'Coming in pretty shallow for a meteor,' the operator added, quite superfluously.
Warhead, meteor, or space junk — whatever it was, it was going to hit the earth before it burned up.
The supervisor said a cuss word and picked up the red telephone.
From San Diego to San Francisco, people out and about three hours before dawn saw a fiery red streak cross the sky heading slightly north of east. Slower than a shooting star yet faster by far than any airplane, the fireball had a short tail and glowed reddish yellow. Despite the hour, a few thousand people saw it. Several managed to get underexposed photographs. One man near Bakersfield engaging in his hobby of amateur astronomy caught the saucer's passage on a time-lapse exposure. Most of the viewers just watched in awe, unaware of what they were seeing or its significance.
The saucer was far too high for the sonic boom to reach the ground, which was perhaps just as well.
As quickly as it came, the fireball disappeared into the eastern sky. A few dozen people called in the sightings to local radio stations, and within seconds reports were on the Internet.
As the saucer dropped below Mach 10, the on-board computer commanded a steeper descent. Charley Pine was reluctant to obey — the surface of the saucer was a cherry red — but after a second of hesitation, she lowered the nose a few degrees. Not as many as the computer commanded, but a few. The airspeed was dropping a bit, she thought, scanning the displays for something that might indicate airspeed, but her primary concern was the saucer's skin temperature. Of course it was designed to take these astronomical temps, but still, the skin was very, very old.
The glow of the saucer's skin seemed to lessen.
She lifted the nose still higher, and the redness faded rapidly. Now she lowered the nose, let the saucer hunt for a descent angle that felt right.
The saucer was still traveling in excess of Mach 4 when Charley descended through a hundred thousand feet just west of St. Louis. Behind her the shock wave touched the ground, a stupendous clap of thunder that shook houses, rattled windows, and frightened livestock and wildlife. It was, perhaps, the loudest noise ever heard in St. Louis. Every human not comatose or stone deaf heard it as a deep, bass boom of overwhelming power, painfully loud, but not loud enough to shatter eardrums. Many thought they had just heard a large explosion a few blocks away. Lights came on all over the metropolitan area and the telephone system was overloaded as everyone within reach of a telephone tried to dial 911.
Charley Pine felt for the earth. The saucer descended through a layer of low broken clouds, then came out in a dark area with few lights. She had carefully milked the glide, never using engines, all the way down. When she was about a thousand feet above the ground — it was hard to tell from looking outside, and she had no idea about the increments on the cockpit indicators — she used the antigravity control. Pulled it as high as it would go, then let the saucer fly down until the descent slowed.
The descent stopped at about two hundred feet. Low. Too low.
She almost flew into a radio tower that loomed in front of her, lit by only a few red beacon lights.
Safely around that, she followed a road toward a town she had seen when she came out of the bottom of the clouds.
Thank heavens the land hereabouts was relatively flat. Coming down in this thing into a mountainous region at night would be a good way to commit suicide.
Rip was standing beside her now. 'Where are we?' he asked, looking out the canopy for lights.
'I don't know.'
'Missouri, you think?'
'Not very likely.'
'The United States?'
'Maybe.'
'Pinpoint accuracy. I like that.'
The sky was getting light in the east when she brought the saucer to a stop on the edge of a small town.
It wasn't much of a town, just a conglomeration of houses on a small paved road in farming country.
They looked the town over from a hundred feet up. Not a car was stirring. 'It must be about four-thirty or five in the morning here,' Charley muttered.
'Yeah.' Rip pointed. 'Try that filling station. Maybe they got a water hose.'
'I'm getting pretty desperate for a bathroom, now that we're back in civilization.'
'Bet everything's locked.'
She maneuvered the saucer through some trees and set it down in a vacant lot beside the filling station, as close to the building as possible. Rip opened the hatch and dropped through.
The smells of earth and summer and motor oil were like perfume. He inhaled deeply. The sky and clouds were pink in the east, which bathed the landscape in soft light. After two and a half months in the desert, Rip thought he had never seen a prettier place than this little town.
