Saucer: The Conquest (30 page)

“You saw him. Do you think he is still capable of leading us?” Julie asked bluntly.

Salmon considered carefully. He wasn’t sure where she was going with this and didn’t want to make a mistake. They needed the saucer, which had a limited carrying capacity. Regardless of how the cake was cut, many of the base personnel would have to be left behind. Henri Salmon didn’t want to be one of them.

“I don’t know,” he said after a pause.

“Oh, you know,” she said, “and you are hedging.” She moved closer, reached for his hand and placed it on her breast. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

“You are a beautiful woman,” Salmon admitted.

“The conquest of earth was my idea,” Julie said, holding his hand in place and staring into his eyes. “I thought Pierre was the man who could do it, but when major difficulties arose, he folded. You, I think, are made of sterner stuff.”

Salmon said nothing. He was very aware of the ripe firmness of her breast. The rumors weren’t true, he decided. She had not had surgical enhancement.

“If we take the saucer to earth, negotiate, then return, the antigravity beam generator will still be here. We can still force the world’s governments to yield. Honor, power, glory, wealth—it can all be ours. You and I—we can rule a united earth!”

Salmon felt the power of her personality. And he wanted off the moon. He swept her into his arms and kissed her.

• • •

Rip Cantrell and Charley Pine stared through the canopy of their saucer at the lunar base, which was about two miles away. The saucer was behind a ridge northwest of the base, with just the canopy protruding above the bare rock ledge. The only sign of man that they could see was the pile of rubble that had been the radio tower—and the tiny figure of an individual in a space suit standing near it. The sun reflecting off his silver space suit made him readily visible.

“So what do you think?” Rip asked.

“I dunno.”

“We are going to have to go in there after Egg.”

“I suppose.”

“Can you think of another way?”

“Make them send him out.”

“How?”

“That’s the problem,” she admitted, and inadvertently glanced upward. The other saucer had left an hour ago in a plume of rocket exhaust, on its way into orbit or back to earth. Or, perhaps, leaving the area so that it could reenter later and try to ambush her and Rip, one more time. She wished she knew which of the three possibilities was the fact.

Rip seemed to read her thoughts. “You must have hurt him badly,” he said.

“Umm.”

“Flying across the antimatter stream at point-blank range—something must have popped in that saucer. Telling the saucer to pull up and fire the rocket engines may have been Lalouette’s last conscious thought. He might be dead. The saucer might orbit the sun forever, or eventually fall into it.”

“I hope he’s on his way back to earth,” Charley Pine said, and meant it. She had liked Jean-Paul.

“I wish he’d crashed back there in that canyon,” Rip shot back. “Then we’d know.”

After thinking through the possibilities one more time, she said, “I think we should wait for a while.”

“He may return,” Rip mused. “An hour from now, a week, two weeks, whenever. He could be stalking us right now.”

“If Lalouette comes back when we’re out of this ship, he’ll destroy it.” Charley knew she could expect no mercy from the French pilot. “You and I and Egg will die here on the moon.”

“That’s right,” he said, and turned his head to look at her.

She met his eyes. “So how long do you want to wait before we go get Egg?”

C
HAPTER
11

After another half hour, the man standing beside the carcass of the radio tower disappeared from view. Rip and Charley decided he had gone back inside the base. Charley was in the pilot’s seat. She lifted the saucer, and they flew slowly, as low as they dared, toward the base. The sun was well down toward the horizon. In another forty-eight hours or so it would set and the two-week lunar night would begin.

They looked for the dome over the antigravity beam generator and didn’t see it. Finally they saw the hole, several hundred yards away. The dome was open.

“That’s my way in,” Rip said.

“And what do you want me to do?”

They were discussing it when they saw a knot of six people in space suits walk out of the shadow of the base air lock into the sun.

“There’s our reception committee.” They quickly lowered the saucer out of sight.

After a brief discussion, they donned their space suits, each helping the other. That’s when Charley remembered that Rip had never before worn a space suit. She made him finger every control and explained how everything worked.

