top of a mesa in the canyon. There were six bodies on the ground near the shattered chopper, four more in the canyon and three on a nearby rim. Many of the bodies were flattened “like road-killed possums.” Lots of weapons lying around. Preliminary indications were most of the men were thugs from a Philadelphia Mafia family. Murkowsky had been flattened, and Douglas was dead of apparent massive internal injuries.
The president handed the message back and concentrated on Egg Cantrell’s image. Listened. Watched his face. Wondered what he was leaving out.
When the interview was over, this network went back to a graphic feed from NASA that showed the current location of the starship in orbit. It was currently leaving the Indian peninsula, ninety-six miles above the surface of the planet. The president sat watching the blinking symbol as it moved, almost as if he were mesmerized. Finally O’Reilly turned off the television with the remote.
“These aliens might be a bit unhappy tomorrow if they think they are going to rescue their castaway, Solo, from the cannibals,” O’Reilly said pointedly.
“Bad news rides a fast horse,” Hennessey observed. “Bet they know as much as we do right now. They’ll have until tomorrow to digest it. I doubt if it will be a problem. The United States government didn’t kill Solo—criminals did.”
The nation’s chief magistrate shook his head, as if he were clearing his thoughts. “So how are we coming on the welcoming ceremony tomorrow?” he asked O’Reilly.
“We’re doing an honor guard walk-though. The kids and teachers and scientists won’t be here until later this evening. The television networks are setting up cameras and lights. Beyoncé has volunteered to sing the national anthem … for free.”
The president made a noise. “She’d probably be underdressed for this,” he said sourly. “This isn’t the Super Bowl. No singers.”
Saucer: Savage Planet Page 20