There was a water tap on the corner of the building but no hose. He turned on the tap, just to make sure. Water came out. He turned it off and stood up, looking around. Across the street from the filling station was a diner, still closed, of course. Four little houses were in sight, with pieces of others visible through the trees. Might as well try the house next door, Rip thought.
He walked through the trees. The house was a white one-story with a single-car garage. The garage door was open, revealing a Chevy pickup and lawn mower parked inside. A coil of garden hose hung from a hook on the wall. Rip helped himself.
Two minutes later he had water flowing into the saucer.
He tried the door of the filling station's men's room. Unlocked.
He was standing beside the saucer looking around at the trees, the buildings, the flat fields stretching away toward comfortable horizons when Charley came out of the women's rest room.
'Ah,' she said, adjusting her gray flight suit.
'Maybe you should take off your name tag and captain's bars,' Rip suggested.
'You're right. The saucer is going to attract a lot of attention.'
Rip thought Charley's remark a masterpiece of understatement. still, he was desperately hungry. 'Let's get something to eat when the diner opens, okay? And please let me do the talking.'
'Okay,' she said without much enthusiasm as she removed the rank devices and name tag from her flight suit. 'I should have taken off the captain's bars two weeks ago,' she said and tossed them away.
'Why did the rockets hiccup when we did that reentry burn?'
'Your guess is as good as mine.'
'If we can get this thing to Uncle Egg's, he can figure it out.'
Rip Cantrell laughed. He felt wonderful. 'This is so cool!' He opened his arms to take in the filling station, the diner, the houses stretching down the street, then pirouetted and gestured grandly at the saucer as he bowed from the waist.
Charley Pine applauded.
'Thank you, thank you. For you, ma'am, we have a seat front row center.'
She checked the water tank. The hose was delivering water under a good head of pressure, yet from the sound the tank was a long way from full.
When she turned around an old dog was sniffing at the ship, then at Rip. He waited until the dog had had its sniffs, then he bent carefully and offered an ear scratch.
Rip is just an overgrown boy, she thought.
She turned back to the saucer, laid both hands upon it.
She had flown it.
Yes! She closed her eyes and remembered how it felt, how it was with the rocket engines going and the ship quivering in her hand.
When she turned back toward him, Rip was looking at her strangely.
'What's wrong?'
'In this light… well, you look awful pretty,' and he reddened nicely.
She grinned at him then, at the boy still in him and the man he had become.
He shuffled over to listen to the water rushing into the tank to hide his embarrassment. 'Half full, maybe.'
The sound of a car coming down the street made them turn and look. The car turned into the station and parked on the other side of the building, well away from the pump. The driver came walking over. He was a kid, maybe sixteen, wearing dirty jea
ns, with a face splotched with acne. The dog lying beside the saucer's nearest landing gear thumped its tail in the dirt.
'Hey,' the kid said. 'What the hell is this?'
'An oversize hauler off-loaded it about a half hour ago,' Rip said matter-of-factly, without inflection. 'He said it was gonna be a sign for an amusement park in St. Louis. Said there was an overpass down the interstate that it wouldn't go under.'
'Well, I'll be… ' the kid said. 'Why'd he leave it here?'
'Didn't have anywhere else to leave it. Said another trucker would be along to get it in a couple hours.'
The kid tore his eyes from the saucer and directed his attention to Charley and Rip. 'Why you putting water in it?'
'Darn thing is so light it needs some water to hold it down if the wind kicks up. Fellow next door brought his hose over.' Rip nodded with his head. 'Hope you guys can spare a few gallons of water.' 'I reckon we can.'
The kid put his hands on the saucer. Then he rapped on it with a knuckle. Before he could speak, Rip said, 'I'd be careful. Just Styrofoam under there and you're liable to dent it.'
'Oh.' The kid put his hands in his pockets and tried to look nonchalant.
