Saucer (36 page)

Rip backed the saucer away before he too fell upward. As the saucer’s antigravity field released him, he lost his grip on the car bumper and fell to earth with a thump.

One of the flattened bodies fell nearby in a shower of blood.

Two were still up there, crushed in the transition zone between earth and saucer. One of them was Hedrick.

Tony came over toward where Rip lay, but he kept his eyes on the now stationary saucer. He was ready to run.

“You win, kid,” Tony said. He raised his voice, “Let’s get outta here.”

“Are you nuts?” one of the onlookers demanded. “That saucer is worth billions!”

“Don’t be a fool!” Tony said bitterly. “The moneyman is dead. Do you want to join him up there, squashed like a bug? And who would pay you ten cents for the saucer, if you could manage to get your hands on it and fly it out of here?”

Rip moved the saucer toward the nearest automobile. The front end of the car rose about three feet in the air. He stopped the saucer, left the car hanging as men dove into the remaining cars and backed up hurriedly. Finally he moved the saucer a few feet, enough to release the front of the suspended car from the saucer’s grasp.

Some of the remaining men made a dash for the cars. The few still standing were restless, shining their flashlights over the saucer’s belly.

“I’m leaving,” Tony announced. “Anybody who wants to take the saucer from the kid can shake hands in hell with Roger Hedrick.” He got behind the wheel of the car nearest Rip and started the engine.

Rip left the saucer where it was and walked for the cabin.

Behind him he could hear car doors slamming, engines roaring into life, gravel being thrown as wheels spun.

There was a paring knife in the tableware drawer. Rip managed to cut himself a little. Eventually the plastic tie around his swollen wrists gave way.

He sat on the floor in the lamplight, massaging his wrists, wiping blood from his face with his shirttail, listening to the frogs and crickets.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
O
NE

The headline screamed, CANTRELL OWNS SAUCER, JUDGE RULES. The president frowned at the headline and scanned the story.

“Yesterday in Washington a federal district judge granted Olie Cantrell’s motion on behalf of his nephew, Rip, for summary judgment after an expedited hearing. ‘The government has no case,’ the judge said. ‘The government has no colorable claim to title to the saucer.’”

“No colorable claim,” the president muttered to the people gathered around his desk. He cast a withering glance at the attorney general, who reddened slightly.

Another headline on the front page caught his eye, down near the bottom on the left side: BILLIONAIRE MISSING. The story began: ‘Australian billionaire industrialist Roger Hedrick, the world’s second richest man, was reported missing yesterday by his companion, Ms. Bernice Carrington-Smyth. A crew of a chartered jet dropped Mr. Hedrick at the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, airport nine days ago. The industrialist was seen leaving the airport in a limousine and has not been seen since. Ms. Carrington-Smyth suspects foul play…’”

The president tossed the newspaper on his desk. “What do you people have to say for yourselves?”

“There’s more, Mr. President,” O’Reilly, the chief of staff, said.

“More?”

“This morning on the Today show Olie Cantrell announced that his nephew was donating the saucer to the National Air and Space Museum. There are a few conditions: The nuclear reactor must be removed from the saucer, it must never fly again, and it must be put on permanent public display.”

“A political masterstroke,” the president murmured. “Thank God Olie Cantrell isn’t in politics.”

“The director of the museum agreed to all three conditions, of course.”

Bombing Joe De Laurio’s face turned purple. “They can’t accept it! That saucer should be confiscated for national security reasons. I’m tired of pussyfooting around with these people. Too much is at stake here.”

“Pussyfooting?” the president purred. He looked at the director of the FBI, who was sitting beside De Laurio. “Go over it again, please, one more time, so all these people have it straight. Including the general.”

The director of the FBI took a deep breath, glanced at De Laurio, who had set his jaw, then began: “At your order we bugged Rip Cantrell’s mother’s house. When Rip came home sixteen days ago, we put a team around the lake cabin in which he was staying. As you know, our orders were merely to observe and report to you while the Justice Department litigated title to the saucer.”

