Saucer (21 page)

The president was horrified. “Oh, my God!” he groaned.

“There is no invasion from Planet X,” Bombing Joe said, weighing each word, searching the president’s face to see if he was getting through. “There is no fleet of saucers, no aliens out to conquer the universe, no androids who eat human flesh, no battle of Armageddon. This crisis has been caused by two idiots zipping around in a round artifact scaring the bejesus out of people.”

“Who says all this? What’s your source?” O’Reilly demanded.

“State got somebody in to see the UFO team that’s being held in the central prison in Tripoli. The team was there with the saucer in the desert. They were actually inside it. The test pilot was on that team. When the Libyans showed up, she and a survey worker sneaked into the saucer amid all the excitement and flew it away.”

“Of all the rotten luck…” said the president, staring at his hands. He sagged back into the chair. “Why me, Lord? I just told the Post the aliens would be received like any other foreign dignitaries! I’m going to be laughed out of the White House.”

“I’m going to get something to eat,” said Bombing Joe. He stood and marched out of the room before anyone could order him to remain.

• • •

Egg and Rip found the magazine in the dentist’s waiting room. The receptionist, who was on the telephone, just nodded when Egg asked with gestures if they could have it. The three people sitting in the waiting area were watching television reruns of the saucer over Coors Field as experts off camera explained everything.

The Cantrells took the magazine and left.

Rip got a new toothbrush and razor at the drugstore across the street, which he put into Egg’s suitcase. After a stop at the bank, Egg pulled up at a pay phone at a filling station on the edge of town.

Fifteen minutes later, Rip was confirmed on a flight from St. Louis to Los Angeles, and from there to Sydney. One way.

“Can you get me to St. Louis by noon, Egg?”

“Get in. Let’s roll.”

• • •

“General, the saucer is coming out of orbit.” The voice on the telephone sounded smug. “Space Command is tracking it. They’re landing in Australia.”

De Laurio picked up a fork and whacked it on the table a couple of times. “Okay,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Call State and the White House and let the duty officers there know. Maybe the Aussies can arrest these people before they scare everybody from Sydney to Perth.”

“Sir, our armed forces throughout the world are still at DEFCON ONE. What should we do about that?”

“Let the politicians decide. A little training won’t hurt anybody. But under no circumstances is anyone to shoot at anybody or anything without direct authorization from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Bombing Joe hung up the phone and attacked his breakfast.

• • •

Egg and Rip were an hour down the highway when Rip said, “You check on Mom, will ya? See that she’s all right. If those jerks are still at the farm, call the police. Send the cops over.”

“Sure, Rip. Don’t worry about your mom. Hedrick got what he wanted. He’s called off the dogs.”

“The saucer isn’t going to do him any good.”

“Kid, you may not be able to get the saucer away from Hedrick. He’s filthy rich, got his own private army, owns that part of the world and all the politicians in it.”

“I know that, Uncle. I’m going to give it a try, though. But what I’m really after is the girl—I’m not leaving Australia without Charley.”

Egg smiled then.

• • •

Charley Pine had no trouble finding Hedrick’s station even though it was night in Australia. She flew west from the lights of Sydney until she spotted the approach lights of Hedrick’s private runway. Hedrick had landed there many times in his Boeing jet, so he stood beside her looking out the canopy and gave her rudimentary directions. The ranch headquarters was a huge, sprawling complex a short distance from the runway.

“Land in front of the hangar,” Hedrick directed. “We’ll put it inside.”

She did as she was told.

Once the saucer was on the ground, a crowd quickly gathered. Charley opened the hatch for Hedrick. “You fly this thing into the hangar,” he told her before he got out. “Rigby,” he said, with a glance at his man. He jerked his head at Charley, then let himself down through the hatch. Rigby grinned broadly. “Back into the seat. I’ll be standing behind you. One false move and I’ll snap your neck like a dry twig.”