'By the way,' Rip continued. 'My sister and I broke down a few miles east of here. After we get some breakfast, could we get someone to tow the car in? I think the water hose broke.'
'Lots of steam, huh?' 'I should say.'
'Well, the owner drives the tow truck. He'll be in after while. You got Triple A?'
'I think so. Somewhere in my wallet.' Rip touched his hip.
'How much more water you gonna put in there?' 'Oh, this is enough, I reckon. It's just to give it some weight.' Rip turned off the water tap and disconnected the hose. Charley closed the cap on the water tank.
As Rip coiled the hose, he said to Charley, 'Meet you at the diner.'
'Nice of you to let the trucker have a little water,' Rip told the kid as Charley strolled away.
'Ain't my water,' the kid said, still looking over the saucer. 'Sure looks real, huh? Looks like it's full of little E.T. guys.' 'Uh-huh.'
'Make these things in Hollywood, I guess.' 'Somewhere in New Jersey, actually.' Rip got the last of the hose coiled up on his arm and took it back to the garage where he had borrowed it.
After another long look at the saucer, the kid went over to the door of the filling station and unlocked it.
Rip and Charley were sitting on the front stoop of the diner when the sun peeped over the horizon and under the cloud deck, illuminating everything in town, including the saucer.
'The kid bought it, I think,' he said. 'You're quite the liar.' 'I'm practicing to be a politician.' 'What do you think happened to our friends?' 'Guess the Arabs will let 'em loose before long. Oil workers are the rainmakers; they come and go all the time. Doesn't pay for the Arabs to hassle 'em. Can't say the same about the Air Force types, though. And God only knows what they'll do with the Aussies.'
The fate of the Aussies didn't interest Charley Pine very much. Of course the United States government would eventually bestir itself on behalf of her Air Force colleagues, who would probably all get medals and a trip to Washington to shake hands with the elected ones.
She sat staring at the saucer. 'That antigravity device is something else,' she said after a bit.
Rip agreed. 'I think those coils on the saucer's belly reverse the polarity of the saucer's gravitational field, so the saucer and earth repel each other.'
They sat watching the sun rise behind the saucer, each lost in his or her own thoughts.
General Hoyt Alexander, commanding general of Space Command, was awakened from a sound sleep by the Cheyenne Mountain duty officer and informed that an unidentified object had entered the atmosphere, one that appeared to remain intact all the way to the ground. The Pentagon watch team had already been notified, the duty officer said.
Ten minutes later, the watch officer called back with the news from California.
By the time the watch officer learned of the sonic booms in St. Louis, the Air Force chief of staff, General 'Bombing' Joe De Laurio, had already called General Alexander.
'Morning, Hoyt. What the hell is going on? Space invaders?'
'I don't think so, sir,' General Alexander said. His sense of humor was invisible, if he had one at all.
'Is your television on, Hoyt?'
'No, sir,' Alexander said, as if that were a routine question to be asked by a superior officer at — he looked at the luminescent hands of his watch — 4:14 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time.
Bombing Joe sighed. 'The media is in a feeding frenzy this morning,' he continued. 'The public affairs people are already besieged, and I haven't even had a cup of coffee. Objects entering the atmosphere over California, possible sonic booms over St. Louis… What in hell is going on?'
'Sir, we don't have any answers… yet.'
'Humpf,' grunted Bombing Joe. After a few seconds of silence, he added, 'How about making sure none of our hot-rock fighter jocks buzzed St. Louis this morning. Call me back as soon as you can.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Too many UFO stories around, if you ask me,' Alexander's boss grumped. 'The world is getting weirder and weirder.'
Alexander hadn't a clue what that remark was in reference to since he had not been briefed about the discovery of a saucer-shaped object in the Sahara, confirmation by the hypersonic spy plane, or the fact that a UFO team had been dispatched to investigate. He kept his mystification to himself, however, because he well knew the Air Force was a compartmentalized outfit. His was not to wonder why…
After a few more grumbles for the record, Bombing Joe hung up. He immediately called his aide at home on the secure telephone and asked him what he had heard about the UFO team that had been sent to the Sahara two days ago.
