Saucer

Chapter Nine

Like the million other Americans who happened to be watching television that August morning as they dressed or ate breakfast, General Bombing Joe De Laurio, U.S. Air Force chief of staff, stared in unbelieving amazement at the flying saucer zipping around on his television screen.

'Holy smokes,' he muttered through his toothbrush, which was still in his mouth.

When the camera zoomed in on the fighter chasing the saucer, he dropped the toothbrush. The quality of the picture was poor as the amateur Egyptian cameraman tried to zoom in and focus on fast-moving machines, but one glimpse of the telltale puffs of white smoke zipping back over the fighter's wing was more than enough for Bombing Joe — the fighter was shooting at the saucer. The general grabbed for the telephone.

'White House!' he roared at the operator when she came on. 'Get me the White House!'

The cameraman centered the saucer's exhaust flame in his viewfinder and managed to keep it there as the saucer went almost straight up, accelerating. The saucer got smaller and smaller until all that was visible against the heavens was the spot of light that was the flame from the rocket nozzles. Then the flame merged with the sun.

'Oh, my God!' roared Bombing Joe De Laurio and rushed for the uniform hanging in his closet.

The general was charging through his outer office on the Pentagon's E-wing when a junior staffer arrested his progress.

'General, you must take a moment to look at the television! A little town in Indiana — people there claim that a flying saucer was there this morning!'

Bombing Joe rocked with the punch. When he saw that video from Egypt, he was convinced. Now they're in Indiana? Was this an invasion?

'How many saucers?' he demanded.

'One saucer, sir. Two crewmen. Aliens. They wore gray, one-piece flight suits, ate a prodigious quantity of food…'

Bombing Joe stood speechless, rooted to the floor. Nothing in his thirty-six years in the Air Force had prepared him for this moment. He was trapped in a fevered nightmare, some weird, drug-addled Hollywood epic.

He pinched the back of his left hand. Yep, he was awake.

'The aliens paid for their meal with U.S. dollars,' the staffer said, pointing at a man talking to a reporter on the television screen.

'They what?'

'Yes, sir. U.S. dollars. A fifty-dollar bill that the owner of the diner says is counterfeit. Then they got in the saucer and flew it the hell out of there.'

The light began to glow for Bombing Joe.

'Where is that UFO team that we sent to the Sahara?' he roared. 'I want answers right now or I'm going to eat somebody's head for breakfast!'

Egg Cantrell came by his name honestly, Charley Pine concluded. His body, neck, and head formed a perfect ovoid shape, marred only by his short, stubby legs. He waddled when he walked and his fat jiggled. A permanent layer of perspiration was beaded on his upper lip and brow. Buried in his fleshy face were quick, intelligent eyes.

'How do, ma'am,' he said and gave a short, nervous bow.

'Well, Unc, what do you think?' Rip stepped back and gestured expansively at the saucer.

Egg Cantrell quivered with joy as he regarded the saucer. He touched it, caressed it, fondled it, stroked it.

'Amazing,' was all he could find to say.

Charley Pine grinned broadly and looked around the old army hangar with interest. She had slipped the saucer into the ramshackle wooden structure after Rip pushed the doors open. There was barely room for the saucer amid the junk that looked as if it were wearing the accumulated dust of centuries; old farm tractors, antique farming equipment, a Model A Ford, an Indian Chief motorcycle, and an Aeronca Champ were just some of the items in sight in this former Army Air Corps hangar, the only one still standing at what had once been a thriving World War II training base. Egg jackhammered the crumbling concrete on the runways years ago — now the runways were grass, perfect for little airplanes like Egg's Champ. Charley ran a hand along the Champ's prop as Rip told his uncle about the saucer.

When Rip had covered the high points, Egg remarked, 'You two have been on television, I think.'

'You mean Egypt? Yeah, that was us, getting water from the Nile to power this thing.'

'I mean L.A., St. Louis, Aswan, Egypt, and just now on CNN, some little burg in Indiana. They're going nuts in Indiana.'

'Are they now?' Rip's face looked almost angelic.