“I’ve waited all my life for a real man like you.” He did stand right behind her. She could smell his breath. As she reached for the controls to lift the saucer to move it, his hands went around her neck. “Let go of me, you bastard.”

He did release his grip, but his hands hovered there by her shoulders. “Goose it,” he whispered, his voice urgent. “Go ahead. I want to see you fly with a broken neck.”

She moved the saucer through the open door into the dark interior, and set it down again.

She killed the reactor and climbed out of the seat. The hatch was still open, so she dropped through it.

Hedrick was on a cell phone. He gestured to a man, who asked her to accompany him. They got in a golf cart and rode a hundred yards or so to the main house, a monstrous structure as big as a hotel. After walking through endless corridors past enough art to fill a medium-sized museum, she was locked in a bedroom without a telephone.

Only then did Charley Pine begin to shake. That passed after a minute or so, leaving her exhausted. She stood at the window, which was two stories above the ground, staring at the lights of the hangar. Finally she lay down on the bed.

• • •

Bombing Joe went back to the White House after he finished breakfast. He was glad he did. He got to watch the president have a conversation with the Australian prime minister that tickled the bottom of his heart, though not a trace of his delight showed on his face.

“Mr. Prime Minister, you don’t understand,” the president said into the telephone. “We are not asking you to arrest these people. Oh, no, sir. Merely to detain them for questioning…”

The president listened a bit, looking very sour. “Yes, sir, we are sure the saucer is there… Our satellite tracking network watched it come out of orbit and enter the Sydney area, where we lost it.”

He frowned.

“Certainly it is the same saucer… I assert to you that it is the same machine. It was tracked from liftoff here to touchdown there… Okay, into the Sydney area… Not touchdown… Indeed, I misspoke. Will you assist us?”

The president listened for almost a minute before he spoke again. “The United States has extensive military, cultural, and economic relations with Australia. Your country and mine are allies. Why are you being so obtuse?”

The good-byes were short and curt. The president slammed down the phone and glowered at his listeners, the secretary of state, O’Reilly, Bombing Joe, and several aides.

“They won’t do anything unless the crew of the saucer violates Australian law. Nothing.”

“What?” O’Reilly was furious. “He can’t do that.”

“He just did. He said that other issues, Australian sovereignty issues, were involved. He would not take orders from the American president. He suggested that the American ambassador deliver a note during working hours that sets forth our request and the grounds for it. It will be considered, he said. “

“He brushed you off,” O’Reilly declared, obviously shocked.

“Someone got to him,” the secretary of state said ominously.

“What a day! I don’t know about the rest of you people, but I want a drink,” said the president and pushed a button to summon the valet even though the clock on the wall said it was still an hour before noon.

• • •

Late that afternoon a large helicopter bearing U.S. Air Force markings circled lazily over Egg Cantrell’s farm, then dropped very low over the burned grass on the runway. It hovered over the burned area for a bit before it gently touched down. Three men disembarked.

They examined the burned area on the runway, then separated. One man went up to the house to knock on the door, a second went to the hangar to peer in the windows, and the third examined Egg’s other outbuildings.

The helicopter pilot remained in his machine with the blades engaged.

Twelve minutes after landing, the three men climbed back into the helicopter and it lifted off. One of the three got on the radio. “It was probably here. The hangar is large enough. It contains a lot of junk and antiques, but there is enough room. No one on the premises.”

The man listened to the reply, then motioned for the pilot to fly on.

• • •

Rip Cantrell was sitting in a cafeteria in the international terminal of the Los Angeles airport, killing time and sipping a Coke, when Professor Soldi came on the television set mounted high in the corner of the room. The tube had been giving saucer coverage since Rip entered the room an hour ago. Only a few people were paying attention.

Then Professor Soldi appeared on screen, talking about the saucer. “It is very old, one hundred and forty thousand years, give or take ten thousand. We dug it out of the sandstone.” Some of his photos appeared on the screen. He explained what each of them were.

“So what happened?” the person interviewing him asked.