'Nothing, sir,' the aide said.
'I want a complete report when I get to the office,' rumbled Bombing Joe. The political people were going to be all over him before he got very much older. He sat in bed frowning as CNN's reporters got wound up about explosive noises in St. Louis.
Just another Rolaids morning, he thought as he climbed out of bed.
Rip and Charley heard the car coming down the street when it was still two blocks away. After parking it beside the diner, a hefty woman got out, took a good look at the saucer across the street, then came walking toward the front door. She glanced at Charley and Rip, then stuck her key in the door.
'You know anything about that?' she asked, nodding at the saucer.
'Truckers off-loaded it there a little while ago,' Rip volunteered. 'Said there was an overpass down the four-lane that it wouldn't go under.'
'Well, I guess. What is it, anyway?'
'Gonna be part of a sign for an amusement park over in St. Louis. That's what the trucker told us. We broke down on the four-lane and walked into town.'
'Come on in and I'll put the coffee on.' Rip and Charley followed her into the diner. 'You folks been driving all night?' 'Yeah. Then the car gave out.'
'That's the way the world works, I guess. Some days you just can't have no luck. Find a seat and I'll get you some coffee as quick as I can.' 'Thanks.'
They sat in the first booth, with the sun's rays streaming through the window. The clouds were patchy now, breaking up.
'It's going to be a pretty day,' Charley Pine said. 'Feels good to be home,' Rip replied and helped himself to a package of coffee sugar. Then he yawned.
'I'm sleepy too,' Charley said. 'And I could use a bath.' 'Uncle Egg's got hot water and beds. I'm going to sleep all day.'
When the woman brought the coffee, Rip said, 'We didn't see the sign on the way into town. What's the name of this place, anyway?'
'Lordy, how did you miss that sign? This is Upshur, Indiana, boy, "where the prairie begins."' 'It was sorta dark when we walked in.' 'Honey, Upshur, Indiana, is a good place to be from. Been here all my life, though. Just can't seem to wind myself up to get up and go.' 'Sounds like a country song.'
'
Don't it, though? What do you all want to eat this fine summer morning?'
'Half dozen eggs scrambled,' Rip said. 'Lots of fried potatoes, a couple slabs of ham, maybe four biscuits, two big glasses of whole milk. What about you, Charley?'
'That's all for you?' Charley and the diner lady both stared at him. 'I'm hungry.'
"
'Two eggs and dry toast for me, thank you,' Charley said.
As she went into the kitchen, the woman turned on the television in the corner. The thing took a few seconds to warm up. Rip helped himself to another packet of sugar. '… Authorities have no explanation for a loud noise that rocked St. Louis approximately one hour ago, shattering windows throughout the metro area and causing thousands of people to telephone police and fire departments.'
Charley and Rip looked at each other. Rip shrugged. The reporters went on to another story. 'A suspected meteor raced across the California sky in the early hours this morning. Hundreds of people saw the large object, apparently burning up in the atmosphere, streak across the sky from west to east. Was it a meteor or a satellite falling out of orbit? The Air Force has yet to say. There have been no reports of a meteor striking the earth this morning, but if one hit in a remote area, it may be days before the report comes out. Here is Air Force spokesman Major Don Williams.'
The station cut to a man in uniform. 'The object was tracked by Space Command, of course. We will have a statement later when we know more about the object's trajectory.'
A reporter asked the officer, 'A very loud explosion was reported just minutes ago in St. Louis. Could the meteor have struck the earth near St. Louis?'
'We don't know,' the major said. 'We're trying to determine that now.'
Charley sipped her coffee and looked out the window at the saucer, which was casting a long shadow in the early morning sun.
'When I was hunting for a hose,' Rip said, 'for a second there I thought you might fly off and leave me.'
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