'I hope to shout,' said Egg Cantrell, his belly quivering. 'They had a genuine flying saucer right there in Upshur,

Indiana; dozens of folks saw it, three or four even got religion. One woman claims she served breakfast to two Martians in gray, one-piece flying suits. After they ate they paid with counterfeit money, left a three-dollar tip, strolled across the street like they were going to Wal-Mart, then blasted out of there like a bat outta hell.' 'Did they now?'

'The diner woman said they ate more food than any human could. Six eggs apiece, giant slabs of ham, a quart of milk each. When she said that ten minutes ago on the TV, I do declare, Rip, I thought of you.' 'I was mighty hungry, Uncle Egg.' 'I know, boy. You come by it honest. I spent my life in that condition.'

'Well, what do you think of the saucer?' 'Hell of a nice piece of machinery. God Almighty, it's nice. I just hope you and the lady here came by it legal.' 'Unc, I told you how we got it. Cross my heart. It was a stroke of pure luck that I saw the gleam where the rock had weathered. Honest sweat dug it out of that rock.' 'You think somebody'll be coming after it?' 'It's mighty valuable, all right.'

'Somebody or something, I should have said. It's like something from a dream… or a nightmare.'

'I don't figure whoever lost it originally will come back for it, but these days, who knows?' 'Never can tell,' Egg agreed.

'No one around here knows it's here,' Rip declared. 'We kept low the last forty or fifty miles, below radar coverage, right above the treetops, kept the rockets off. It was sorta tough finding this place in the rain, what with the clouds and all. If anyone saw us I doubt if they could figure out where we were going.'

'What do you say, young lady?' Egg asked.

'The Air Force will come looking before long. In a day or two, I think. Three at the most.'

'Uh-huh. Are you going to call 'em, tell 'em where to look?'

'Not just now. To the best of my knowledge, Rip is the lawful owner of the saucer.'

'Is he really, you think?' Egg asked shrewdly.

'I doubt it.'

'So do I, ma'am,' Egg said.

'Now see here, Uncle,' Rip said hotly, 'you're supposed to be on my side.'

'I am, I am,' Egg said. 'I know you didn't do anything immoral — I just think you have a legal problem.'

Rip set his feet and squared his shoulders. 'Possession is nine-tenths of the law, I always heard. I've got it and I intend to hang on to it. Whoever hopes to take it away is going to have to prove better title than mine.'

'Finders keepers, losers weepers,' Egg said thoughtfully. After another sideways appraisal of Charley Pine, he added, 'That'll have to do for now, I guess.'

Egg pointed toward the hatch hanging open under the saucer. 'Any way I can get up through that hole?'

'If you kinda suck yourself up, I reckon you can,' Rip replied, grinning. 'We got a little problem with the engines. They hiccup from time to time. Was hoping you could look at that.' With that Rip led the way under the saucer. Egg got down on his hands and knees to crawl after him.

'Uh, Mr. Cantrell. Mr. Egg. Before you go. Do you have someplace I could freshen up?'

'Why, I guess I'm forgetting my manners, Miss Pine. Go up to the house and help yourself. I'm a bachelor and the place is messy, but avail yourself of all the conveniences. Towels are in the closet.' 'Thank you, sir.'

The small house wasn't messy, of course. As Charley suspected, Egg Cantrell was a fastidious housekeeper. Everything had a place and everything was in it.

Charley Pine went straight to the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. With her flight suit in the washing machine, she retired to Egg's guest bedroom, a cozy nook with a television. On the walls were frames containing flint arrowheads, dozens of them, perhaps a hundred. Each arrowhead was neatly labeled.

Rain from a turbulent gray sky spattered on the windowpane. She got under the covers and surfed television channels.

On CNN she found what she was looking for. Yes, the network was showing the video from Egypt one more time. Then there were more interviews with the citizens of Upshur, Indiana. Charley looked at her watch. Lord, she and Rip had blasted out of there just two and a half hours ago and already the place was famous.

She sat in bed watching the citizens express their wonder and awe at the abilities of the saucer. Ordinary people who had seen an extraordinary thing. The adventure seemed to affect each of them in a slightly different way; some were thoughtful, others exuberant, some frightened, some angry or resentful.

