Julie had no intention of letting Charley take charge of the conversation. “Permit me to clarify the situation, mademoiselle. Monsieur Cantrell is our hostage. We will kill him where he stands if you give us any trouble.”
“Then you’ll never leave the moon. Your choice.”
“After we kill him, we will kill you.”
“And Rip will splatter you all over this lava bed with the antimatter beam, then fly on home.”
The other people in the group stirred uneasily, glancing at each other. The ones on the edge took a step away from the group, Charley noted with satisfaction.
“Alright, Julie,” Charley continued. “Enough threats and bullshit. I have come to the moon with authorization from the president of the United States to make a deal.”
WHEN HE HEARD THAT STATEMENT, P.J. O’REILLY grunted, then turned to the president. “You didn’t—”
“Sssh!” the president hissed, holding up his hand.
O’Reilly glanced at the interpreter, who was checking her nail polish and looking bored, and held his tongue.
THE LIGHTS IN THE CORRIDOR WERE VERY BRIGHT. IT took several seconds for Rip’s eyes to adjust. He walked carefully down the corridor, pausing in front of each door to look into the rooms. He saw no one.
Well, where are they? It’s a cinch they all aren’t standing outside.
He eased along with the weapon at the ready. The com center—there was someone in there. Seated with his back to the door.
Rip walked in, making as little noise as possible, yet making some. The man didn’t turn around. He jabbed the rifle barrel in the man’s back. Still he didn’t turn around.
Rip moved off to the side. It was Pierre Artois—he recognized him from his pictures. The man had even been on the cover of Time a month or so ago.
Pierre ignored Rip. He seemed … detached … disconnected somehow.
He was unarmed, apparently. No weapons that Rip could see. He left him seated there in front of the radios and television cameras.
The entrance to the mess hall was only a few steps farther along the corridor. Rip looked in the door. The place was full of bodies!
No!
The corpses lay contorted, frozen in death, under that brilliant white light. Blood was spattered everywhere; pools of it stained the floor. Amid the gore were glittering, empty brass cartridges. Rip went from body to body, looking. Not a one of them had a weapon.
At least two dozen people had been murdered here. Men and women.
Rip felt the vomit coming up his throat and managed to choke it back. He walked on, making sure that they were indeed all dead. Not that there was much he could do if he found anyone alive.
And he did. Find one alive.
Above the classical music background he heard a man groaning. He was lying behind the food service counter and wearing a white apron stained with blood. Rip bent and turned him over. The man was hugging his stomach, and blood was oozing around his fingers.
His eyes opened, focused on Rip.
“Easy there, fella. Who shot you?”
The man took a few seconds to process it. “Who you?” he asked in heavily accented English.
“Name’s Rip.”
“Reep?”
“Yeah. Now tell me, who shot you?”
“Salmon. Henri Salmon. He got all in here, then bang bang bang … He shot me in the stomach, and laughed.”
Rip grasped the rifle and looked around the room again, checking the two open doors. “Where is he now?”
“I saw him go b … in suit. Space suit.”
“He went outside?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t come back in?”
“Not that I see. But I passed out. My stomach … the pain.”
“There’s nothing I can do for you.”
The chef thought about that as he hugged his middle. He looked down at the blood.
“Bad way to die,” the Frenchman said.
“Yes.”
“You … have a pistol?”
“No. And I’m not going to shoot you either.”
“Not for me. For him. If he comes back.”
Rip looked the dying man in the eyes and made a decision. He reached into the belly pocket of his suit and pulled out a grenade. He held it so the chef could see it. “You know what this is?”
“Oui.”
“You pull the pin. It is perfectly safe as long as you hold the lever on. After you release the lever, you have eight seconds.”
The man held out a bloody hand. Rip placed the grenade in it. He tried to think of something to say, couldn’t, rose too fast from his kneeling position and almost fell, then hopped carefully from the room, avoiding the bodies.
“SO HERE’S THE DEAL, JULIE. A FRENCH CREW WILL be admitted to the United States, and they will fly the spaceplane to France. It can take a fuel tank into orbit, refuel on earth, then launch for the moon. They can take you guys back to earth.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah. We take Egg and leave, you get a ride home. They want you bad back there. Over two hundred people are dead in the States alone from your antigravity attacks. There are warrants in the U.S., Britain, Germany—”
“That was Pierre. He tried to minimize the loss of life.”
“Good ol’ Pierre, always thinking of others. I’ve heard that France and Germany are full of progressive thinkers who have abolished the death penalty. We’re a little more backward in the States. Still, maybe the jury will give you folks life in the can instead of frying you. Get the best lawyers money can buy, cry for the cameras, and hope for the best.”
“You certainly sugarcoat it, Pine.”
“Or you can stay up here enjoying the scenic view until the air or food runs out, the machinery breaks down, whatever. Stay forever or wait for your ride, your choice. But Egg is going with us.”
“What if we say no?”
“Then you die where you stand.”
THE PRESIDENT GRINNED AT P.J. O’REILLY, THE SAME grin the secretary of state found so offensive. “That woman has style! We gotta appoint her ambassador to something.”
“If she lives,” O’Reilly said thoughtfully.