“To make a long story short, the saucer was flown away by a former United States Air Force test pilot, a Ms. Charlotte Pine, and a seismic exploration worker, a Mr. Rip Cantrell.” He spent several minutes explaining how that came about and what the saucer looked like as it took off.

By now everyone in the room was paying rapt attention to the television, including Rip.

“As you know,” the professor continued, “I’ve been a prisoner of the Libyan government for three days, since the incident happened. We were released just hours ago and taken to the airport in Tripoli, where we boarded a plane for Rome. The other people who were prisoners with me are now en route to the United States, but I wanted to get the story out quickly. That is why I stayed behind to be interviewed.”

They talked some more about the saucer, how it worked, how it was discovered.

“Tell me, Professor,” the interviewer said, “where did this saucer come from?”

“Obviously it was not made on earth,” Soldi said. “It appears to be a shuttle craft, designed to take people and materials from orbit to the surface of a planet, then back into orbit. Apparently it was abandoned where we found it, abandoned all those years ago.”

“Who left it there?”

“Ah,” the professor said, “if only we knew. I think a careful study of the machine, and I mean a careful, thorough, analysis of every nut and bolt, every aspect of the device, would suggest some answers.”

“Do you have a theory?”

“Several. But explanations of each of them would take more time than we have.”

“Please share with us the theory that you believe most likely.”

“The saucer is man-made.”

“You mean people like us?”

“I mean our ancestors.”

A murmur ran through the airport crowd that was watching this with Rip. He looked around at the people there, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, some of indeterminate race. All of them were listening intently to Professor Soldi.

“Civilizations don’t just happen,” the professor explained. “Hunter-gathering Stone Age societies are at one end of the continuum, we are somewhere closer to the other end. Each technological level, if you will, above Stone Age hunter gatherers requires a different level of social organization to support it. Increased specialization is the rule. The industrial age required millions of workers and consumers. The postindustrial age required even more specialization, a larger base of workers and consumers. We are now moving into the era of the global economy, in which the brains, talents, and skills of workers all over the planet will be melded together in gigantic enterprises to create further technical progress. Our destination is the technological future that created the saucer.”

“I think I understand,” the interviewer prompted.

“The properties of the technological continuum that we have just talked about are rigid; in effect, they are laws. Since each level of technological achievement requires more and more people, more and more social organization, it follows that without the specialized people, the technological level cannot be sustained.”

“Keep going,” the interviewer said.

“A society that can build a device like the saucer, put it in an interplanetary spaceship, and cross the vastness of interstellar space will not be able to replicate that society anywhere else unless they bring their whole population, or most of it. Upon arrival at the planet they intended to colonize, the small number of people who could make that voyage would drop to a technological level that they could sustain.”

“You are saying that if the saucer brought colonists, they became hunter-gatherers to survive.”

“Precisely,” said Professor Soldi. “Spaceships, computers, tools, weapons, lasers, advanced medical devices, books, learning—they lost everything. There weren’t enough people to maintain or manufacture any of that. The abandoned saucer was finally covered with sand by the wind. The people lived in caves and learned to make tools with stone and ate their meat raw. The past was passed on as legends and myths. Eventually over the generations the legends and myths became unrecognizable, completely divorced from historical fact. The past was lost, just as the saucer had been.”

“So… the people who flew the saucer are… us?”

“I think the evidence of the saucer will ultimately prove that is the case.”

• • •

Nine FBI agents, seven men and two women, were waiting for Egg Cantrell when he drove into his driveway. They had driven there in three cars. Egg got out of his pickup and demanded of the closest agent, “Did you pick the lock on my gate?”

“Uh, the gate was open, sir, when we arrived. I never saw a lock. We just drove on in.”

“Right! Well, what do you want?”

“We need to have a talk, Mr. Cantrell. We want to know what went on here today.”

Egg looked them over and came to a fast decision. If he told them what he knew, they would eventually leave. If he didn’t, he was probably going to find himself held in protective custody until he did talk.