Gear up!
He heard the whine of the landing gear coming in, felt it thump home. Three green lights on the instrument panel disappeared.
Forward, slowly.
The saucer crept toward the open hangar door. Egg looked right and left. The opening seemed to be wide enough.
Safely outside, he looked around for the chopper.
There it was, some kind of gunship, in a hover on his left, facing the saucer. The nose turret gun was tracking.
Dear Lord …
Go, Egg urged the computer. Full power.
The rocket engines lit with a roar and the G came on instantaneously. Newton Chadwick, who had been standing beside Egg, tumbled aft. Out of the corner of his eye, Egg saw muzzle flashes from the helo’s machine gun, but only for an instant.
The ship accelerated in a gentle climb, faster and faster, gathering speed as at least four Gs pushed Egg aft into the seat. When it was several thousand feet above the desert, traveling at least five hundred knots, the nose of the saucer began to rise.
On the computer presentation before Egg a pathway appeared, one that led up, up, up from the earth in a long, gently curving path off to the east.
Go, go, go, Egg told the computer as the exhilaration of flight filled him with laughter. Oh, yessss.
RIP WAS ABOUT TO GET IN THE CESSNA WHEN HE heard the deep, low rumble of rocket engines at very high altitude. He looked up into the evening sky—and saw the twinkle of rocket exhaust. The dot of fire was well to the east when the sound arrived, and it disappeared eastward into the night sky more quickly than any jet as the rumble from the heavens washed over Rip. The sound was lower in pitch than jet noise, and stronger. It seemed to engulf him. Charley heard it too, and got out of the little airplane to listen.
Rip knew what it was. A saucer, going into space. Perhaps the one he and Charley had speculated about just two hours ago. Or a spaceplane, like Jeanne d’Arc. Where it had come from he didn’t know, but he knew as well as he knew his own name who was in it. Egg Cantrell. That was why the frogs had kidnapped him.
Holding hands, he and Charley stood listening to the low rumble until it had faded completely. It was one of those sounds that you think you still hear long after it has gone, so even after it faded he stood frozen, straining for the last whisper.
Rip shook himself, finally, then leaned against the side of the plane for support and thought about what they should do. He and Charley discussed their options.
They got into the Cessna and Rip started the engine. Charley was exhausted, feeling the effects of eight days in zero or low gravity. She lay down again on the rear seat and immediately drifted off to sleep.
It was a clear, windless evening over the Rockies. The sun set as Rip flew eastward up the valley of the Colorado River. The moon was well above the horizon and about three-quarters full. Its light illuminated the ridges and peaks. Rip left the Colorado River at Eagle and made for Vail Pass. Safely through, he flew over Dillon Reservoir while climbing to fourteen thousand feet.
He was aware of the magic of this moment—the hum of the engine, the mountains at night, the stars and moon above, and Charley asleep in the backseat. He turned and looked. She was sacked out with her flight jacket around her shoulders.
If only those bastards hadn’t kidnapped Uncle Egg …
The interstate was illuminated by a steady stream of headlights. Flying above it, he crossed the Divide over Eisenhower Tunnel and immediately saw the lights of Denver gleaming in the darkness sixty miles away. He eased the throttle out an inch, dialed the RPM back a hundred, and retrimmed for a gradual descent.
SAFELY IN ORBIT, WITH THE ROCKET ENGINES SHUT down, Egg Cantrell sat strapped to the pilot’s seat while he swabbed the perspiration from his face with his shirttail. Ohmigawd! He had done it! Flown a saucer into space. Actually, he had done nothing but talk to the computer via the headband, and the computer had flown the ship, but wow!
Newton Chadwick floated near him, white as a sheet and unable to speak. Chadwick looked through the canopy at the earth, then turned his head to look into the infinite void of deep space. Egg could see that Chadwick’s hands were still shaking.
“I have never—” Chadwick began, then gave up.
