Saucer

Chapter Ten

It was early evening when Rip and Egg Cantrell climbed the gentle grade to the small house nestled in the trees. Charley Pine was wearing her gray flight suit, now clean, and pacing back and forth in front of the television.

Both the men looked tired, she thought. 'The water cracker was full of mud,' Rip told her. 'Egg cleaned it out. We're ready to go.'

'Go where?'

'I don't know,' Rip said crossly. 'Somewhere that the Air Force and Qaddafi and those Aussie nuts can't find us.' The injustice of the pursuit bothered him. The saucer was his.

Charley gestured toward the television. 'Sit down, you two. Watch some of this. It's a media meltdown. Every channel has flying saucers continuously or is offering instant updates for breaking news.'

They sat. CNN was running the video of the saucer lifting off from the shore of Lake Nasser one more time. 'This has been on every channel on earth ten dozen times today,' Charley explained. 'The only saving grace is that the tape starts with the saucer lifting off, not with Rip and me pouring water into it or climbing aboard.'

'Humpf.'

'The West Coast… St Louis… Upshur, Indiana… the press has done it up brown. They've interviewed everyone who might have a pebble to contribute. Just for balance, they've also interviewed every UFO nutcase in the country who is willing to say something outrageous.'

She flipped through the channels to give them a taste of it.

Five minutes was enough. 'Turn it off,' Rip said. 'Let's go get something to eat. I'm starved.'

As Charley reached for the clicker, the talking head mentioned Clarksville, Missouri. Egg held up his hand. 'Wait,' he said. 'Clarksville is just east of here.'

A farmer appeared. 'I saw a saucer this morning, so I did,' he announced solemnly. 'Right over the treetops, flying along quiet as a prayer. Round it was, sorta dark, black-like in the mist and rain, sinister as all get-out. I was on the tractor, going down to plow the winter-wheat field, when it caught my eye…

'Wouldn't be talking about it now, you understand, but I called my minister. He said it was my Christian duty to tell what I know so the government can take steps, do what has to be done to protect us from them.''Them?' Egg asked.

'Them,' Charley said firmly and turned off the television. 'The hunters are close, Rip. Just a few miles from here. They'll be here soon.'

Egg swiveled to examine her face. 'The government is looking for the saucer?'

'Absolutely. Satellites photographed the saucer in the Sahara. My UFO team was sent to investigate.' She wasn't about to mention the hypersonic reconnaissance plane, the very existence of which was a top secret. 'The other members of the team were there when Rip and I flew it out. As soon as the U.S. government knows who we are, they'll find out where our parents live, where we grew up. They'll look for us by talking to all those people, checking every place we might be.'

'You're speculating,' Rip said, his face ominous.

'Bet on it, Rip,' Egg replied, not in the mood for argument. 'Go on, Ms. Pine. Tell us all of it.'

'The only reason the FBI isn't knocking on your door right now is that the Libyans probably are holding Rip's colleagues and mine — and the Aussies — incommunicado. As soon as the Air Force learns our identities from the UFO team, the FBI will be called in to find us.'

'The FBI will try to hold on to the information,' Egg mused. 'They won't want to get trampled by reporters.' 'It'll get out anyway,' Rip said, rubbing his chin. 'Of course it will,' Charley said. 'Someone will leak it or one of our relatives will talk to a friend, who will talk to a reporter or talk to someone who will. This is too hot. The press will find out. The FBI will be trying to stay a jump ahead.'

'How long do we have?' Rip asked. 'However long the Libyans give us. As soon as they release our crowd, all of them will dive for a phone. I think we'll know when it happens because Professor Soldi has to get on television as fast as he can. If he doesn't get the story out, the Air Force will scarf the saucer when they find it, and neither he nor you nor anyone else will ever see it again. It'll go straight to Area Fifty-one; no one in government will ever admit that it exists. Soldi's no fool. He knows what is at stake.'

'It sounds as if you have a little time,' Egg said to Rip. 'Uncle Egg,' said Charley Pine, 'people are out there looking this very minute. Space Command tracked the saucer as it came into the atmosphere. The Air Force will assume the object they saw on radar was the saucer or a meteor. They will use every law enforcement resource available to find where the thing came down: state police, county mounties, National Guard, everybody. Those people are out there right now beating the bushes, looking for little green men. Some of that has been on television.

There's an element of public hysteria in all this that television and government are both pandering to. The politicians get on camera and ask that everyone remain calm. It's ludicrous.'

'So just what is at stake, Ms. Pine?' Egg asked.