One, the lady at the diner, Flo, was thankful:

'Of all the places on God's green earth they could have lit, they picked this one. I always thought Upshur was special, and now I know. I am so happy this happened.'

'Why?' the interviewer asked.

'That flying saucer gave us something besides ourselves to think about, reminded us that there's more to life than our little bean row.'

Charley flipped channels, found some government type explaining that flying saucers were figments of people's imaginations. 'There is no scientific proof whatsoever that flying saucers exist,' the scientist on television argued. 'The Air Force has been investigating sightings for fifty years and has come up with exactly nothing.'

'They found what they were ordered to find, buster,' Charley Pine growled and flipped the channel again.

More talking heads, offering opinions about what this 'rash' of saucer sightings might mean. One woman was plainly nervous. 'Aliens' might already be here, she explained.

Another scoffed, insisted that what was being reported were top-secret Air Force test vehicles. 'The government never tells us the truth,' she said. 'They know and won't tell.'

Charley flipped off the television finally and laid her head back on the pillow. She was tired but not yet sleepy. What had she gotten herself into? Would the Air Force demand that Lockheed Martin fire her? For flying the saucer? For not calling to tell them where she was? Would the publicity ultimately make it impossible for her to get a test-flying job anywhere?

She thought about Rip, who was down at the hangar with his Uncle Egg, two boys playing with a new and exotic toy. Rip hadn't a clue about the extent of the stir the saucer had caused… would cause.

Perhaps Rip was taking all this the right way. He didn't really care what other people thought. He didn't care about the talking heads on television or their carefully crafted opinions. Nor did he care a fig about the Air Force.

How did Australians get involved?

Maybe she should take a tip from Rip, ignore all of this.

She unfolded the diner place mat and read her notes.

The saucer flew very, very well across an amazing variety of flight regimes. That had been no accident, she well knew. The designers of that ship knew precisely what they were doing.

Staring at the notes, Charley Pine could once again feel the ship in her hands, feel the rudder pedals under her feet, feel the power of the rocket engines. She looked out the window with blind eyes, thinking about how it had been. With a blanket wrapped around her, she went looking for paper. In Egg's little office she found a notebook.

Back in bed she wrote quickly, with a sense of deep purpose, trying to capture all of it. Never in her life would she get another chance to fly such a unique machine. No two ways about that!

Finally her eyelids became heavy. She lay back on the pillow and slept.

'Oh, wow, Rip! This thing is something else!' Egg Cantrell marveled at the extraordinary engineering manifest in the saucer, the way things fit together, the tidy, neat solutions to problems.

Egg was wedged into the engineering spaces. When they had first come aboard, Rip had pulled the power knob out to the first notch, firing off the reactor. Amid the computer displays and cabin lights, Egg stood in awe. Rip secured the reactor before the men entered the engineering compartment.

Now, wedged between machines, Egg tapped on the walls, looked at each component, examining everything with his flashlight. He did so with a sense of curiosity and wonder.

'You say you put some muddy water in this thing?' Egg asked after a bit.

'Yeah. It was all we had.'

'Gotta be mud in this separator. Gotta be. Go get my little toolbox on my workbench, please.'

Rip did as requested.

Egg soon found that the wrenches didn't quite fit. Neither metric nor American wrenches worked. Worried that he might ruin a nut or two, he had to use adjustable wrenches and pliers.

'It's good to see you again, Rip. Missed you this summer.'

'Yeah,' said Rip. 'This old farm… ' Rip had been spending his summers with his Uncle Egg since he was twelve. Ever since his father died. 'The desert was a new adventure,' he told his uncle now as a partial apology.

'A man needs new adventures,' Egg admitted as he worked on the separator. 'Yes he does. Expands his horizons, lets him learn new things. I still missed you.'

Rip didn't reply, and Egg didn't expect him to. He knew Rip pretty well.