Egg put the headband back on and asked the computer for a flight path. He studied it. The computer had planned two orbits of the earth and, on the second one, a burn that would accelerate the saucer on a course that would loop it around the moon. On the back side another burn would decelerate the saucer, placing it in lunar orbit.
Fine, Egg told the computer. That’s the way we’ll do it.
Regardless of how this adventure turned out, Egg felt as if he had reached the zenith of his life. Nothing he ever did in the past or would do in the future could compare with the rush he got flying this saucer into space. Now he knew how Charley Pine felt, and why she took the job Pierre Artois offered.
If NASA ever calls me, I’m signing up, Egg told himself, and laughed.
THERE WAS A TELEVISION CREW WAITING AT THE CENTENNIAL Airport executive terminal when Rip taxied up. Charley had awakened on final approach. Now, seeing the cameraman and female reporter waiting with her microphone, she groaned. “This isn’t going to do your uncle any good,” she said over the intercom.
“Just don’t say anything that will set Pierre off.”
The television crew charged the plane the instant the prop stopped.
“Mr. Cantrell, Mr. Cantrell,” the reporter called breathlessly, “what can you tell us about Charley Pine? Why did she steal the spaceplane?”
Then the reporter saw Charley. She elbowed Rip out of the way and jabbed the microphone at her.
“Get that thing out of my face,” Charley snapped.
Rip hurried into the terminal and squared around in front of the desk person, another woman. “I thought you people promised customers some privacy.”
“Oh, my heavens,” the woman said, fluttering her hands. As Rip well knew, celebrities and business bigwigs didn’t want the press lurking when they departed or arrived in their bizjets. “We didn’t think you’d mind. The reporter is the spouse of one of our executives. He thought—”
“Get that camera crew out of here now or I’ll make a formal complaint to the president of the company.”
The woman snapped her fingers at one of the line boys, and in less than a minute the camera crew was marching through the lobby toward the parking lot. The reporter scowled at Rip, who ignored her. Charley trailed the media into the building and followed the signs toward the women’s room.
“Did you have a nice flight?” the woman at the desk asked Rip with a frozen smile.
“Great. Now we need to charter a jet to take us to Washington. We’ll leave as soon as you can get a crew.” He tossed the keys to the rental Cessna on the counter.
It took the crew of the jet an hour to get to the airport and file a flight plan. Charley Pine took a shower and ate a sandwich from the vending machine while they waited. Rip watched a little television. European camera crews had managed to capture an Italian cathedral in Rome being zapped by the antigravity beam from the moon. Joe Bob Hooker, home from the moon, was the hottest man on the planet. A battery of reporters were questioning him about the lunar base, his conversations with Pierre Artois, his thoughts on Pierre’s demands.
Charley joined Rip in front of the television. After she had watched some of the interview, she said, “I told him most of that stuff.”
“He referred to you as the most beautiful woman alive, and the finest pilot.”
“Joe Bob is a discerning individual,” Charley said, and squeezed Rip’s hand.
“He’s going to be in big trouble with his wife when he gets home,” Rip replied.
Then a newsflash.
“This network has just learned that a flying saucer went into orbit from an unknown site in Nevada several hours ago. It is now in orbit. Here is the announcement from the White House.”
Charley watched in frozen si
lence as Rip squeezed her hand.
“Oh, Rip. You know Egg was in it.”
“Flying it, probably.”
They talked in whispers. They were still head to head in one corner of the room when the desk lady came to tell them their jet was ready to depart.
An hour and fifteen minutes after they landed in Denver, Rip and Charley were on their way to Washington in a Citation V. The space suits and air compressor were stacked in the empty seats.
10
“ARTOIS’ ANTIGRAVITY STRIKES ONLY OCCUR DURING periods of good atmospheric visibility, usually during the sunlight hours,” the astronomer said. “We believe he is using some type of optical instrument to aim the antigravity beam.”