RIP CANTRELL HURRIED THROUGH THE ROOMS OF THE base looking for people while Charley laid out the options for Julie Artois. Didn’t find anyone. The two grenades that remained in his pocket were on his mind. Perhaps he could booby-trap a couple pieces of equipment. Naw.
Satisfied that the dying chef and Pierre Artois were the only living folks in the base—he looked in again at Pierre to make sure he was behaving—he went to the main air lock and stepped inside.
“YOU DON’T SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION,” Julie told Charley Pine. “My friends and I are leaving in the saucer. You, your friend and Monsieur Cantrell can accompany us. But we are all leaving together.”
“You don’t even have a pair of deuces, lady.”
Julie didn’t understand the poker analogy, but she correctly surmised that Charley was commenting on the weakness of her negotiating position. “I have Monsieur Cantrell,” she said confidently, “and I have you. One bullet for him, one for you. Your friend in the saucer may make it back to earth, but I promise you that you won’t. Are you ready to die, Charley Pine?”
Charley glanced upward, at a spot on the rock above the air lock door. Aim and fire, she ordered.
The place that she was staring at began to sparkle and pop. Pieces of stone flew off. Some of the chips struck the man beside Egg, and he looked around.
Smoke and dust and rock fragments poured from the stone.
Cease fire!
It took several seconds for the dust to slowly settle, revealing a hole the size of a bushel basket in the cliff.
Keeping her pistol jammed in Egg’s ribs, Julie glanced over her shoulder as the last of the rock fragments fell like snowflakes around the little party.
When she turned back to Charley, the American pilot asked, “Are you ready, Julie?”
The man on th
e other side of Egg tossed his pistol away. It flew for ten feet, a long, lazy arc, before it hit the lunar surface and skittered along.
“Waiting for the spaceplane sounds like a good deal to me,” he said on his helmet radio.
Julie stiffened. She looked around once, then looked at the saucer, the nose of which was tilted down and seemed to be pointing directly at her. “You win,” she said, and dropped her pistol. It fell at her feet.
“Come on, Uncle Egg.”
He walked forward toward Charley. She hooked her arm in his and walked toward the saucer. It descended slowly until the landing gear touched the ground. The hatch under it was still hanging open. Charley glanced back to ensure the Frenchmen hadn’t moved, then bent to go under the saucer to the hatch. That’s when she saw a space-suited figure with an assault rifle leveled at her approaching from behind the saucer. Where has he been hiding?
“Not so fast, Charley Pine,” Julie said gleefully. “Stop right where you are or Henri Salmon will shoot you dead.”
Charley glanced over her shoulder. Neither Julie nor her pals had yet retrieved their pistols.
She shoved Egg forward into the dirt and dove down herself. At the same instant the rocket engines of the saucer spurted out a blast of flame, several seconds’ worth.
The saucer hopped forward a few feet. One of the landing gear pads struck Egg a glancing blow on the arm, but fortunately he rolled away from it and it didn’t crush him.
Charley Pine lifted her eyes, looking for the man. He was flying above the surface away from the saucer, tumbling end over end, being carried along by the hot exhaust gases. He didn’t have his rifle.
Charley scrambled up, dragging Egg. She grabbed an arm and jerked him off the surface, half lifted him into the yawning hole in the saucer’s belly. He began scrambling too, and she pushed against his leg. He tumbled in and she leaped upward with so much vigor she struck the ceiling of the craft and almost fell back through the hatch opening. As she reached for the hatch a bullet spanged off it, making a spark. She grabbed the handle and pulled it closed.
Whew!
Charley Pine stood and looked through the canopy. The little knot of world conquerers in front of the air lock were milling around, collecting their guns, touching helmets together and probably asking each other, What now?
She climbed into the pilot’s seat. Lifted the saucer a few feet and aimed the reticle at Julie.
“Where are you, Rip?”
“In the lock.”
“Come on out.”
Julie Artois heard the transmission, of course, and spun around. She was facing the lock as it opened. Rip stepped out with his rifle leveled and moved slightly to his left to go around the group.
“Drop the pistols!” Charley ordered over the helmet radio.
Julie turned her head to look at the saucer, then turned back to face Rip. She lifted the pistol ever so slightly, aiming, probably.
Fire!
The antimatter particles caught her in the right side. Most of them passed harmlessly through her suit and her body and exited out the other side, where they penetrated the cliff and annihilated themselves in the rock. One of them didn’t, however. It exploded an atom in her lung. The pain was intense and sudden. She released the pistol as a second antipositron met its opposite number in her liver.
Cease fire!
Julie staggered. Blood flowed from her nostrils in a stream. She tried breathing through her mouth, and with every breath she gushed blood. Suddenly she was too weak to stand. She slowly toppled over.
Charley set the saucer down and rushed to the hatch. When it opened, Rip came scrambling in. He slammed the hatch shut and latched it, slapped her on the arm and whacked his helmet into hers. “You did great. Let’s repressurize and get the hell outta Dodge.”
“What about the antigravity beam generator?”
“I took care of it. Everyone in there is dead except for Pierre.” He didn’t take the time to tell her about the chef. “Salmon shot them all.”
