Saucer (15 page)

“They found what they were ordered to find, buster,” Charley Pine growled and flipped the channel again.

More talking heads, offering opinions about what this ‘rash’ of saucer sightings might mean. One woman was plainly nervous. “Aliens’ might already be here,” she explained.

Another scoffed, insisted that what was being reported were top-secret Air Force test vehicles. “The government never tells us the truth,” she said. “They know and won’t tell.”

Charley flipped off the television finally and laid her head back on the pillow. She was tired but not yet sleepy. What had she gotten herself into? Would the Air Force demand that Lockheed Martin fire her? For flying the saucer? For not calling to tell them where she was? Would the publicity ultimately make it impossible for her to get a test-flying job anywhere?

She thought about Rip, who was down at the hangar with his Uncle Egg, two boys playing with a new and exotic toy. Rip hadn’t a clue about the extent of the stir the saucer had caused… would cause.

Perhaps Rip was taking all this the right way. He didn’t really care what other people thought. He didn’t care about the talking heads on television or their carefully crafted opinions. Nor did he care a fig about the Air Force.

How did Australians get involved?

Maybe she should take a tip from Rip, ignore all of this.

She unfolded the diner place mat and read her notes.

The saucer flew very, very well across an amazing variety of flight regimes. That had been no accident, she well knew. The designers of that ship knew precisely what they were doing.

Staring at the notes, Charley Pine could once again feel the ship in her hands, feel the rudder pedals under her feet, feel the power of the rocket engines. She looked out the window with blind eyes, thinking about how it had been. With a blanket wrapped around her, she went looking for paper. In Egg’s little office she found a notebook.

Back in bed she wrote quickly, with a sense of deep purpose, trying to capture all of it. Never in her life would she get another chance to fly such a unique machine. No two ways about that!

Finally her eyelids became heavy. She lay back on the pillow and slept.

• • •

“Oh, wow, Rip! This thing is something else!” Egg Cantrell marveled at the extraordinary engineering manifest in the saucer, the way things fit together, the tidy, neat solutions to problems.

Egg was wedged into the engineering spaces. When they had first come aboard, Rip had pulled the power knob out to the first notch, firing off the reactor. Amid the computer displays and cabin lights, Egg stood in awe. Rip secured the reactor before the men entered the engineering compartment.

Now, wedged between machines, Egg tapped on the walls, looked at each component, examining everything with his flashlight. He did so with a sense of curiosity and wonder.

“You say you put some muddy water in this thing?” Egg asked after a bit.

“Yeah. It was all we had.”

“Gotta be mud in this separator. Gotta be. Go get my little toolbox on my workbench, please.”

Rip did as requested.

Egg soon found that the wrenches didn’t quite fit. Neither metric nor American wrenches worked. Worried that he might ruin a nut or two, he had to use adjustable wrenches and pliers.

“It’s good to see you again, Rip. Missed you this summer.”

“Yeah,” said Rip. “This old farm…” Rip had been spending his summers with his Uncle Egg since he was twelve. Ever since his father died. “The desert was a new adventure,” he told his uncle now as a partial apology.

“A man needs new adventures,” Egg admitted as he worked on the separator. “Yes he does. Expands his horizons, lets him learn new things. I still missed you.”

Rip didn’t reply, and Egg didn’t expect him to. He knew Rip pretty well.

“What’s the story on the woman?”

“No story. She was the test pilot the Air Force UFO team brought to the desert to look at this thing. She’s a civilian, got off active duty two weeks ago. She crawled into the saucer when I was getting ready to fly outta there. People were shooting; I couldn’t leave her.”

“Lucky for you she happened by.”

“I could fly this thing, Uncle Egg. Honest.”

“Be sorta messy if you happened to be wrong.”

“Flying’s an instinct thing.”

“We have birds in our family tree?”

“I flew your Aeronca. Remember? You taught me how to fly. This saucer is sorta like the Aeronca, I think. Course it’s a little faster and has some other complications, but I could figure it out. It’d come to me.”

Egg changed the subject. “When I got out of bed this morning I never expected anything like this. A flying saucer! What a day this is! And the gal is something else. Everyone needs a nephew like you, Rip, who just might drop by. Every morning for a lot of years I’ll wonder if you’re coming by today.”

