Saucer: The Conquest

by Coonts, Stephen

  “You’re going to attack France?” the secretary of state asked disbelievingly.

  The president didn’t answer right away. He was apparently taking the time to choose his words carefully when the secretary of state, unable to wait for his answer, broke the silence.

  “I strongly suggest consulting with Congress before we do anything rash.”

  “We try to never do anything rash,” O’Reilly shot back, obviously miffed.

  The president didn’t let those two get into another squabble. “Artois may be a tool of the French government,” he said. “He may actually be following orders.” The president toyed with a pen on his desk. “Even if he is a rogue, he must have many allies in the French space agency. In any event, it is plain that he thinks the French government will cave. I suspect he’s right.”

  The president cast a cold eye on his audience. “Regardless of what happens anywhere else, the British will never surrender, and of course we won’t. Artois may cause a great deal of havoc, but he isn’t getting any supplies from earth or a ride home from the moon without my permission.”

  The president smiled. The secretary of state had never liked his smile, and she didn’t like this one.

  The president glanced at the Joint Chiefs. “Let’s not waste any more time, gentlemen. I want those bombers armed and airborne as soon as humanly possible. I want a plan on my desk within the next two hours that tells me precisely how many hours it will be before we have the bombers and subs in position to destroy those spaceplanes.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Madam Secretary, I suggest you pop over to the State Department and work the phones. Keep me advised.” He shooed her out.

  When only the president and O’Reilly were left in the room, the president stood and stretched. “After the military destroys those spaceplanes, I’ll make a televised address to the American people. We’ll dither until then. In the meantime get the congressional leaders over here and consult with them. Have the speechwriters do a draft of the speech.”

  He started for the door before adding as an afterthought, “After the speech Artois may zap the White House. Better get the staff and the valuable paintings out. Don’t let the television people see you doing it.”

  “Yes, sir. What should the press secretary tell the press in the interim?”

  “We’re consulting with allies, congressional leaders, talking to the UN, all that stuff.”

  “In other words, nothing.”

  “That’s usually best.”

  “Where will you be if we need to find you?”

  The president looked at his watch. “I think I’ll go to the gym and work out. Call me when you have a draft of that speech ready for me to look at.”

  O’Reilly looked at his watch, then his notebook, which he carried everywhere. “You have an appointment in ten minutes with a Sports Illustrated reporter who wants to know if you think baseball should reinstate Pete Rose.”

  “Ah, the burning question of our time. Tell him I’m meditating on the matter and reschedule.”

  “May we say cogitating or ruminating?”

  “Meditating. It makes me sound smarter.”

  NEWTON CHADWICK AND THE FRENCHMEN HUDDLED around a radio in the dilapidated hangar in the Nevada desert, listening to the news of Pierre Artois’ announcement. They had rigged an antenna on top of the building and were tuned to a station in Reno.

  Egg listened from his perch on a crate of canned food in the back of the room.

  An antigravity beam weapon! On the moon. Egg scrutinized Newton Chadwick, who was hanging intently on every word from the radio. Yep, without a doubt, Chadwick gave or sold Artois the technology, which was right out of that saucer in the middle of the hangar—Egg would have bet every last dollar he ever hoped to get on that proposition.

  And Artois intended to conquer the world. Egg knew he was the only person in the room to whom that was news. Chadwick and the Frenchmen were excited, intense. They looked like athletes on a team that was several touchdowns ahead.

  So what else did Chadwick give Artois? The youth serum?

  It wasn’t a serum, really, but a gene blocker. The chemical latched on to the aging gene that was present in every human cell and inhibited its functioning. When he had first discovered it in his saucer computer, Egg had been so excited he couldn’t sleep. Medical researchers were today attempting to find a formula that would affect the aging gene so that they could come up with some way to attack the diseases aging caused, diseases such as Alzheimer’s, senility, diabetes and Parkinson’s. Egg was ready to call them up, give them the formula.