“Why can’t he use city lights to target his weapon?” the president asked.
“It’s certainly possible,” the astronomer said, “but probably technically difficult. Yet Artois has struck several times during the night hours. As you know, just now the earth is moving between the moon and the sun—”
“How do we know that?” O’Reilly demanded.
The astronomer gaped, then said, “Don’t you look out the window occasionally? The moon is almost full. When the earth is between the moon and the sun, as it is now, the surface of the earth facing the moon would appear very dark when viewed from 238,000 miles away, which is its average distance from the earth. The more magnification his optical instrument has, the darker the surface would appear. And behind the earth is that huge bright light, the sun.”
“Doesn’t the relationship change daily?” someone else asked.
The astronomer couldn’t believe her ears. “The moon appears to move across our sky every day because the earth is spinning,” she explained. “The moon actually takes twenty-nine days, twelve hours and forty-four minutes to complete one revolution around the earth, as measured against the sun. The moon also revolves on its axis, but at the same rate that it circles the earth, which is why we always see the same side of it.”
“And when will the moon be overhead today?” the president asked.
The astronomer almost shook her head in amazement. The weather had been fantastic in Washington this past week—as usual, this autumn had the best weather of the year—and the night of the full moon was three days away. The Hunter’s Moon, for those with a romantic bent. “At about thirty-eight minutes past ten P.M., sir.”
The president looked at his watch. It was almost midnight. He tossed his pencil on his pad with a sigh. “So if Artois doesn’t zap Washington tonight using the city lights, he can’t do it until tomorrow night.”
The leaders of Congress were demanding that he publicly reject Artois’ demands, the sooner the better, but he didn’t want to trigger Artois’ wrath—at least until all the spaceplanes had been permanently grounded. So he had a little breathing room. Just enough, perhaps.
The president was counting hours on the wall clock, figuring when the attack on France would happen, when a messenger scurried into the room with a piece of paper. He handed it to O’Reilly, who read it and passed it to the president. The president scanned it and tossed it on the table.
“Aha! An ultimatum from the moon. Surrender within forty-eight hours or Artois will flatten Washington.”
That remark set off the president’s advisers. Everyone wanted to talk at once. The president used to insist they talk one at a time, but he didn’t anymore. Now he merely tuned in to snatches of each speech and got the gist of it. One voice hammered on public safety, someone fretted about paying people not to work, several were horrified at the cost to rebuild public buildings, and the attorney general remarked on the government’s liability if anyone were injured or killed by flying debris. Evacuation would look bad to voters, everyone agreed. Tourists would flee Washington, the local economy would be devastated, government workers would refuse to commute into the city, essential government services would be disrupted, Social Security checks wouldn’t go out on time, the homeless had noplace else to go …
“Now you understand why the French surrendered,” the secretary of state said smugly.
The president couldn’t resist. “We’ll rebuild the capital in Kansas,” he told her. “The climate there is better, and it’s closer to Texas.” Then he shooed them out.
O’Reilly, the national security adviser, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs remained when the others had left. “Have the director of homeland security make sure every government building in Washington is empty from moonrise to moonset tomorrow and every day after that,” the president said to O’Reilly. “Things may get nasty if we don’t whack those spaceplanes tomorrow night.”
“We’ll have to evacuate the White House.”
“Are we going to whack those spaceplanes?” the president asked the national security adviser.
“The submarines are in position to launch cruise missiles now, sir,” the adviser said. “But I suggest we wait for darkness to fall in France, then launch a coordinated strike. That will maximize the chances of catastrophically damaging the targets. And the incoming cruise missiles will be perfect cover for the B-2s. Under no circumstance should we risk having the French capture a B-2 crew.”
“What do you think?” the president asked the chairman.
“If they move the planes while the missiles are in the air, the missiles will miss. We have a better chance of hitting the birds with B-2s.”
“The spaceplanes could fly away while we are waiting,” the president objected. “If they’re ready to fly. Are they?”