'What's the story on the woman?' 'No story. She was the test pilot the Air Force UFO team brought to the desert to look at this thing. She's a civilian, got off active duty two weeks ago. She crawled into the saucer when I was getting ready to fly outta there. People were shooting; I couldn't leave her.' 'Lucky for you she happened by.' 'I could fly this thing, Uncle Egg. Honest.' 'Be sorta messy if you happened to be wrong.' 'Flying's an instinct thing.' 'We have birds in our family tree?' 'I flew your Aeronca. Remember? You taught me how to fly. This saucer is sorta like the Aeronca, I think. Course it's a little faster and has some other complications, but I could figure it out. It'd come to me.'

Egg changed the subject. 'When I got out of bed this morning I never expected anything like this. A flying saucer! What a day this is! And the gal is something else. Everyone needs a nephew like you, Rip, who just might drop by. Every morning for a lot of years I'll wonder if you're coming by today.'

'Well, owning this saucer, I just might.' A warm glow suffused Rip as he contemplated the prospect of flying around the country in his own saucer, able to go when and where he chose, anywhere he chose… He rubbed the metal of the bulkhead beside him.

When he realized Egg was looking at him, Rip grinned.

'Come any time,' Egg said. 'And bring the woman. I like her.'

Rip flipped a hand. 'Charley will be gone soon. She isn't a girlfriend or anything like that, Egg.'

Egg got back to the separator. 'She sure looks healthy,' he said. 'Brainy, cute… '

'She's pushing thirty. She's too old for me.'

'She's not too old; you're too young.'

'Yeah. I really missed you this summer, Egg. All the romantic advice and opinions and trips to town for pizza.'

'How's your mom?'

'Oh, so-so, I guess. Haven't had a letter in a while. Maybe I ought to call her while I'm here.'

'Maybe you should.'

Egg finished taking the separator apart. He had a knack for things mechanical.

There was mud in the separator all right. 'There should be a plastic bag and some paper towels on the workbench.'

When they had the separator as clean as they could get it, Egg muttered, 'Didn't anybody on this planet make this thing.'

'You sure about that?'

'Yeah. I've never seen anything like it, and I keep up with all the latest. This thing is built with technology that's so damn up-to-date it hasn't been invented yet.'

'Who built the saucer, Egg?'

'People! Obviously. Take a look. This thing is sized for people our size, maybe a few inches smaller. Look at this twist grip I'm holding.' Rip eased into position to see. 'See this? It's designed to be twisted with a human hand. I'd bet money on it.'

'Tell you what, Egg. You get that separator back together and let me turn on the garden hose, fill this thing with water. We may have to get out of here in a hurry, if Charley is right.'

'I sorta think she is, Rip-boy. This is some piece of machinery — the Air Force is gonna be looking hard for it.' 'It's mine, Egg. Not theirs.'

'You told me that before. Go hook up the hose and turn on the water.'

When Rip got back, Egg was examining the computer that the Australian mechanic had partially disassembled. 'You didn't do this, did you?' Egg grunted. 'Heck no.'

Egg looked it over. After a few seconds, he whipped out a magnifying glass. 'I think I can get it back together,' he said after a bit. 'The fool was trying to get to the chip, but he didn't know what it looked like. This whole case is the chip.' He picked up the three pieces that formed the case. They were dangling, held only by some wires. 'That's the chip?'

'Yeah. Probably has billions and billions of transistors. If they are transistors, which I doubt.' Egg scrutinized the inside surface of the case with the glass.

'Are they even talking about stuff like this at your school?' Egg wanted to know. 'Uh-huh.'

Egg cradled the three pieces with both hands. 'What's the rule? The number of transistors industry can cram on a chip doubles every eighteen months?' 'That's it,' Rip affirmed. 'If we knew how many transistor like things are in this case, we could calculate how far ahead of us technically these creatures are.'

'Of course,' Rip said, 'the function may cease to be straightline after a while.'

'See this screen. It's a quarter inch thick and flexible.' The screen was also hanging by a wire. Egg twisted it in his hands, pulled it and kneaded it. 'Unbelievable.'

He laid the screen aside and began examining parts. Soon he laughed. 'Look at this headband. This must be the keyboard.'

'Naw,' Rip said, hunting through the parts for something he might recognize.