  Yet the more he thought about it, the less he liked the idea. Someone would undoubtedly realize the economic value of such a drug, and the vision of fantastic wealth would be irresistible. Listening to the announcer translate Artois’ demands and the reaction of governments around the world to them, Egg thought about the impact upon human life—upon all life on this planet—that the ready availability of such a drug would have. The demand for the drug would distort the world’s economy, the death rate would plummet, and the population would explode in a Malthusian nightmare that would crowd out other life forms and destroy civilization.

  When Egg added it up, the human conquest of death didn’t seem like a red hot idea. So he had said nothing to anyone about it, not even Rip or Charley. Nor had he been tempted, like Chadwick, to make a small batch of the drug for himself. He had perhaps two or three decades of life left, and that was enough. When his time came, he would be ready for the next adventure.

  So Chadwick wanted to go to the moon. That figured. Charley Pine had stolen the only spaceplane on the moon; the other three might be destroyed or damaged at any moment, leaving Artois and his crew marooned high and dry. Obviously Artois was betting that Chadwick could deliver, that he could get the saucer there.

  Egg shook his head, trying to clear his mind of extraneous thoughts. If he didn’t take Chadwick where he wanted to go in the saucer in the hangar, this crowd would kill him and go after Rip. Artois had to have a ride home, and no doubt he would do whatever he could to get one.

  He had inspected the saucer carefully. It looked intact, as well preserved as the one Rip had found in the Sahara. Larger than Rip’s saucer, it had more capacity to carry water. Of course, it also weighed more. Still, rough calculations indicated that it should be able to reach the moon and land there. Once there, however, it would have to be refueled with water to make the return trip to earth. Was there enough water on the moon?

  Egg had asked Chadwick that question and had received a curt nod. Yes.

  Well, Chadwick had better be right or there were going to be more people stranded up there, Egg included.

  The reactor seemed intact; it wasn’t leaking radiation. Egg had checked with a Geiger counter. The main flight computer was installed, the headbands were there, the hatch seals seemed intact—he had checked everything that he could. As far as he could determine, the saucer was ready to fly.

  He hadn’t told Chadwick that, though. He had more things to check, he had said, which gave him more time to think, to come up with the right course of action.

  Could he fly the saucer?

  He knew how Charley and Rip had done it, but Charley was a highly skilled test pilot, and Rip was—well, he was fearless and a quick thinker, and he had flown repeatedly with Charley before he gave it a try. Egg had had exactly one ride.

  Hoo boy!

  CHARLEY PINE CRACKED HER KNUCKLES AFTER SHE finished programming and checking the navigational computer. She ran through the program twice to make sure she had it right, went over the checklist one more time, then stowed the checklist, sighed and cracked her knuckles.

  “You’ll give yourself arthritis doing that,” Joe Bob Hooker said. He was sitting in the right seat, watching.

  “Doing what?”

  “Cracking your knuckles.”

  “Oh,” she said, vaguely surprised. “I’ve been trying to stop that. Bad habit.”

  J
eanne d’Arc was in low earth orbit, and had been for two days. The television monitor behind the pilots’ seats picked up broadcasts as the spaceplane came over the horizon and lost them about ten minutes later when the stations sank behind the orbiting ship. Sometimes the signal faded just as the commercials came on, but it seemed that most of the time Charley and Joe Bob got all the commercials and lost the signal in the middle of some significant pronouncement by a political leader.

  The snatches of news were clear enough; Pierre was causing havoc with the antigravity beam and making demands. France was in meltdown, it seemed. A great many Frenchmen were ready to march behind the Artois banner; they were loudly demanding the government accede to Pierre’s demands. The small nations of Europe, with token military forces without any real combat power, were making noises, but not threats. Charley Pine got the impression that a lot of the elected persons were merely wringing their hands, waiting.

  Everyone was waiting on the United States, which so far had taken no official position. The press secretary said the government was “studying” the matter. Indeed, the press reported that everyone who was anyone in official Washington had trotted over to the White House for consultations, but no one was saying anything for the record to the press. Oh, sure, there were the usual leaks and rumors, but nothing official.