'You've seen the saucer,' Charley Pine shot back. 'You tell me.'

'I can cook here or we can go to town,' Egg told his guests. 'Town is twenty miles down the road.'

'I vote for town,' Rip said. 'I've been three months in the desert. I want a decent meal, and Charley and I need to buy some clothes.'

'Are you insulting my cooking?' Egg asked hotly, which made Rip laugh.

'Can Air Traffic Control see the saucer on their radar?' Rip asked Charley as they rode down the two-lane asphalt in Egg's pickup.

'Only if they are looking for it. Their radars are set up to receive coded signals from aircraft transponders, not pick up skin paints.'

'Wouldn't the saucer's shape be hard to see?'

'The shape of the top and bottom would give it some stealth characteristics,' she said after a moment's thought, 'but the curved leading edge will glint, make a return on a screen, if there is a radar close enough and properly tuned to pick it up.'

'So what are our chances of, say, flying to Denver tonight, making an appearance with the saucer, then sneaking back here?'

'Are you serious?' she asked.

'If we can make these people look in Colorado, we've got another day or two we can stay with Egg.'

'Why do you want to stay here?'

'Speaking just for myself,' Rip replied, 'I'd like a decent night's sleep and a couple of good meals. And we need to do some figuring about what happens next.'

'What does happen next?'

'Every day you hang out with me is another day deeper in trouble for you. Have you thought about it?'

'Yes,' Charley Pine admitted.

'And?'

'My troubles are mine. I'll handle them.'

Rip Cantrell shrugged. 'Okay, lady. You being an older woman and all, I guess I have to live with that. But back to my question, can we sneak the saucer out of here without blowing the eardrums out of every hick within fifty miles?'

'Let's talk a bit more about Denver. The television people are talking about an invasion of saucers. Plural. They've got the American public looking for a swarm of saucers, an aerial armada.'

'The more saucers they think there are, the less chance they have of finding just one.'

'Denver?'

'Denver.'

'If we left after dark,' Charley mused, 'rode the antigravity rings for a while before we lit the rockets… '

'If we used the rockets sparingly to get to altitude, maybe the ship would sound like a low-flying jet,' Rip suggested hopefully.

'It might work,' Charley mused. 'Or it might not.'

'Maybe the best thing to do is leave it right where it is,' Egg said.

A state police car passed the pickup going the other way. All three of them watched the car go by.

'So what are you going to do with the saucer, Rip?' Egg asked when the police car was out of sight.

'I don't know, Unc.' Rip's voice reflected his misery. 'Honest, I don't know what the right thing is. Giving it to the Air Force doesn't have much appeal.'

'Ms. Pine, what do you think?' Egg asked, his eyes on the road.

'Rip has to make a decision he can live with,' Charley replied.

'That's a cop-out,' Rip said and sighed. 'Maybe you ought to steal the damned thing and fly it to Area Fifty-One.'

'Maybe I should,' Charley said lightly.

'What is this?' Rip asked the waitress at the cafe.

The woman looked at him as if he were stupid. 'It's what you ordered: banana cream pie.'

'I didn't want a piece. I wanted the whole pie.'

She stared at him for a moment. Then her eyes narrowed. 'I remember you. You were here last summer.'

'That's right. Would you bring the rest of the pie, please?'

The waitress looked at Charley and Egg with suspicion, then marched for the kitchen. In a moment she returned. The heads of the rest of the kitchen staff were visible behind her, peeking through the door. She put the pie in front of Rip with a flourish. 'Enjoy,' she ordered and marched away.

As Rip ate, Egg asked, 'Why do you want to go to Denver tonight, Rip?'

'You want a ride, don't you?'

'Well, yeah. Who wouldn't? But I don't want to get you guys in trouble giving me one.'

'No trouble,' Rip said between bites.

'What do you think, Ms. Pine?' Egg asked.

'Someone is liable to see us coming or going from your place.'

Rip nodded. 'Life's a risk.'

'Being around you, it certainly is.'

'Hey! I don't know how this saucer adventure is going to turn out. While we have it, let's enjoy it. Let's take Egg for a ride. Twenty years from now he and I can sit in front of his hangar talking about how great it was.' 'Makes sense to me,' Egg said.

'Try this tonight,' Rip said, handing Charley a headband. He had already plugged it into the computer, which presented the main display in front of the pilot. The reactor was on, so the ship had power. 'Egg figured out the computers this afternoon. Put it on, try it out before we light out of here.'

'You've done this yourself?' Charley asked, checking the expression on his face. She was sitting in the pilot's seat of the saucer with the reactor on, waiting for things to warm up. Egg was standing on her left and Rip on her right.