“Well, owning this saucer, I just might.” A warm glow suffused Rip as he contemplated the prospect of flying around the country in his own saucer, able to go when and where he chose, anywhere he chose… He rubbed the metal of the bulkhead beside him.

When he realized Egg was looking at him, Rip grinned.

“Come any time,” Egg said. “And bring the woman. I like her.”

Rip flipped a hand. “Charley will be gone soon. She isn’t a girlfriend or anything like that, Egg.”

Egg got back to the separator. “She sure looks healthy,” he said. “Brainy, cute… “

“She’s pushing thirty. She’s too old for me.”

“She’s not too old; you’re too young.”

“Yeah. I really missed you this summer, Egg. All the romantic advice and opinions and trips to town for pizza.”

“How’s your mom?”

“Oh, so-so, I guess. Haven’t had a letter in a while. Maybe I ought to call her while I’m here.”

“Maybe you should.”

Egg finished taking the separator apart. He had a knack for things mechanical.

There was mud in the separator all right. “There should be a plastic bag and some paper towels on the workbench.”

When they had the separator as clean as they could get it, Egg muttered, “Didn’t anybody on this planet make this thing.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I keep up with all the latest. This thing is built with technology that’s so damn up-to-date it hasn’t been invented yet.”

“Who built the saucer, Egg?”

“People! Obviously. Take a look. This thing is sized for people our size, maybe a few inches smaller. Look at this twist grip I’m holding.” Rip eased into position to see. “See this? It’s designed to be twisted with a human hand. I’d bet money on it.”

“Tell you what, Egg. You get that separator back together and let me turn on the garden hose, fill this thing with water. We may have to get out of here in a hurry, if Charley is right.”

“I sorta think she is, Rip-boy. This is some piece of machinery—the Air Force is gonna be looking hard for it.”

“It’s mine, Egg. Not theirs.”

“You told me that before. Go hook up the hose and turn on the water.”

When Rip got back, Egg was examining the computer that the Australian mechanic had partially disassembled. “You didn’t do this, did you?” Egg grunted. “Heck no.”

Egg looked it over. After a few seconds, he whipped out a magnifying glass. “I think I can get it back together,” he said after a bit. “The fool was trying to get to the chip, but he didn’t know what it looked like. This whole case is the chip.” He picked up the three pieces that formed the case. They were dangling, held only by some wires. “That’s the chip?”

“Yeah. Probably has billions and billions of transistors. If they are transistors, which I doubt.” Egg scrutinized the inside surface of the case with the glass.

“Are they even talking about stuff like this at your school?” Egg wanted to know. “Uh-huh.”

Egg cradled the three pieces with both hands. “What’s the rule? The number of transistors industry can cram on a chip doubles every eighteen months?”

“That’s it,” Rip affirmed. “If we knew how many transistor like things are in this case, we could calculate how far ahead of us technically these creatures are.”

“Of course,” Rip said, “the function may cease to be straightline after a while.”

“See this screen. It’s a quarter inch thick and flexible.” The screen was also hanging by a wire. Egg twisted it in his hands, pulled it and kneaded it. “Unbelievable.”

He laid the screen aside and began examining parts. Soon he laughed. “Look at this headband. This must be the keyboard.”

“Naw,” Rip said, hunting through the parts for something he might recognize.

“Yes. My glory, this has gotta be it! This must be the way you talk to the computer.”

The headband was a collection of very fine wires, thousands of them, fashioned into a complete loop. The wires seemed to be held together with some flexible material, plastic perhaps.

It took Egg only about five minutes to reassemble the computer. “Turn on the power.”

Rip pulled out the master power knob to the first detent, which fired off the reactor. Then he passed Egg the headband. Egg carefully placed it over his head.

“This isn’t the smartest thing you ever did, Unc.”

“We’re engaged in a scientific inquiry. If I freak out, get this thing off me.”

“What if—?”

But Egg had already closed his eyes. He sat impassively.

Rip waited.

He could hear the water running into the fuel tank. The water was from a well, and the hose delivered only three or four gallons a minute, so it was going to take a while.

Now Egg was grinning. Widely. His eyes were open, his hands moving, reaching… Now they were still.