The FBI director looked around. “On the night of September ninth, Roger Hedrick and several dozen Mafiosi from Chicago arrived at the lake cabin in Minnesota. Rip Cantrell was tied up and given a physical beating. Hedrick and two of the others were crushed by the saucer, which was probably under Cantrell’s control. When the saucer is in the museum, perhaps we can examine it and determine how he controlled the thing, if he did.”

“In any event, after Hedrick’s death the surviving mobsters departed the scene. We believe Mr. Cantrell wrapped the bodies in bedding from the cabin, loaded them in the saucer, and flew away. NORAD lost the saucer off the California coast. The following night Cantrell returned to Minnesota, once again submerged the saucer in the lake, and resumed reading and fishing.”

The president scratched his head, then smoothed his coiffeured hair. “When we discussed this before, you said that you believed Hedrick’s death was self-defense, did you not?”

“Yes, sir,” said the director. “I did.”

“And after consultation with you and the attorney general, I decided not to have Mr. Cantrell arrested.”

“We should have taken that saucer,” the general rumbled. “It’s a national security treasure.”

The president’s patience was fraying. “If I had authorized seizing the saucer while the courts were litigating the title, I would have opened myself up for impeachment.”

“We can appeal the judge’s ruling,” De Laurio said.

“We could,” the chief of staff replied, “but we won’t. Olie Cantrell torpedoed that option with his announcement that Rip was donating the saucer to the people of the United States for display at the Air and Space Museum. We were litigating title on behalf of the American people—now he is donating the saucer to them. An appeal is politically impossible.”

The president leaned forward in his chair and wagged his finger at the Air Force chief of staff. “It’s over, General. The saucer crisis has been a mess from day one: I got bad advice and was stupid enough to take some of it. The crisis is over. I am not going to risk my tenure in this office or my place in American history over a flying saucer.”

“We should destroy the saucer now,” De Laurio insisted.

“We were lucky the Australians decided not to raise a stink about those two Tomahawk missiles.”

“They are corrupt.” Bombing Joe’s upper lip rose into a sneer. “Hedrick owned them.”

“Hedrick owned half of Sydney,” the president explained. “Politicians can’t ignore such men. That’s the reality of the world we live in.”

“Politics!” Bombing Joe said contemptuously.

The president appraised the general thoughtfully. “I still don’t understand, Joe, why you argued so vehemently that the saucer should be destroyed. The benefits the saucer can confer on all mankind are beyond calculation.”

The general leaned forward and automatically lowered his voice to a whisper. “Mr. President, we already have a saucer. It’s in a hangar in Area Fifty-one. The technology was the basis for the hypersonic spy plane. We don’t need another one.”

The president gaped.

The deepening silence was broken only when the president asked, “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

“That’s classified,” Bombing Joe said, his face beet red.

“Don’t give me that, General,” the president snarled.

“My predecessors decided years ago to keep the saucer’s existence secret,” Bombing Joe explained. “Really secret. Politicians get voted in and out, they talk in bedrooms, whisper in congressional hallways…”

“Where did the Air Force get a saucer?

Bombing Joe took several deep breaths before he answered. The president could see that he didn’t want to say anything. “New Mexico, forty years ago,” Bombing Joe said after a bit, then shrugged.

The president sat erect in his chair, played with the items on his desk. Finally he asked, “Aren’t you due to retire in about eighteen months, Joe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Put in your retirement papers today. Effective tomorrow.”

Bombing Joe swallowed hard. He squared his shoulders. “Yes, sir,” he said, and stalked from the room.

The president picked up the morning newspaper, glanced at the headlines one more time, then tossed it in the wastepaper basket beside his desk.

“What time is Rip delivering the saucer?” he asked P.J. O’Reilly.

“Two this afternoon, sir.”

“Clear the calendar. I’m going to the museum to watch the thing fly in.”

• • •

There were at least a hundred thousand people on the Mall outside the Air and Space Museum when the saucer came into view. Apparently every government worker within five miles of the museum had taken the afternoon off. A gaggle of congressmen and senators hoping to get on the evening news surrounded the president, who was surreptitiously scoping the crowd for pretty girls.