'Oh, yeah,' Rip assured her. 'Nothin' to it.'

She looked at Egg. 'Why the headband?'

'Near as we can determine,' Egg explained, 'the computer uses the headband to determine what you want to know, then gives you that information. You will have a few choices to make — just move toward the icon or selection you want.'

'Will I still be able to fly?'

'We think so,' Egg replied, nodding thoughtfully.

'Are you suicidal?'

'Only on Mondays. That's the short answer. The long answer is, the computer that the Aussies disassembled allows you to see things — you step into the computer's world. When I tried the primary flight computer this afternoon, it seemed to give the pilot displays on the screen and project graphics on the canopy glass. In other words, the pilot stays — how do I say it? — here. The pilot stays here.'

She looked at Rip. 'You and your uncle spent the afternoon on a psychedelic computer trip?

'Not the whole afternoon,' Rip protested. 'And it was pretty cool.'

Charley pulled on the headband and arranged her hair around it. She jerked rigidly as the computer screen came alive.

'Takes a little getting used to,' Rip added, but Charley Pine gave no indication that she had heard. Her gaze went around the cockpit, taking in everything. Once she reached out and touched the gear lever, which was of course in the down position.

'Can you hear me?' Rip asked loudly.

'Yes,' she said finally, after several seconds, then held up her hand for silence so that she could concentrate.

Graphics flashed on the computer screen in the middle of the instrument panel, so quickly they were difficult to follow. It comes and goes as quickly as she thinks, Rip thought. He was watching the screen displays with only a passing interest when the realization struck him that he was looking into Charley's mind. He was watching her think.

A map appeared on the pilot's main display and, instantly, at the speed of thought, resolved itself into the farm, trees, woodlots, the nearby rivers, with a pathway leading away. He could see everything in three dimensions, so clearly that he was tempted to try to reach out and touch. The pathway was long and narrow, ribbon like, resting almost on the treetops. It ran for several hundred miles southwest, almost into Kansas, before it curled up away from the earth, high into the atmosphere.

Now Charley lifted the collective with her left hand, fed in gentle forward stick with her right. The saucer rose a few feet above the ground and drifted forward out of the hangar.

'You want me to close the door or — ' Rip began, but the saucer didn't stop. She was following that thin pathway up to the treetops and then with the contours of the land southwestward. The rocket engines remained silent. That, Rip reflected, had been the plan. Get well away from the farm before using the rockets, which could be heard for miles. The rain and clouds of this warm front should prevent most people from actually seeing the saucer.

Rip looked at Egg. 'Maybe we oughta sit down and strap in,' Rip said as the saucer accelerated to perhaps a hundred knots using only the antigravity rings.

When he was strapped in, Rip looked up at Charley. She had her hands in her lap and was intently watching the computer screen. The saucer dipped and danced as it followed the contours of the land.

She must have figured out the autopilot, Rip thought, then realized that the computer was the autopilot.

A light spot remained on the bulkhead where he and Egg had removed the maintenance computer. The faint outline of it was just visible if you knew what you were looking for. He hadn't told Charley about that machine, and he felt vaguely guilty now. The truth of the matter was that he didn't trust her completely. She was Air Force, she might leave him stranded God knows where, she might steal the saucer…

Man, she could fly this thing; you had to admit that.

She could fly like a bird. Or an angel.

Rip was half asleep an hour later when he felt the rocket engines ignite. The G pressed gently at him, perhaps a quarter G of acceleration. Charley must be following that pathway into the sky. Egg was standing up there beside her, taking it all in.

Rip smiled and fell asleep listening to the moan of the rockets.

'Rip, wake up!'

Charley was calling his name, over and over. He unfastened his seat belt and pulled himself up by her chair.

She had the engines running at a low-power setting. The saucer seemed to be in level flight.

'We're about twenty-five miles high, I think,' she said and pointed behind them.

Rip looked. He could see something. Red and white lights very close together, coming closer. At this altitude? It couldn't be a plane. Or could it?

'What is it?'

'A hypersonic aircraft. Air Force.'

'A what?'

'A hypersonic spy plane. It's the replacement for the SR-71. Cruises at Mach five at these altitudes.'

The spy plane was closing quickly.

'Does he see us on radar?' Egg asked. He too was hanging onto the pilot's seat, looking aft.

'He must,' Charley said. 'Hang on.' She heeled the ship over in a turn, began pulling back stick, added a bit of juice to the rocket motors. The G shoved all of them toward the floor. Egg grabbed onto the pilot's seat and held on with all his strength.