A variety of emotions registered on Egg’s face: amazement, happiness, joy.

What was in that computer?

Rip moved his hand back and forth in front of Egg’s face. His open eyes didn’t track or blink.

Egg’s breathing seemed okay. Rip sat watching Egg and listening to the running water and the silence. The silence was exquisite. Rain was pounding on the hangar’s tin roof, but the interior of the saucer was quiet as a tomb.

If Professor Soldi was correct, the interior of the saucer had known no sound for a hundred and forty thousand years. God, that was a long, long time! Man became man, the African diaspora spread man all over the planet, the ice sheets came and went, people walked across the land bridge to America, the pyramids rose, Moses led his people from Egypt, Greece flourished, then Rome… The entire human story happened while this machine sat, just like this, silent under the sand. Rip shivered.

Egg’s eyes came open. He took off the headband. His grin got wider and wider. “Yes, yes, yes! This is the cat’s nuts, man. Oh, Rip, it’s fantastic!”

“What is?”

Egg offered the headband. “Put it on. Follow the picture of the saucer. It’s the maintenance manual for this ship… some sort of three-dimensional holograph. You can see everything: how the ship works, how each component functions, how to take it apart, how to repair it. It’s so real you’ll want to reach out and touch. I never in my life saw anything like it.”

He leaped from the seat and tossed the headband onto it. In seconds he was on his knees working on the compartment’s forward bulkhead. A panel opened. Egg reached in and withdrew a package encased in a soft material. He held it out toward Rip.

“Look at this! It’s a tool kit. Take a look! It’s the tools to fix the machinery on this ship. And here are some more headbands—you wear one to access the computers.”

Rip placed the headband on his head. It was a tad small, but there was some give to it, so it was not uncomfortable.

The saucer was one of three objects before him. He approached them, looking… They were real!

He jerked the headband off.

Egg broke into laughter. “I told you! I told you!” He bent down, his face inches from his nephew. “Try it again, Rip.”

Rip went toward the saucer, merely desired to go closer, and it moved toward him or he toward it—it was hard to say which. The saucer was whole, yet it wasn’t. From several feet away the ship was transparent, allowing him to see every piece, every fastener, wire, valve, pipe, etc. And it was real, a three dimensional object with perspective and shadows and a tangible reality. Like Egg, he tried to touch.

The reactor, the water cracker, the antigravity system… Rip leaned closer to examine a computer. The closer he looked, the more he could see. He dove deeper and deeper into the chip in the main computer in front of the pilot, deeper and deeper until he could see the microscopic circuits.

When Rip Cantrell finally took off the headset, he was drained. It took him several seconds to reestablish where he was, whom he was with.

His Uncle Egg was sitting across from him, a smile playing over his lips. “Amazing, eh?”

“Oh, Egg, I never dreamed… “

“Now you know how the Indians felt when they went aboard Columbus’s ship.”

Rip sat stunned, replaying the experience in his mind.

“One thing,” Egg mused. “One thing we know: Humans built this saucer.”

“But… We—I and the two men I work with—dug it out of sandstone, Egg. I breathed the dirt and dust and dug it out with these two hands. There’s no way that was fake rock. That stone had been there for one hundred and forty thousand years, the archaeologist said. “

“This computer, the headband… ” Egg pointed. “That machine reads our thoughts, tells us what we want to know. The machine is designed to communicate with our brains. With human brains. I can’t explain it, but there it is.”

• • •

The president and his advisers were serious men (and one serious woman), engaged every day in the serious business of politics, i.e., dividing the pie in such a way as to create maximum advantage for themselves. They didn’t smile much; on those rare occasions when they did it was at an enemy’s discomfiture. They had a goodly number of enemies. Friends were blindly and intensely loyal to the president and his administration, enemies were everyone else. The great saucer scare left these serious people at a loss over what to do. Nothing in their experience quite fit this situation.

The saucer hullabaloo was perfect for television, a made-to-order media event that glued an extraordinary percentage of the populace to the tube, where they could be sold everything from automobiles to Zantac, brokerage services to suppositories. One of the things television wanted were ten-second sound bites from the serious people. Television reporters and camera crews lay in wait anywhere that an ambush of a serious person was even a remote possibility.