Saucer: The Conquest (10 page)

“My sentiments, exactly. I’ve brought a driver and a box of balls. Been outside hitting a few, figuring out just how far they go. Can’t get a real good swing in a space suit, and Artois will have to keep that in mind. He had a designer lay out a course and asked for my opinion. He knows I have a ten handicap.”

Charley Pine’s opinion of Pierre Artois’ public relations skills soared. If he could keep the Joe Bobs of the world happy, there were no limits on what he could accomplish. Too bad the worker bees around here assiduously avoided the Texan.

As Hooker chattered about his golf experiences at deluxe courses around the world, Charley finished her meal. The lunar base personnel who entered the dining area avoided their table.

Money can buy the adventure, she thought, but it can’t buy camaraderie. Joe Bob would always be a tourist. And he knew it. He eyed the technicians in their one-piece jumpsuits and concentrated on his food.

She made her excuses and left.

Life at the lunar base was regulated by the clock, almost as if the people were in a submerged submarine. Charley worked out in the gym, then spent the rest of the clock day sitting on an inflatable couch that didn’t weigh five pounds in front of a television playing French and Italian movies. She watched people come and go from the cafeteria section of the room while scanning European newspapers that Jeanne d’Arc had delivered. Around her, off-duty base personnel chattered among themselves. They had engaged her in conversation, then turned to subjects that interested them—problems with the base, professional challenges, gossip and games. Several computers sat on a table against a wall and were set up to play games. Chess sets were nearby and were always in use.

People were the same everywhere, Charley thought ruefully. Even on the moon. People needed intellectual stimulation as well as physical exercise to stay healthy.

The adrenaline rush of the flight had worn off, leaving her depressed and lethargic. With no duties to engage her, she was bored. And blue. She wasn’t yet ready to throw herself into computer games. Yeah, this was an adventure of a lifetime, but when it was over, then what?

Yawning and tired, she tossed away the newspapers and sat musing about Rip. Finally she gave up and headed for the women’s bunkroom.

• • •

In the months that he had had the computer from Rip’s saucer, Egg Cantrell had devoted much time and thought to try to learn how it worked. Yet he could not ignore the contents of the database. He had converted his office into a computer center so that he could transfer the contents of the saucer’s computer to his own, where he could manipulate the data, attempting to organize it and make sense of it. At times he felt like a man sampling books in the Library of Congress, knowing that reading them all would be impossible. At first he had tried to be systematic. The problem was that all knowledge is interrelated, so no matter where he began, threads to other interesting things led away in all directions. Finally he realized that systematic exploration of the storehouse of information contained in the computer would take thousands of years, and he only had a fraction of one lifetime left. So he abandoned system and, when he wasn’t working on the programs that made the computer think, he followed any interesting thread anywhere it led. If he crossed another pathway that looked more interesting, he followed that.

The real problem was that he couldn’t read the language. Much of the information was in the form of text, which he spent several months trying to decipher. Finally he realized the task was beyond him. With the help of several academics he knew, he located a young linguistics scholar and gave her a huge sample of the text and the graphics that were embedded around it. That was several months ago. She was still searching for a key, a Rosetta stone, that would give her an opening.

In their last conversation she said, “I am assuming that this language was the parent of all the earth’s languages. That is a huge assumption and may prove to be wrong. There has been much theoretical work done on the so-called first language, and it’s just that, theory. All that said, I guarantee you that I can crack it with a computer.”

“When?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What if it isn’t a language but computer code?”

“It’s not computer code. Computer languages are cake. I had to eliminate that possibility first.”

Today he was examining the design of an interstellar spaceship. It contained a cargo hold for transporting two saucers. The ship reminded him of a giant Ferris wheel, with an outer ring that housed the passengers spinning slowly around an interior axis that held the ship’s nuclear engines and fuel. The exterior ring was large enough to hold several hundred people. It also held hydroponic gardens, which were used to grow plants for the humans to consume, and a lab for manufacturing food from recycled organic compounds.