The hypersonic aircraft tried to turn with the saucer but couldn't.

'How fast are we going?' Egg asked plaintively.

'About Mach five.'

'I never even heard of a hypersonic airplane,' Rip told her.

'It's highly classified.'

'So now you've got to kill us?'

'Don't tempt me, Rip.' Charley tightened the turn and twisted the throttle to the stop. The saucer leaped forward, the G increasing ferociously. Egg lost his grip and tumbled aft.

In seconds the lights of the spy plane faded behind them. After a minute or two Charley killed the rocket motors and let the nose drop toward thicker air.

The lower atmosphere was clear and the bright moon seemed to wash out the stars. All of Denver and the front range of the Rockies were spread beneath them as the saucer came thundering down from altitude. The visibility was unlimited, in excess of a hundred miles, so the lights of Colorado Springs, Denver, Boulder, Loveland, even Fort Collins, glittered in the darkness like jewels. The peaks of the Rockies formed a jagged backdrop to the scene. Some of the peaks still sported a bit of snow, which appeared luminescent in the moon's dim light.

'We're about fifty miles out,' Charley murmured. I'll have to make some turns to bleed off some of this airspeed.'

Uncle Egg muttered something that Rip didn't catch. He had managed to get his bulk erect and now was holding on tightly.

'What was that spy plane doing up there, anyway?' Rip asked Charley.

'Looking for us.'

'Well, now he's got something to tell the folks at Area Fifty-one, huh.'

'Yep.'

'Anything else you want to tell me about?' Rip demanded.

'What are you talking about?'

'I'm talking about spy planes looking for us, spy planes that you seem to know all about.'

'Oh, shut up,' Charley said.

'So what are we? Criminals?'

'They think so. Of course they are looking. They want this saucer.'

Rip wanted to enjoy this moment, not think about the future. Charley kept pushing the outside world at him, and he resented it.

'So what do you want to do, Rip?' Charley asked, nodding toward the city dead ahead. It was then that Rip realized that the saucer was on autopilot: Charley had her hands near the controls, not on them.

'I dunno exactly. Get down low, get ourselves seen, then boogie. What do you think?'

'As long as we stay away from the airport, I don't care.'

'Let's not cause any heart attacks,' Egg admonished.

'Oh, we won't,' Rip assured him. 'No one will feel threatened. This is just good clean fun.'

'Is that all the saucer is to you, Rip?' Charley Pine asked. 'Good clean fun?'

'It's not like we're married or something, Charley. I'm not even sure I like you that much.'

'Just asked,' Charley said, never taking her eyes off the scene before her. The pathway on the computer screen was a ribbon stretching forward and downward, leading her in.

The Los Angeles Dodgers and the Colorado Rockies were tied, 2–2, in the bottom of the eleventh inning at Coors Field on that pleasant August evening. Roughly thirty thousand people remained in the stands watching a Coors Field rarity, a pitching duel.

Wally Greenberg was in the upper deck behind third base with his wife and two teenage sons. The boys were tired and bored and whispering dirty comments to each other about a voluptuous girl three rows down and ten seats left. His wife had been ready to leave for three innings, but Wally wanted to see the 'whole game.' He didn't get to come see the Rockies very often — the family couldn't afford it — and he wanted his money's worth. He cuffed the boys, growled at them, and tried to ignore his wife's resigned torpor.

For some reason he looked away from the batter toward the Scoreboard behind center field. That was when he saw the saucer, a lenticular shape just a bit lighter than the dark beyond the bank of field lights. It was above the lights, moving slowly into view.

At first he thought it was a balloon, some kind of promotion. Probably the Elway dealerships, which were advertising heavily.

Then Wally realized the moving shape wasn't a balloon.

'Look!' He pointed.

His wife gasped.

'Oh, wow!' The comment escaped his eldest son, who normally was too cool to show pleasure or enthusiasm for anything.

The people sitting behind Wally inhaled so sharply he could hear it.

'It's a saucer!'

'A flying saucer!'

People were standing now, pointing. All over the stadium, people were rising to their feet.

A vast, awed silence fell upon the frozen crowd as the saucer dropped lower and lower toward the center of the field.

A worried Elmer Disquette was on the mound for the Dodgers. He was in his fourth inning of work and was starting through the Rockies' lineup the second time. The catcher had just asked for a curve to this right-handed batter, Disquette's bread-and-butter pitch; in fact, the pitch he had to throw to get people out. His fastball he used merely to set up the curve. He didn't have a decent change-up or slider, a fact he had brooded over for years. Staying too long on the mound was Russian roulette for short-relief men with limited repertoires, as Elmer Disquette well knew.