  “Where is the president?” one commentator asked rhetorically.

  Joe Bob Hooker thought the political theater very entertaining, and watched by the hour as Jeanne d’Arc circled the earth and Charley Pine catnapped in the pilot’s seat. But now the waiting was over. Charley had programmed the navigation computer for reentry and made a last inspection tour through the ship ensuring all gear was properly stowed, and now the minutes were ticking down.

  The autopilot turned the ship, lining it up so that it was flying backward with its rocket engines pointing dead ahead. Charley wondered about the main engine. If it wouldn’t start, the computer would automatically fire the other engines longer and adjust the reentry flight path accordingly. As long as the other four rocket engines worked!

  “I want to thank you,” Joe Bob said, “for the adventure of a lifetime.”

  Charley smiled. “I had nothing to do with it. Write a letter to Pierre Artois.”

  “Seriously, flying with you is the adventure of a lifetime. Selling cars will never be the same.”

  All four of the smaller engines ignited on cue, to Charley’s intense relief, and the deceleration Gs mashed her back into her seat. Joe Bob Hooker abandoned his attempts at conversation.

  When the burn was over, the autopilot gently turned the free-falling spaceplane 180 degrees, until she was pointed along her trajectory like a large arrowhead. As Charley and Joe Bob sat watching, Jeanne d’Arc plunged silently downward toward the Earth’s atmosphere.

  THE FIXED-GEAR, HIGH-WINGED CESSNA 182 BUZZED low over the tops of the mountain ridges. In the pilot’s seat Rip Cantrell scanned the sky, and occasionally glanced at the instruments to ascertain the health of the single piston engine. High clouds obscured the sky to the west, the precursors of a front that was moving eastward, yet the sky overhead was clear except for a high, thin, gauzy layer of cirrus.

  Rip glanced at his watch again and checked the fuel. He had been airborne for an hour and had plenty remaining, yet—

  He had been cruising north along the ridge; now he turned south. He throttled back even more and leaned the mixture a tad, trying to save another gallon.

  There, in the sky to the west, under the clouds—a speck. He watched it intently. He had already been fooled twice, once by an airliner and once by a jet fighter.

  The speck was high and descending.

  Rip turned eastward, toward the stupendous expanse of salt flats that lay west of the Great Salt Lake, and rapped the mixture and throttle controls forward.

  The spaceplane was ten or fifteen thousand feet above him when it passed overhead, descending steeply in a powerless glide. He had the nose down, the throttle and prop controls full forward as Jeanne d’Arc broke her long glide ten miles ahead of him and, with the nose well down, turned 180 degrees and lined up for a landing to the west, into the wind.

  The spaceplane leveled its wings, descended steadily and flared just before the wheels touched the salt. A plume of dust rose behind it and tailed away to the east—Charley Pine had guessed right on the wind. Jeanne d’Arc rolled and rolled until she came to a complete stop.

  INSIDE THE SPACEPLANE’S COCKPIT, CHARLEY PINE looked at Joe Bob Hooker and said, “Welcome back to earth.”

  Joe Bob threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, man, have I got a tale for the grandkids! If you ever get to Dallas …”

  Charley was the first out of her seat. She almost fell on her face after the days of weightlessness, broken only by the weak gravity of the moon and occasional bursts of rocket power. Hanging on to whatever she could reach, she carefully made her way aft. The door that she had entered on the moon was the one she wanted, so she set to work releasing the pressure on the seals and opening it. It opened with a hiss.

  The cool autumn air enveloped her. It smelled of salty earth and cooked brake pads—well, she did push vigorously on the brakes after she touched down. Wispy contrails floating in that high autumn sky made streaks in the gauzy cirrus. She filled her lungs and exhaled slowly. This certainly wasn’t Kansas, but Dorothy Gale was right: There is no place like home.