He was tracing the power and life support systems when Rip came into his study.

“Look at this,” Egg said. “It might be the ship that brought the saucer people to earth.”

Rip stared over his shoulder at the computer screen. “They assembled it in space.”

“They certainly didn’t bring it into the atmosphere,” Egg agreed. “See the hold for the saucers, which must have shuttled people and cargo up and down to a planet.”

After a bit Rip said, “If all the people came down to earth, where is the starship?”

“Perhaps some of the crew flew it on to another star. Or if everyone stayed on earth, perhaps they left it in orbit.”

“It’s not up there now.”

“No, it wouldn’t be. If it were left in low earth orbit, sooner or later it would have fallen into the atmosphere and been destroyed.”

Rip sighed and turned away. He sagged into the only easy chair in the room and stared at his toes.

“You must be patient,” Egg said. “Life always works out. Give Charley a chance.”

“Umm.”

“Give life a chance, Rip. If you are the man for her, she’ll figure that out.”

“I am the one,” Egg’s nephew replied. “How could she not see that? How could she doubt it? She’s not blind.”

“She’ll have to discover that truth for herself.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

• • •

Charley Pine awoke from a deep sleep knowing someone was in the room. She lay perfectly still for several seconds, trying to remember precisely where she was. Someone was shaking a person in the next bed. Ah yes, that person was Claudine Courbet, who had gone to bed an hour or so after Charley.

It was a man—Henri Salmon. Now he whispered something in French. He left the room, and Claudine Courbet bestirred herself. Charley pretended to be asleep.

Courbet dressed in the darkness; then Charley heard the door open and close. She opened her eyes and sat up in bed. There were two other women in the room, both apparently asleep.

Charley sat up, pulled on her flight suit and her boots, then pulled her hair back and put a band on it.

The corridor was lit with red light during the base night hours in an effort to help the humans regulate their internal clocks. And it was empty. She walked carefully along, past the doors to several workshops, toward the steel door that had been locked yesterday. I’m getting accustomed to the moon’s gravity, she thought wryly. A few more days and I’ll look like a native.

She approached the last bend in the corridor with care. Two men were wrestling a dolly loaded with something heavy. The reactor! They punched in the code; then one man held the door while the other maneuvered the dolly through the entrance.

As they disappeared into the space, Charley bounded toward the door—and caught it just before it closed.

She waited several seconds, then pulled it open and followed them through.

A few feet past the locked door she passed through an air lock, both doors of which stood open. Beyond the air lock the corridor opened into a commodious cavern. The two men with the dolly were off-loading the reactor. Claudine Courbet was hovering nearby, apparently supervising. None of the three noticed her.

A control console sat facing a large window. Beyond the window, which appeared to be thick, bulletproof glass or plastic, three large objects were visible.

One of them looked like an optical telescope, a huge one, at least ten feet tall. The largest machine, if it was that, stood at least twelve feet tall and was covered with opaque plastic. Against the wall was another object, a giant cube about six feet high. Power cables three inches thick ran from it to the machine under the plastic.

Charley recognized the cube—it was a giant capacitor. The solar panels on the surface over their heads would never fully charge it, but the nuclear reactor, if used to generate electricity, certainly could.

Above the machines beyond the glass was a large metal roof, one that apparently consisted of panels that could be moved by a complicated arrangement of hydraulic rams. This roof must be the object she had seen from outside and thought was a skylight.

On this side of the window the control console dominated the room. There were four raised chairs, the usual emergency equipment and, against one wall, hangers that held at least a half dozen space suits and helmets.

The place looked like an observatory. Yet the orientation was wrong. When the roof was opened, the telescope wouldn’t be pointed at deep space; it would be pointed toward earth.

Now Claudine saw Charley. She looked startled, then approached her.

“What are you doing here?”