“CIA doesn’t know. But if we shoot cruise missiles and miss, I guarantee you that the pro-Artois French will shuffle those planes all over. The B-2s are already in the air. They’ll refuel twice on the flight to France and twice coming home.”
The president went to the window. The moonlight was so bright the trees in the lawn cast shadows. He looked up. He could see the moon by leaning close to the glass. The seas, really dark areas caused by ancient lava flows, were quite stark.
When he was small someone told him about the man in the moon, frightening him. He had hidden from the moon’s sight, afraid of that man up there. Now a whole generation of kids might grow up afraid.
That egomaniac Artois!
He looked again at his watch. It was a few minutes past six A.M. in France. “Okay,” he said. “Wait until darkness in France.” The national security adviser and the general left the room.
O’Reilly turned on the television. The president wasn’t paying much attention until the announcer said breathlessly, “Earlier this evening a reporter for our Denver affiliate attempted to interview Charlotte Pine, the American pilot for the French space ministry, who stole the spaceplane that took Artois to the moon. Tonight she was a passenger in a private airplane that landed at a general aviation airport in Denver. She refused to be interviewed.” The network then played fifteen seconds of footage of Charley Pine snarling at the reporter.
So she was back, and in the United States!
“Have the FBI detain her and bring her here,” the president growled at O’Reilly.
He was back at the window, looking at the moon, when a military aide came into the room and handed him a slip of paper. A saucer or rocket had gone into orbit from Nevada.
The president’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline. He knew about the saucer that the Air Force had stashed in Area 51, had learned about it the hard way last year. Surely no one had flown that artifact away. That thing had been guarded day and night and locked up tight since 1947!
More than likely this report was another false alarm. Boy, there had been plenty of those. People were edgy, defenseless and ready to stampede. Rumors swept from coast to coast as quickly as telephone switching equipment could handle long distance calls.
Tomorrow night. With the spaceplanes destroyed, Artois would have to reexamine his cards.
“Better check on this report,” the president said, and handed the slip of paper about the Area 51 saucer to O’Reilly. “Sounds as if someone in Nevada panick
ed big time. And find that spaceplane that Pine flew back.”
Then he smiled one of those smiles the secretary of state hated.
AFTER ARRIVING AT REAGAN NATIONAL, CHARLEY Pine and Rip Cantrell rented a car, loaded the space suits and air compressor in the trunk and went looking for a motel room. They found one near the Potomac, south of the city on U.S. 1, which had been the main drag south back in the dark ages before the interstates were built. The motel dated from that era, although it had been painted three or four times since.
Charely Pine washed her clothes in the sink of their room and hung them up to dry. Rip gave her a toothbrush and some other personal items that he had brought in a small tote bag from Missouri. When Charley put her clothes on the next morning they were still damp. She complained to Rip, who had just returned from the small diner next to the motel with coffee.
“You gotta be tough this day and age,” Rip said, and kissed her good morning.
“I am tough, but wet panties—” Charley shivered.
Charley already had the television on and had watched a replay of her vignette with the Denver reporter. As she and Rip sipped coffee, she flipped back to CNBC and turned the audio down.
“So do you still want to do it?” she asked Rip.
“Artois snatched Egg. If he hadn’t, I’d vote to find a hole and crawl in. But we can’t.”
“You’re right. And I owe Pierre. If he wins, he’s going to squash me like a bug.”
A half hour later, as they ate breakfast in the diner, the news broke that the three spaceplanes in France had just taken off, and had presumably gone into orbit on the first leg of their journey to the moon.
Charley and Rip sat frozen, watching the film clip of the spaceplanes taking off, a minute apart, on the television at the end of the counter.
“They have to get fuel at the orbiting tank,” Charley remarked thoughtfully. “I didn’t think there was enough there for three spaceplanes.”
Saucer: The Conquest Page 15
