Saucer: The Conquest (23 page)

Deeper it went, down into the darkness, down toward the waiting atmosphere that enshrouded the massive planet.

Finally, far behind and below the speeding saucer the exhaust plume twinkled out, and there was nothing more to see.

“I hope they’re dead before they hit the atmosphere,” Rip said softly.

“Yes,” she said, thinking of Marcel, with the black eyes and the shy smile. “If God is merciful.”

C
HAPTER
7

Jack Hood was a farmer in Kent, England, only a few miles from the white cliffs of Dover. It was after midnight when his wife awakened him. “There’s something out there, Jack. Listen to the cows.”

Hood blinked himself awake and listened hard. The cattle were bawling loudly. Hood glanced at the bedside clock: It was at least an hour before dawn.

“I’d better go check,” he said, and rolled out of bed.

He had a gnarled shillelagh standing in the corner, and after he dressed and stomped into his Wellingtons, he reached for it, just in case. He made his way to the front door of the house without turning on any lights and went out.

It had rained last evening, so the earth was pungent and sweet. During the night the wind had moved out the clouds and now the sky was clear, ablaze with stars, with the moon low in the west. Standing on the porch in the moonlight, Jack Hood remembered the flashlight in the kitchen and went back for it.

The moon gave enough light that he didn’t need the flashlight to find his way to the barn. Last night Hood and his wife had watched all the latest news from capitals around the world on the telly and heard the demands of the man in the moon, so as he walked he flashed Pierre the finger.

The cattle stopped bawling when they sensed his presence, yet still they milled about, looking toward the pond. Actually the pond was a small lake, almost two acres in size.

Hood let himself through the gate and walked toward the water. He flipped on the flashlight and swept it around the shore. Nothing out of the ordinary here. A few bushes, lots of mud churned up by cattle, here and there a small tree.

“Out here,” a voice called.

Elmer turned the flashlight toward the center of the pond—and saw a man standing there. In the pond. In only to his ankles. What the—?

“Hope you don’t mind treating us to a fill-up,” the man called. He had an American accent, which Jack Hood recognized from the movies. “We ran out of water and missed North America. We were skipping and hopping and hoping, and this is where we wound up.”

Hood went down right to the water’s edge. Now he could see that there was a shape, something dark, mounding up out of the water. Aha, the man was standing on something!

“Name’s Rip. Bet we woke you up, huh?”

Jack Hood didn’t know what to say. He simply stood and stared.

Now the man bent over and rapped on the thing he was standing on. It rose slowly and gently out of the water. The thing was a saucer! A bloody flying saucer!

It was big! Ohmigosh, it was big, maybe sixty or seventy feet in diameter. As it came completely out of the water, the water level in the pond dropped, perhaps as much as a foot. The saucer moved gently over the pasture with the man still standing on its back. Its legs snapped down, and it settled onto the grass.

The man jumped down and strolled over. He was in his early twenties, clean-cut and lean. He reached for the flashlight and turned it away from his face, then grasped Hood’s hand.

“Rip Cantrell. Glad to meet you.”

“Righto,” Jack managed.

“Have a good night,” Rip said, and turned back to the saucer. He went under it and disappeared into the belly.

Seconds later it lifted and the gear retracted.

It moved out over the pond, accelerating, then a small flame burst from a series of rocket nozzles on the trailing edge.

When the saucer was perhaps two miles away, traveling at several hundred knots, the exhaust became intense and all the noise on God’s green earth washed over Jack Hood. The fireball rose almost straight up and kept going and going, shrinking to a pinpoint as it drifted toward the east. Finally it disappeared among the stars.

• • •

The disaster that had claimed the three French spaceplanes was the topic of considerable conversation between Mission Control in France and Pierre Artois on the moon. Newton Chadwick listened on the battery-operated encoded radio in the Roswell saucer and passed on what he heard to his two colleagues. All of the conversation was in French and unintelligible to Egg Cantrell. From Chadwick’s reaction, he could tell that the news was bad.

When the radio had finally fallen silent, Chadwick and his colleagues discussed what they had heard for half an hour, and finally Chadwick shared what he had learned with Egg.