“I heard you leave the dorm and wanted to see you set up the reactor.”

Claudine blinked once. “Henri gave you the door code?”

“Of course.”

Claudine seemed to accept that. She turned and gestured grandly. “What do you think?”

“Wow,” Charley Pine said, and meant it.

Charley walked to the control console and examined the presentations. Computer screens, track balls for maneuvering cursors, LED readouts, a few analog gauges for voltages…

What is the purpose of this room? What is that large piece of equipment under the plastic cover? Claudine knows, and she expects me to know. An optical telescope, a reactor to generate large amounts of electricity, a giant capacitor, and…? Is this an observatory? Or a weapons platform in high earth orbit?

“How long will it take to get the system operational?” Charley asked Claudine, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as possible.

“A week or so, I imagine. If we don’t have any unforeseen problems.”

“Aren’t there always unforeseen problems?” Charley turned so that she could see Courbet’s face.

“Let’s hope not. We tested the entire system extensively in the laboratory, worked out the bugs, then brought the components here one by one. The testing phase took three months.” Claudine smiled confidently. “It’ll function properly.”

Looking through the glass, Charley carefully examined the metal plates and hydraulic rams that formed the ceiling above the machinery. Then she glanced again at the space suits arranged on hangers against one wall. When the roof opened, this window would be the pressure barrier—hence the space suits. If the glass cracked or air leaked past it, the people in this compartment would need space suits to survive. The air lock in the passageway was designed to prevent a sudden depressurization of the entire lunar base.

Claudine bit her lip, then went over to supervise the technicians unpacking the reactor, which was easy to manhandle in the weak lunar gravity.

A laser? Could it be?

Charley tried desperately to remember everything she knew about lasers. The light beams were most effective at short distances. They were degraded by moisture in the atmosphere. Firing a beam through a cloud was impractical. The earth, at which this device seemed to be aimed, was swaddled in a heavy atmosphere laden with moisture; clouds obscured huge portions of the earth on a regular basis.

Claudine was glancing at her from time to time. Charley studied the control console, looking for any clue. And failed to find any.

The pressure door to the equipment bay was standing open, so she went through it, out under the dome.

The telescope was mounted on a conventional stand. The larger device was mounted on a massive support structure that sat atop a round titanium base at least twelve feet in diameter, which looked as if it could support a tremendous weight. But why? Even if the device were made of pure steel, it couldn’t weigh over a few hundred pounds here on the moon.

Obviously the engineer who designed it thought it would thrust downward against the lunar rock, and the base was designed to transfer the load, much like a bridge support.

A gun? To shoot a projectile at targets on earth?

She glanced around, looking for anything that might be ammo for such a gun—and saw Courbet walking toward her. The technicians who had unloaded the reactor were leaving. They disappeared through the air lock, taking the dolly with them.

“Is this base really strong enough?” Charley asked.

Faced with a technical question, Claudine found her confidence. “Oh, yes. Actually it is twice as strong as it needs to be. And the base is twice as large—the underlying rock may have a hidden fault.”

“Of course,” Charley said carelessly. Then it hit her. For every reaction there is an equal but opposite reaction. This thing was going to push hard against the rock that supported it. If it wasn’t a gun, it was something that affected the lunar gravitational field.

She reached for the plastic cover, which was merely draped over the device, and jerked it off. A system of gears sat above the base, apparently to aim the device. Above the gears were metal rings arranged around a cone, the largest at the base and the smallest at the tip. Heavy cables led to them.

It was an antigravity beam generator!

Egg Cantrell had publicized the antigravity technology from the saucer just two months ago, with misgivings. The weapons potential of the technology was obvious. Egg knew that every advance in human knowledge could be misused, yet he believed the possible benefits outweighed the risk. Risk-benefit decisions are part of life; they have been routinely made by man ever since cavemen weighed the benefits of eating cooked meat against the risk of getting burned.