“The outer shell is the protective cover, very hard to damage. But under it is the pressure suit, and it can be torn or ripped. The tiniest leak will kill you. Now here’s the dangerous part—a fall that won’t tear the outer shell may still damage the pressure suit.”

“Oh, that’s comforting.”

“If the pressure suit is damaged, there will never be any little Cantrells.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Remember the first time you and I crawled into this saucer and tried to fly it?”

“Sure.”

“This is not that risky.”

“I hate to tell you this, lady, but I’m older now, not as carefree and stupid as I was when I was young.” A whole year had passed since he found the saucer. “I don’t even buy lottery tickets these days.”

“Right.”

“Was that a Freudian thing, that mention of little Cantrells?”

“Well, I was thinking, maybe someday…”

He kissed her, gently and tenderly.

Charley found she had an eye that was leaking and swabbed at it, then clamped her helmet on her head.

With the helmets on and latched to the suits, they turned on the helmet radios. French sounded in their ears. Charley understood most of it. She touched her helmet to Rip’s and said, “That’s Julie. She’s outside.”

“What’s she saying?”

“She’s telling them to stand easy. We’ll be along.”

“I feel like a sausage in this thing,” Rip said.

“That’s good. When you don’t, you’re in big trouble.”

Rip put three hand grenades in the small belly pocket of his space suit. Getting the pins out with his gloves on would be difficult, but it could be done. There were two M-16 rifles. Charley loaded them both, chambered rounds and put the weapons on safe. She showed Rip how they worked, then asked, “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yes.”

They pulled on their gloves and zipped them to the sleeves of the suits. After each of them checked the other one last time, Charley told the saucer to extend its landing gear, then to land. It settled several feet and came to rest.

When all motion had stopped, she depressurized the ship. Air was pumped from the interior of the saucer into a pressure tank. Finally, when the interior of the saucer was at a near vacuum, Rip opened the belly hatch. He felt a tiny rush of air as the last of it escaped from the ship. He dropped though the open hatchway and stood in it.

Charley gave him a thumbs-up. He blew her a kiss, then closed the hatch behind him.

• • •

“Mr. President,” P.J. O’Reilly said, “we’ve got audio from the moon. Apparently they are outside the base in space suits and talking to one another.”

The president was still at the “secret, undisclosed location.” He brightened. “I thought we couldn’t hear anything from the moon.” The folks on earth had heard nothing from the moon since the radio tower there went down. And they didn’t know why.

“Space suit helmet transmissions are only a few watts. We can normally hear them only when they are picked up and rebroadcast by the base’s transmitters, which are apparently off the air. We’re getting these signals from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s hundred-meter telescope in Greenbank, West Virginia. The moon is above the horizon now, and they have the telescope aimed at the lunar base.”

“Let’s listen,” the president said.

O’Reilly picked up the phone. After a few words, he listened, nodded and punched the buttons so they could hear the audio on the speakerphone. Then he hung up the handset.

Voices speaking French filled the office.

“Get a translator,” the president said. “I want to know what’s going on up there.”

• • •

Rip Cantrell carefully walked away from the saucer. In the reduced lunar gravity the trick was keeping his balance, he decided. He had to work carefully at it. He was a hundred feet away from the saucer when it lifted off in a swirl of dust. He turned to look. He could see Charley’s helmeted head in the pilot’s seat. He waved and she waved back. After the saucer had moved off, he watched the dust settling. It sifted slowly down undisturbed by the slightest breeze.

He watched the saucer go around the base, pass over the remains of the radio tower and settle onto the lava bed in front of the main air lock.

Then he walked toward the gaping hole in the top of the cavern that held the antigravity beam generator.

He paused near the edge and approached it carefully. The cavern was lit—but he couldn’t see if there was anyone in it. Nor did he know if the beam generator was in use. Better find out, he thought. He stooped, picked up a pebble, and tossed it across the hole. It sailed across like a baseball thrown from the outfield. They’re not using it, he concluded. If they were, that little rock would have soared up out of sight, like a pebble caught in a torrent from a fire hose.