Charley climbed into the pilot’s seat and began the pressurization process. The people milling around outside couldn’t hurt them now. One of them was bent over, looking into Julie’s faceplate.
Still, Charley had had enough of this place. She lifted the saucer on the antigravity rings, turned it and began moving across the lava plain to the southeast.
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?” P.J. O’REILLY ROARED AT THE speakerphone. The president, the translator and O’Reilly were staring at it. The president was holding on to the desk so tightly that his knuckles were turning white.
“There was some kind of shootout,” the president muttered.
“God in heaven,” O’Reilly said, and mopped his brow with his handkerchief.
When the radio remained silent, he pleaded at it, “Tell us something, please!”
HENRI SALMON CAME RUNNING IN HUGE LEAPING bounds toward the open air lock. He didn’t even glance at Julie Artois, who was still lying on the lunar surface, unable to breathe, drowning in her own blood. He was the first into the air lock, and the others crowded in right behind him.
When the pressure was safe inside the lock, he jerked off his helmet and glared at the others. “Fools. Idiots! Our only hope of getting off this damn rock alive was that saucer, and you let it get away!”
“We still have the antigravity generator,” Claudine Corbet said calmly. “We can force the Americans to send the spaceplane back. Or the saucer. We aren’t beaten yet.”
As the air lock door opened into the interior of the base, Salmon nodded, staring at her. “You are right. First, however, I suggest we destroy the saucer. We must prove to those people we mean business or they will ignore us.”
Claudine grasped at this straw. She didn’t want to spend any more time on the moon than necessary, yet she certainly didn’t want to die here. She rushed off along the corridor toward the cavern while she unfastened her helmet and pulled it off.
Salmon was right behind her. They charged into the control cavern, fired off the reactor and computers and were soon charging the antigravity capacitor. While the charge was coming up they heard the rumble of the saucer’s rocket engines—except they didn’t really hear it, since there was no air; what they heard and felt was the concussion of the rocket exhaust traveling through the rocks.
“The saucer will rise toward the earth,” Salmon said. “We’ll pick it up on the telescope and fire the antigravity beam at it. That will ruin their day. We can’t let the Americans win a triumph.”
An hour passed before they caught the glint of the sun reflecting off the saucer. The engines were secured, and it was coasting toward earth with sufficient velocity to escape the moon’s gravitational field.
Holding it in the telescope was tricky. The telescope’s drive mechanism wasn’t designed to track a moving target, so the controls had to be adjusted manually. Courbet lost the saucer several times before she figured out the proper rate of traverse.
At her nod, Salmon fired the beam generator.
Since Rip had reversed the power cables, the generator no longer pushed against the moon; it repelled it. The generator shot away from the floor of the cavern, accelerating on its way into space. When it had risen to the length of the power cables, they tore out of their clamps, killing the power to the generator. Still, the velocity the unit had already attained was enough to carry it several hundred feet above the surface of the moon before it coasted to a stop and began to fall. When it arrived back in the cavern thirty seconds later it smashed itself to pieces on the floor. Flying metal cracked and crazed the bulletproof glass window, but didn’t break it.
An amazed Henri Salmon and Claudine Courbet watched the entire debacle, including the crash at the end.
“Mon Dieu!” she whispered. “We are dead.”
With shoulders sagging, she turned and walked slowly through the open air lock.
Henri Salmon kicked at the console in frustration. He shouted, he raged, but it did no good.
Finally,
when the bitterness had ebbed to the point that he could again think, he sat on the stool in front of the controller trying to think of a way to save this situation. There was none. After an hour or so, even he had to admit it. He wandered through the open air lock doors into the interior of the base.
He looked into the com center at Pierre, who hadn’t moved from his chair.
The bastard isn’t worth killing, Henri thought. The damned fool sitting here out of his mind, his bitch wife outside in the dirt, everyone inside dead or going to die, all of this madness to the strains of classical music. Henri Salmon tried to laugh, but it rang hollow and died in his throat.
Out in the corridor he met a figure fully clad in a space suit, walking toward the air lock. Claudine Courbet.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
She ignored him, went to the main air lock and opened the inner door. It closed behind her. Salmon shrugged.
Two of the people who had been with him outside scampered from the mess hall when he went in. He glanced at the bodies as he walked toward the refrigerators—and felt nothing. Not remorse, not sorrow, not anything.
Salmon was looking into a refrigerator when he heard something solid hit the door. He half closed the door and scanned the floor.
A grenade! It had no pin, no safety lever. He glanced up. The chef was lying there looking at him, his face and stomach a bloody mess.
Then the grenade exploded.
COURBET FOUND JULIE ARTOIS LYING WHERE SHE HAD last seen her. Her helmet faceplate was covered with blood. She didn’t seem to be breathing.
Claudine looked around, at the stark lunar mountains, the setting sun, the rubble of the radio tower, the earth hanging above her in the sky like a giant halfmoon. Even at this distance she could see the riot of colors in the area still lit by the sun.
She lowered her gaze to the ground before her and began walking southeast, out into the vast lava sea that stretched away to the horizon.
Saucer: The Conquest Page 25