The museum staff had opened the front of the main display bay, an emergency operation that had taken all night and most of the morning. The last of the workmen finished cleaning up just minutes before the saucer became visible as a black dot in the western sky. At Olie’s insistence, a clear area a hundred feet wide and a hundred yards long was roped off leading to the open bay.

“There,” someone said, pointing. Hundreds of other fingers probed the air, thousands of eyes scanning, then as one the whole crowd saw the dark circular shape and fell silent.

Rip dropped over the Lincoln Memorial, still decelerating. He was flying hands off, letting the computer do the work. Now he knew: Flying the saucer over a crowd was extremely dangerous. If the saucer got below fifty feet and needed the antigravity rings after aerodynamic lift was lost, the earth would literally push anything loose toward the saucer. When the saucer was above fifty feet, objects on the ground didn’t seem to be affected.

To think that he and Charley had blithely flown this thing into the baseball stadium in Denver! It was a miracle that someone, or a group of someones, hadn’t been sucked out of his seat to his death.

He could see the spot where he wanted to go, the clear area in front of the Air and Space; he kept his gaze on that area except for an occasional glance at the computer graphics. The vector crosshairs were in exactly the right place.

Past the Washington Monument at about three hundred feet, still making a hundred knots but decelerating… He was on the antigravity system as he slowed through fifty knots at about two hundred feet, still above the treetops.

Then the saucer was settling onto the patio area in front of the museum, just to one side of a silver-and-gold monument.

As the saucer neared the pavement, dirt and trash began to fly.

Hovering just above the patio, Rip looked at the spot inside the museum where he wanted the saucer to come to rest, in the clear area under the Wright Flyer. The saucer moved toward it, closer and closer, through the open side of the building…

Gear down!

He could feel the thumps as the landing struts locked down. Then the saucer touched down… swayed once… and gently came to rest.

For the first time he really saw all the faces looking at him. A sea of faces, thousands packed into every square foot inside the building. Suspended from the ceiling near the Wright Flyer were Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1, and an X-I5.

Rip killed the reactor, took off the computer headband, and unstrapped from the pilot’s seat.

On the floor of the compartment he paused, took a last good look around.

“You’ve come to the right place, ol’ girl,” he said and bent to open the hatch.

The first people Rip saw as he came out from under the saucer were Uncle Egg and Charley Pine. He hugged Charley and shook hands with Egg, both at the same time.

“Hey, Charley.”

“Hey, Rip.”

“Right now you are on every television set on this planet,” Egg said above the buzz of the crowd.

“If everyone is watching, we might as well give them a show,” he said to Charley and kissed her. When they came up for air, Charley asked, “What happened to your eye? And your neck?” The marks from Hedrick’s fingernails were raw scabs.

“Had an accident. Tell you about it later.”

“I’d like you to meet the director of the museum,” Egg said and put a hand on Rip’s arm. Rip shook a hand.

Egg whispered into Rip’s ear, “We need to go upstairs to sign some papers.”

The director led the way up the stairs to the second level of the building while flashes popped and television cameras pointed. When they entered the administrative office area they were alone.

Once they reached the director’s office, he shook Rip’s hand again. “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Cantrell, a real pleasure. We are so thrilled you are presenting the saucer to the museum.”

Rip just nodded.

“Here are the papers transferring title. Perhaps you’d like to read them?”

“Who wrote these?” Rip asked Egg. “Olie did,” his uncle told him.

Rip borrowed a pen from the director and signed three copies. He handed his copy to Egg. “I left the hatch open.”

“Ms. Pine has been very helpful. She has spent the morning telling us all she could about the machine, including the operation of the hatch.”

Rip nodded. “I must caution you that anyone under the saucer will be killed when the ship is lifted off the ground.”

“Under the terms of your gift, we cannot fly the saucer. And I assure you, we will have the reactor removed as soon as possible.”

The director wanted him to meet some of the staff. Rip shook more hands, smiled, didn’t even try to remember names.