“A disaster. The orbital refueling tank exploded when the second of the two ships bound for the moon was refueling. The explosion was actually seen over Japan in the hours before dawn. The tank and that ship were destroyed. The crew of the tanker, which had carried the fuel aloft, thought they saw another ship in the vicinity, but they couldn’t be sure. It was black and saucer-shaped. They immediately fired their engines for a reentry, and talked to Mission Control before they entered the atmosphere and lost radio contact. That ship crashed somewhere in the Pacific, Mission Control believes.”

He sighed. “No one knows what happened to the third ship. There were several garbled radio transmissions, which the agency is studying, trying to decipher. An oil tanker in the western Pacific reported a large object—they thought it was a meteor—penetrating the atmosphere at a steep angle and burning up a few minutes before dawn.”

“Saucer-shaped?”

“A saucer!” Chadwick made a face. “The American news media reports that the saucer housed in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington was stolen in midmorning, several hours before the disaster aloft. An extraordinary coincidence that must somehow be explained.”

“Stolen?” Egg said, his disbelief evident in his voice.

“Of course not!” Chadwick replied acidly. “The American government obviously sent that saucer aloft to attack the spaceplanes while they were still in earth orbit. What kind of weapon the saucer used is unknown.” He stared into Egg’s eyes. “Is there a weapon on this saucer?”

Egg blinked and managed to look surprised. There was the antiproton beam on the saucer from the Sahara, of course, but— Naw! Certainly not! No one knew of it except Rip and Charley. No one in the government—

“Don’t be absurd,” Egg said sharply. “Do you really think the government converted this saucer to a weapons platform? If they did, where is it?” He made a show of looking around the compartment. “This thing has been sitting in an abandoned hangar in Nevada for how many years?”

Chadwick was thinking—Egg could see that. Obviously he hadn’t learned of the antiproton beam in his exploration of this saucer’s computer or he wouldn’t even have asked the question. In fact, Egg had only discovered its existence from studying the schematics. Chadwick wasn’t an engineer; he just wanted to get rich and live forever.

“How could the American government install a space weapon on a museum artifact in a few days?” Egg asked. “Do you think they bolted it onto the belly? Or put it inside here and cut a porthole in the leading edge to shoot through?”

“I think you know something you aren’t telling me,” Chadwick said, still gazing intently at Egg’s face.

“Think what you please,” Egg grunted, and floated toward the toilet facility.

As soon as he had the door closed he put his hands on his face, trying to compose himself.

He didn’t know if this saucer had a weapon on it—he hadn’t asked the computer. He wondered if Chadwick would. All he had to do was put on the headband and ask. If he knew enough to ask. In his explorations of the computer’s memory, Egg had spent months wandering along, poking here and there, completely on his own, before one day the thought occurred to him to ask the computer for the information he wanted. Then data spewed forth like an Oklahoma gusher.

What if this saucer did have an antimatter weapon of some sort and Chadwick learned of it? So what? They were on their way to the moon.

Given a moment to think about it, Egg put two and two together. If Rip’s saucer had indeed flown again, Rip and Charley Pine were in it.

Were they still alive? Were they safe?

If anything happened to them…

When he had himself completely under control, Egg opened the door and floated out into the main compartment. Chadwick had strapped himself to the pilot’s seat and was wearing the headband.

• • •

The news of the loss of the spaceplanes hit Pierre hard. He had bet his quest—indeed, his life and Julie’s life— on the fact that his friends could get control of the French spaceport and continue to fly the spaceplanes to and from the earth. He was sure the French government would fold—he knew most of the ministers personally. They weren’t gamblers, they were politicians. They read the papers, were acutely attuned to the public mood and strove mightily to stay in front of the parade so they would appear to be leading. If the public could be persuaded, the politicians would go along, and Pierre knew how to sway the French public. Honor, glory, for the good of all mankind, which would be united under a French banner. The appeal would be irresistible.

And, mon Dieu! It worked.

Except for that Charley Pine. Stealing the spaceplane from the moon, stranding them.