He glanced at his dugout — all the guys were on their feet — as he went into his windup.

The batter was coiled.

Elmer knew the pitch wouldn't break when he released it, just a millisecond too early.

Ramon Martinez was the batter, and he swung with everything he had. Just up from the AAA farm club, Colorado Springs, Martinez was playing in his third major league game. He had yet to get a hit. If he didn't start getting some hits, he was going to be riding a bus back to the Springs in the very near future. That bus ride was in his mind when he felt the shock of the bat connecting with the ball.

The ball went off the bat climbing. Ramon's heart sank. Another pop fly to center.

He got started toward first as he followed the flight of the ball. It went up, up, up, right under that big black saucer shape…

Saucer?

And the ball kept going, going, going…

Unbeknownst to Ramon, or anyone else in Coors Field, the ball entered the antigravity field under the saucer and got a free ride for about a hundred feet, just enough. The Dodger center fielder wasn't even trying to catch the ball. He was standing dead in his tracks staring at the saucer. The baseball went over his head and cleared the fence in straightaway dead center by ten feet.

Ramon Martinez leaped straight up at least three feet, his heart filled with joy. He jabbed both fists aloft, then jumped with both feet on first base. After he spiked the bag good and proper, Ramon set off for second, so overwhelmed by the moment that the absence of crowd reaction didn't even register.

While Ramon was bounding around the bases, the crowd was watching the saucer, which was dropping lower and lower toward second base.

As the ship neared the earth, dirt began flying around. The dirt was lifted from the area around second by the saucer's antigravity field and swirled by the gentle breeze blowing in from left.

The cloud of dirt got Ramon's attention. Like everyone else in the stadium, he too looked up. When he got to second he was feeling light on his feet, as if his contact with the earth were being severed. He dropped to his knees and clutched the bag with both hands.

'We better get going before anyone panics,' Rip said to Charley. He was eyeing the people near the exits. They were still frozen in place, their mouths hanging open, but that wouldn't last. The urge to flee would strike soon.

'Okay,' Charley said softly and eased back the collective while she turned the saucer with stick and rudder.

When the ship was pointing toward the Scoreboard in center, she eased the stick forward. As the ship began accelerating, she twisted the throttle grip. The rockets rumbled into life as the saucer shot over the Scoreboard.

With Coors Field safely behind her, Charley Pine came on hard with the rockets and pulled the nose up sharply. The G pushed her back hard into her seat.

The thunder washed over Wally Greenberg like an ocean wave. It engulfed him and overwhelmed his senses as the fireball of the saucer's rocket engines rose and rose and rose into the heavens.

When he finally looked around, the boys' faces were shining. 'Did you see that? one roared.

'Awesome! Totally cool!'

Wally Greenberg stretched both arms above his head and shouted to the heavens. 'Yesssss!'

Ramon Martinez walked to third base, then home. He kept his head down, concentrated on the placement of each foot. As he walked he crossed himself again and again, endlessly.

A thing like that — a man has to think on it, get it into proper perspective.

Elmer Disquette stood on the mound rubbing his face. He took off his glove and rubbed his face some more and spit in the dirt.

The catcher wandered out.

'Tough break, man.'

Elmer snorted. 'What in hell was that, anyway?'

'Hey, I don't know, man. It didn't land and that's something.'

'I didn't even think of that.'

'A bunch of aliens running around the diamond… ' the catcher mused as he watched the crowd stampede for the exits. 'I don't think I'm ready for that much diversity.'

The television cameras at Coors Field caught it all.

Although the game was not being televised live, the saucer was barely out of sight before the networks had the feed on the air nationwide. In the White House the president and his advisers watched in horror as the saucer slipped into the lights and dropped toward second base.

'My God!' the president whispered. 'It's reall' 'Sweet holy Jesus,' said Bombing Joe De Laurio.

They sat mesmerized until the saucer disappeared from the camera's view.

'They are more advanced than we are,' muttered the secretary of state. 'We may have to become their slaves.'

Bombing Joe looked at her in horror. The old biddy's screws were coming loose.

'People will think that religion is bunk,' said O'Reilly. 'Morals, ethics, the philosophical underpinnings of civilization are all in question. The government may collapse.'

'Where in blazes is my UFO team?' Bombing Joe wondered aloud and trotted away to call the Pentagon again.

The president pounded his fist on the arm of his chair. 'An off-year election less than three months away,' he said bitterly, 'and now this!'