'Yes. My glory, this has gotta be it! This must be the way you talk to the computer.'

The headband was a collection of very fine wires, thousands of them, fashioned into a complete loop. The wires seemed to be held together with some flexible material, plastic perhaps.

It took Egg only about five minutes to reassemble the computer. 'Turn on the power.'

Rip pulled out the master power knob to the first detent, which fired off the reactor. Then he passed Egg the headband. Egg carefully placed it over his head.

'This isn't the smartest thing you ever did, Unc.'

'We're engaged in a scientific inquiry. If I freak out, get this thing off me.'

'What if — ?'

But Egg had already closed his eyes. He sat impassively.

Rip waited.

He could hear the water running into the fuel tank. The water was from a well, and the hose delivered only three or four gallons a minute, so it was going to take a while.

Now Egg was grinning. Widely. His eyes were open, his hands moving, reaching… Now they were still.

A variety of emotions registered on Egg's face: amazement, happiness, joy.

What was in that computer?

Rip moved his hand back and forth in front of Egg's face. His open eyes didn't track or blink.

Egg's breathing seemed okay. Rip sat watching Egg and listening to the running water and the silence. The silence was exquisite. Rain was pounding on the hangar's tin roof, but the interior of the saucer was quiet as a tomb.

If Professor Soldi was correct, the interior of the saucer had known no sound for a hundred and forty thousand years. God, that was a long, long time! Man became man, the African diaspora spread man all over the planet, the ice sheets came and went, people walked across the land bridge to America, the pyramids rose, Moses led his people from Egypt, Greece flourished, then Rome… The entire human story happened while this machine sat, just like this, silent under the sand. Rip shivered.

Egg's eyes came open. He took off the headband. His grin got wider and wider. 'Yes, yes, yes! This is the cat's nuts, man. Oh, Rip, it's fantastic¹.' 'What is?'

Egg offered the headband. 'Put it on. Follow the picture of the saucer. It's the maintenance manual for this ship… some sort of three-dimensional holograph. You can see everything: how the ship works, how each component functions, how to take it apart, how to repair it. It's so real you'll want to reach out and touch. I never in my life saw anything like it.'

He leaped from the seat and tossed the headband onto it. In seconds he was on his knees working on the compartment's forward bulkhead. A panel opened. Egg reached in and withdrew a package encased in a soft material. He held it out toward Rip.

'Look at this! It's a tool kit. Take a look! It's the tools to fix the machinery on this ship. And here are some more headbands — you wear one to access the computers.'

Rip placed the headband on his head. It was a tad small, but there was some give to it, so it was not uncomfortable.

The saucer was one of three objects before him. He approached them, looking… They were real'!

He jerked the headband off.

Egg broke into laughter. 'I told you! I told you!' He bent down, his face inches from his nephew. 'Try it again, Rip.'

Rip went toward the saucer, merely desired to go closer, and it moved toward him or he toward it — it was hard to say which. The saucer was whole, yet it wasn't. From several feet away the ship was transparent, allowing him to see every piece, every fastener, wire, valve, pipe, etc. And it was real, a three dimensional object with perspective and shadows and a tangible reality. Like Egg, he tried to touch.

The reactor, the water cracker, the antigravity system… Rip leaned closer to examine a computer. The closer he looked, the more he could see. He dove deeper and deeper into the chip in the main computer in front of the pilot, deeper and deeper until he could see the microscopic circuits.

When Rip Cantrell finally took off the headset, he was drained. It took him several seconds to reestablish where he was, whom he was with.

His Uncle Egg was sitting across from him, a smile playing over his lips. 'Amazing, eh?'

'Oh, Egg, I never dreamed… '

'Now you know how the Indians felt when they went aboard Columbus's ship.'

Rip sat stunned, replaying the experience in his mind.

'One thing,' Egg mused. 'One thing we know: Humans built this saucer.'

'But… We — I and the two men I work with — dug it out of sandstone, Egg. I breathed the dirt and dust and dug it out with these two hands. There's no way that was fake rock. That stone had been there for one hundred and forty thousand years, the archaeologist said.'