Now he needed to know if there was anyone in the control room. He laid the rifle down, got to his hands and knees and began crawling toward the edge.

• • •

The saucer came into view of the small crowd standing in front of the air lock from their right. It was low, only ten feet or so above the surface, and moved slowly, trailed by a cloud of dust.

They had been waiting for it, yet they were surprised when it appeared. “It’s not Lalouette!” someone shouted into his helmet microphone. “The saucer is too small.”

“Oui,” Julie agreed bitterly.

• • •

“They made it!” O’Reilly exclaimed triumphantly when he heard the translation. “Rip and Charley made it!”

“Umm,” said the president.

O’Reilly couldn’t sit still. He bounded from his chair and paced the small office. The president kept his gaze riveted on the speaker of the telephone, waiting.

• • •

Rip leaned his head over the edge of the hole. The floor of the cavern was at least twenty feet below. Right in the middle was the beam generator. Wow, it was big.

He felt for the hand grenades. They were there. He pulled the Velcro loose that held the pocket closed and reached for one.

French exploded in his earphones. At first he thought someone below had seen him; then he realized that the people outside in space suits had probably seen Charley.

He raised his head, just in time to see the saucer settling below his horizon.

No grenade! Dropping one on the beam generator wouldn’t get Egg back. Better stick with the plan.

He lowered his head, trying to see what was on the opposite side of the cavern. And did. It was rock.

More French assaulted his ears. They were certainly excited. They had to have the saucer if they ever expected to see trees and grass again in their lives. He had emphasized that point to Charley, who had merely nodded.

She had brains and guts—more than he did, he thought—so he let it go at that. She could handle it.

He backed up, stood carefully and hopped around the edge of the hole ninety degrees, then got down on his hands and knees and crawled in for another look.

This time he saw the glass panels and the control console beyond. And there was no one there!

Rip moved and took another look. Finally he was satisfied that he had seen the entire layout and the cavern and control room were indeed empty.

He went back and picked up the rifle, checking that the safety was on.

Hoo boy.

The gravity was only one-sixth as strong as earth’s. Charley had told him that. So a twenty-foot fall would be equivalent to a three-and-a-half-foot drop. Heck, it’ll be like jumping off a picnic table. Only he was wearing this zoot suit, and if it tore—Well, hell, nobody lives forever.

Standing erect, holding the rifle in both hands, Rip shuffled to the edge of the hole, took a deep breath and jumped.

• • •

Charley Pine brought the saucer into a hover fifty feet beyond the six people standing in front of the base air lock. She pointed the saucer right at the air lock door.

One of the figures was rotund, wearing a space suit that looked to be under severe stress around the middle. Egg! There was a person immediately beside him on the right and left. Both held what appeared to be pistols in their hands.

Charley reached up to her helmet and keyed the mike.

“Is that you, Uncle Egg?” she asked in English.

The heavyset figure reached for his helmet. “It’s me, Charley.”

“Ah, Mademoiselle Pine, welcome back to the moon.” That was a feminine voice in French. Julie Artois.

“English, please,” Charley said.

“We must talk, Ms. Pine,” Julie said, shifting languages.

“You people stay right where you are. Don’t move.”

She looked at her watch. She wanted to give Rip at least fifteen minutes to get inside before she landed. She looked carefully around, at the parked forklift for off-loading spaceplanes, at the small lunar ATV, at the rocks behind, anywhere that might conceal a man. And saw no one.

Which didn’t mean no one was there.

• • •

Rip fell when he hit the cavern floor. He had tried to catch himself by bending his knees, but he misjudged it and bounced in slow motion. Then he toppled sideways and was unable to right himself. He landed the second time on his shoulder, bounced again and this time used a hand to cushion the impact. He managed to hang on to the rifle. His motion was heavily restricted by the pressure the suit put on his limbs. He struggled to stand erect, then stood looking into the control room.

It was empty of people, thank heavens! Any semidangerous villain who witnessed his ignominious arrival would have died laughing.