He wondered if she had flown the saucer that attacked the three spaceplanes in orbit. His gut told him yes. She would do that.

It would take at least two years to build another spaceplane and test it, even on an expedited schedule. Then another fuel tank would have to be placed in earth orbit and filled with fuel before a spaceplane could make a trip to the moon filled with supplies.

The lunar base was not self-sustaining, as he well knew. Oh, there was indeed water, but the hydroponic gardens would not sustain the forty-two people who were here. Make that forty-six, for four more were coming on Chadwick’s saucer. Nor were the complex carbon-based compounds being created in the lab yet edible.

Somehow, some way, Chadwick’s saucer had to be used to carry critical supplies back and forth across the chasm.

He was musing thus when Julie came into the com center. He told her of the disaster to the spaceplanes. She took the bad news well, he thought, although obviously it was a blow. They discussed how Chadwick’s saucer would have to be used.

“Even with the saucer, it will be difficult to sustain forty-six people,” she remarked distractedly.

Pierre nodded. “We will send as many as possible back to earth on the saucer.”

“Yes. We must lower the number somehow.”

The radio crackled to life. It was Mission Control reporting that the French space facilities were under attack. “Hangars are exploding, the fuel dump just detonated—” He was cut off in midsentence.

“The Americans,” Pierre said heatedly.

“Or the British,”Julie said. “We’ll give them a taste of their own medicine. They want war, and they shall have it! And I’m going to enjoy pulling the trigger!”

• • •

It was still dark in Washington when Charley Pine drifted the stolen saucer to a stop ten feet in the air outside a large hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. One of the huge doors began opening, revealing a brilliantly lit interior and dozens of people. The saucer slipped through the open door. Inside, the gear snapped down; then the ship settled to the shiny, reflective white concrete beside Air Force One, a huge Boeing 747 that dwarfed saucer and people. Behind the spaceship, the door was already closing.

Rip and Charley dropped through the open hatch. The first person they saw was the president of the United States. He walked over with a hand out.

He pronounced their names as he shook their hands, but didn’t say his own. After all, Rip thought, any American who didn’t know the name of the president was in danger of being involuntarily committed.

Charley said, “Hi,” to the president, then asked, “Where’s the ladies?”

Surprised, the president looked around for a sign. One of his aides pointed, and Charley headed that way, leaving Rip and the president standing in front of the saucer.

“She’s had a rough night,” Rip explained. “She knew the spaceplane crews, trained with them in France.”

“Sure,” said the president.

“Sorry about smashing up the window over at the Air and Space. I’ll pay for the damage. We didn’t have time to get permission,” he finished lamely.

The president’s eyebrows rose. “The director told one of my staff that he figured it would cost ten million to repair the side of that building.”

“We’ve been doing okay licensing the propulsion technology. When I get back to Missouri, I’ll write the museum a check.”

“I’ve never been inside your saucer,” the president said. “How about a tour?”

Once inside, the president climbed into the pilot’s seat and looked at the blank computer presentations. Rip pulled out the power knob to the first detent, and the presentations came vividly to life. After Rip’s cursory explanation, the president said, “Tell me about the spaceplanes.”

So Rip told it, about going into orbit, calling Space Command, doing a huge loop and dropping down onto them, blowing up the refueling tank with the spaceplane attached…

When Rip ran dry, the president said, “One spaceplane blew up with the fuel tank, one burned up in the atmosphere, the third came down in the Pacific. The survivors were picked up by a freighter. One crewman dead, four injured. The fourth ship, which Ms. Pine flew, is parked on the Bonneville Salt Flats under armed guard.”

“Guess that’s the inventory.”

“Then there is the saucer that we kept in Area Fifty-one. Top secret and all that. It was stolen and is on its way to the moon, presumably under the command of Artois’ colleagues.”

“With my uncle Egg flying it.”

“Space Command said that you believe this saucer can make that trip.”

“Yessir. If we put bladder tanks here in the cabin, plumb them into the water system, we can increase our fuel capacity by two hundred percent. Charley and I figure that will be enough to get us there and back.”