'This computer, the headband… ' Egg pointed. 'That machine reads our thoughts, tells us what we want to know. The machine is designed to communicate with our brains. With human brains. I can't explain it, but there it is.'

The president and his advisers were serious men (and one serious woman), engaged every day in the serious business of politics, i.e., dividing the pie in such a way as to create maximum advantage for themselves. They didn't smile much; on those rare occasions when they did it was at an enemy's discomfiture. They had a goodly number of enemies. Friends were blindly and intensely loyal to the president and his administration, enemies were everyone else. The great saucer scare left these serious people at a loss over what to do. Nothing in their experience quite fit this situation.

The saucer hullabaloo was perfect for television, a made-to-order media event that glued an extraordinary percentage of the populace to the tube, where they could be sold everything from automobiles to Zantac, brokerage services to suppositories. One of the things television wanted were ten-second sound bites from the serious people. Television reporters and camera crews lay in wait anywhere that an ambush of a serious person was even a remote possibility.

Yet even if the serious people were uncooperative, the insatiable appetite of the medium had to be filled somehow. Enterprising producers sent their minions after the God squad.

'How dare the networks air this trash,' one prominent divine raved on camera. 'This talk of flying saucers and aliens is all right for the movies, but it has no place in serious conversation.'

The president's advisers nodded in sympathy. What could they say on camera? In television everything is on the record. The camera captures every moment, good or bad. If, as seemed probable, the saucer scare turned out to be some kind of hoax, the serious ones would be covered in ignominy if they treated it seriously now. On the other hand, if buried under all this sensationalism was a real flying saucer filled with real aliens, the serious ones had to be out there in the arena ready to fight or shake hands. At least, they had to appear to be ready.

'How did we get into this fix?' the president's chief of staff, PJ. O'Reilly, demanded of Bombing Joe De Laurio. The serious people were very unhappy with the Air Force and Bombing Joe, whom they suspected was somehow responsible for this unholy mess.

Bombing Joe glowered at O'Reilly, who would blame the weatherman for a thunderstorm.

'This whole thing is very troubling,' the president said. 'I don't know what our options are.'

'Mr. President,' Bombing Joe began, 'the CIA tells me that Qaddafi may have our UFO team in custody, and — ' 'Don't try to blame this on Qaddafi,' O'Reilly snarled, interrupting.

'I was trying to say that — '

'I know high-tech when I see it. That thing' — O'Reilly pointed at the video from Egypt — 'sure as hell looks high-tech to me.'

'Who knows what it is?' Bombing Joe sneered. 'You ought to go to the movies more often. It's absolutely amazing what the special effects crowd can do with computers these days.'

The national security adviser picked up a wad of computer printouts of wire service stories on the St. Louis boom and the Indiana appearance and fluttered them. 'Twenty-seven sane people in Indiana swore they saw a flying saucer in broad daylight from a range of less than a hundred yards. Four of those twenty-seven swore they touched it! Special effects?'

Bombing Joe tried earnestly to explain: 'I'm telling you that nothing in anybody's inventory looks like that thing on television or flies like that. Sure, we have some black projects, but they are airplanes, for God's sake. You know that! I resent the implication that the Air Force has developed some magic machine without the knowledge of the government.'

'What if it's really a flying saucer?' the president asked. The president was a politician because he enjoyed being in front of a crowd. He wanted to be liked, yet he hated making decisions. 'From somewhere out there? Do you realize the implications? Technically advanced beings from another world? Would I have to meet them in the Rose Garden, surrender the nation?'

Just then Dr. Jim Bob Cantwell, the famous evangelist, appeared on CNN. 'The events we are witnessing today herald the coming of the Antichrist,' he intoned.

Furious, P.J. O'Reilly grabbed the television remote control and shut off Cantwell. 'Cantwell is a fool,' he growled.

Another serious person pointed out, 'A sizable percentage of the voters are churchgoers. They are worried about the implications of this saucer mania on their faith.'

'I don't do religion,' the president said firmly. 'Other than a few platitudes on holidays — '

Bombing Joe excused himself and walked from the room, looking for a telephone. He should have retired years ago and got seriously into golf; he knew that now.