  By leaning out slightly and bending down she could see one of the right main landing gear’s wheels. It hadn’t sunk more than an inch or two into the salt. She had been worried about the salt’s consistency—if it had been too soft, it could have torn the landing gear right off Jeanne d’Arc, which would have skidded to a quick stop on her belly, shattered beyond repair. She knew it was hard enough the instant she touched down, yet visual confirmation of her pilot’s sense was nice.

  Satisfied, she didn’t waste any more time. She went to the locker room where the space suits were kept and brought hers back to the door. She tossed it out. There were three extra suits stored in the ship, just in case one of the fitted suits sprang a leak or was damaged during use. She threw them out the door onto the growing pile.

  Joe Bob Hooker was there at the door when she made her last trip. “Why the suits?” he asked.

  “You never know when you’ll need a space suit,” she replied, and tossed the air compressor and suittesting equipment on top of the pile.

  He went back for his and threw it out too. “Paid for it,” he explained. “I’ll strut around in it at Lions Club.”

  She had to help him down, then tossed his small bag of personal items to him. Then she jumped. She fell heavily and bruised herself.

  She arose, dizzy and hurting, and brushed the salt from her sleeves and rump as the wind from distant mountains played with her hair. Eight days away from the earth’s gravity and she was weak, as if she were recovering from a long illness.

  Charley heard the Cessna before she saw it. It came out from behind the wing, already on the salt, and taxied up. Rip grinned and waved.

  “Here’s my ride,” she said to Joe Bob. “You’re going to have to wait for a while, but someone will be along pretty soon.”

  “I reckon somebody saw us land,” Joe Bob said, scanning the seemingly endless expanse of empty, flat salt.

  Rip killed the engine of the little plane and jumped out. He rushed over to Charley and enveloped her in his arms. When he came up for air, he whispered, “Missed you, lady.”

  “Oh, Rip—”

  “Here comes someone now,” Joe Bob said, pointing. A plume of dust was rising from the vast dirty-white expanse, still miles away. It looked as if it might be a car, or perhaps an SUV.

  “Let’s load the suits and get out of Dodge,” Charley said to Rip.

  They were in the Cessna taxiing when a police car rolled to a stop beside the spaceplane. Charley waved at the officer, a woman, while Rip reset the trim and eased the throttle in. The plane gathered speed and lifted off. Rip turned to
the southeast.

  Charley sat looking at Jeanne d’Arc as long as she was visible. As they flew away, the ship seemed to shrink on the endless expanse of salt, under the huge, high autumn sky. She looked small, almost toylike. Hard to believe she had flown to the moon and back.

  The Cessna hummed loudly and bumped along in light turbulence. It was certainly real enough. Charley reached for Rip’s arm, felt the firmness of his muscles. Rip grinned at her. “Welcome home,” he said over the song of the engine.

  She kissed him again.

  9

  JEANNE D’ARC’S FIERY PLUNGE INTO THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE was monitored by Space Command, which projected that the ship’s flight path would impact at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The news was flashed to the Pentagon and the White House while the spaceplane was still miles high, descending. The news should have made a huge splash at the White House, but today, of all days, the government of France was in chaos. The news of the spaceplane’s return didn’t even reach the brain trust that surrounded the president.

  In Paris the cabinet ministers were in conference behind closed doors. The networks had live feeds featuring reporters in front of the doors with nothing to report but speculation and the hourly communiqué from Pierre Artois, demanding responses to his nonnegotiable demands. The CIA had no idea what was going on in Paris. If the British knew, they weren’t telling.

  The U.S. ambassador to France was huddled with his mistress, who had a brother who worked as a janitor in the French parliament building. Every now and then one of the politicians visited the men’s room where the brother was pretending to work and commented on this or that. The brother telephoned his sister, who told it to the ambassador, who flashed the comment to the State Department in Washington, where it was passed to the White House for the president and his advisers to ponder.

  Periodically news of another French municipal or national monument rising abruptly into the sky, only to return to earth in ruins, was announced on television by breathless reporters. Enterprising producers ordered camera crews to set up in front of likely monuments in the hope that they could broadcast an attack from the moon as it happened. Pictures of rubble after the event had less dramatic impact.