Saucer

Chapter Sixteen

Charley heard diesel engines several times during the night. The third time she went to the window to look. She saw three trucks near the horse barn, at least a dozen men. The men all seemed to be carrying weapons. As she watched, the men got into the trucks, which then drove slowly away.

She pulled a chair over to the window and sat there with the blanket from the bed wrapped around her. Her back was sore when she moved, she had a headache from the wine and cognac, and she could still taste that cigar even though she had brushed her teeth, and tongue, three times.

Of course Roger Hedrick has armed security around, probably as many men and weapons as he could muster. He would be a fool not to, and a fool he wasn't.

She wondered about Rip, wondered where he was, what he was doing, if he was getting over the loss of the saucer. Unable to stand the silence any longer, she turned on the television. Professor Soldi appeared, talking about the saucer, how it should be in a museum for scientists to study and learn from. Well, Soldi and Hedrick were on opposite sides of a great divide.

'The saucer is a product of a great civilization,' Soldi said, 'and as such embodies not just the technical knowledge of the civilization, but the social organization as well. If we can learn the processes used to manufacture the systems in the saucer, we can learn many things about how the people who made it organized their lives, their society, their civilization. Just as the pyramids and hieroglyphics have taught us about ancient Egypt, the saucer will instruct us about the people who made it.'

A moment later, in response to a question from the interviewer, Soldi said, 'People seem to think the benefits of the saucer will be things. Nothing could be further from the truth. Look how the telephone has revolutionized life on this planet during the past seventy-five years. Because of the telephone, we live much differently from the contemporaries of Alexander Graham Bell.'

'But can you, or anyone, predict the changes?' asked the interviewer.

'Of course not,' Soldi responded. 'Change is the one constant in human affairs. Change is unpredictable, unwanted, unplanned for, evolutionary, revolutionary, resisted, welcomed — and absolutely inevitable.'

'Professor, several of our guests have pointed out that the change that you envision will not be change caused by man, nature, or even God. They argue that this will be change stimulated by an alien agency.'

'I find that reasoning ludicrous,' responded the professor. ' We are responsible for the human condition. Life is a constant struggle to better our chances for survival. That is a law, like birth and death.'

Soldi seemed to search for words. 'We are trapped like flies in amber,' he said, 'imprisoned in our time and place. The saucer will let us see what was and what will be.'

Charley Pine watched for a while longer and finally clicked the television off. That crowd Hedrick invited here couldn't care less about the human condition.

Hedrick had not mistreated her, other than to allow a little pounding by friend Rigby. And he hadn't killed her. She had thought that he might after she flew the last flight for him, but he hadn't. Now she wondered if Hedrick was going to ask her to chauffeur home the saucer's happy new owners.

If he sent her to Beijing, Tokyo, Moscow, or Munich in the saucer, or merely let her walk out to the highway and thumb a ride into Sydney, there wasn't much she could do to hurt him. Oh, she could be a minor irritation, a flea on the elephant's ass, but that wasn't going to embarrass Mr. Roger Hedrick very much. He would probably be too busy to notice.

Of course, if she had this figured wrong, tomorrow night she was going to be very dead. Rigby would love to do her, that's a fact. The bastard would probably strangle her just so he could watch her face.

Hedrick sure seemed to be enjoying himself last night, hawking the saucer like it was a used Chevy. He was going to make a huge, heaping pile of money, then live happily ever after.

Or would he? Charley Pine mused on that question.

He would have cash or securities for the saucer, but whoever got the saucer would have the future in his hand. The saucer was a collection of seeds, many of which would probably grow and bear fruit. All manner of wondrous things would come from the saucer for whoever had it.

Ultimately the benefits from the saucer's technology would trickle down to everyone on the planet. Everyone would make money from it, have their lives improved, see new opportunities for their children.

Everyone except Roger Hedrick, that is. True, he would have money, lots of it. He was already worth forty to fifty billion dollars, and his fortune wasn't in cash. He owned things, like ships and factories, newspapers and television stations, computer companies and… oil companies. He owned a lot of oil, she recalled, tens of billions of dollars' worth.

Of course the cash he got for the saucer would have to be invested. Even Roger Hedrick couldn't keep all that money in his mattress; he was going to have to find someplace to put it to work.

He certainly wouldn't buy more oil. The investments in oil he already had would slowly decrease in value. Perhaps he could get out of oil before the price dropped precipitously. That must be his plan.

She gingerly put her feet up on the chair and hugged her legs. This stretched her back and gave her temporary relief. She arranged the blanket around her to keep warm.

Of course, if Hedrick were a real swine he would destroy the saucer after he was paid for it. Blow it to smithereens while it was on its way to wherever. Then he would have the purchase price, none of his existing investments around the world would be threatened by saucer technology, he would never have to defend his title in court, and no one could prove a thing. And if Charley Pine were flying the saucer, she would be neatly and tidily disposed of.

If Hedrick were a real swine…

She wondered if Roger Hedrick had thought that far ahead.

When the president finished lunch with the leaders of Congress, he went back to the Oval Office and turned on the television. Like half the people in America, he too was trying to keep up with the saucer story via television. In addition, he was trying to take the pulse of the voting public. He had four televisions arranged side by side so he could monitor the video on four networks at once and surf the audio channels.

Like Charley Pine in Australia, he also watched Professor Soldi. Being momentarily alone, he gave the archaeologist the finger.

The old fool didn't seem to realize how many applecarts he was threatening to upset with his visions of change, but the president certainly did. Successful politicians were those who knew which levers to pull, which buttons to push in today's world. Of course they paid lip service to change and spent their professional lives guiding it, but it was incremental change designed to benefit those people who had or would support them, usually people who were already at the top of the food chain. The president instinctively understood that the change Soldi envisioned was revolutionary, the kind that beheaded kings, executed czars, toppled republics. Soldi was the prophet of a new paradigm, and the president feared him.

He was listening to man-in-the-street interviews on CNN when his chief of staff, O'Reilly, came in.

'Roger Hedrick has four groups bidding on the saucer, Mr. President. China, Russia, and Japan arrived yesterday. A group from Europe arrived at Hedrick's station about ten hours ago. The senior negotiator is Nicholas Pieraut, a senior executive at Airbus. He telephoned the French government two hours ago and reported that he had had a saucer ride. He was very enthusiastic.'

'I thought State said the Europeans wouldn't bid on the saucer?'

'That's what their governments told our ambassadors.'

The president turned off the televisions with the buttons on his desk and leaned back in his chair.

'Were they lying, or did they change their minds?'

'They were lying.'

'And we can't tell them we know they were lying?'

'If we tell them… '

The president waved O'Reilly into silence. The National Security Agency was light-years ahead of the rest of the world in decoding encrypted electronic transmissions; it had been eavesdropping on foreign governments' conversations for years. Of course, to reveal knowledge gained in this manner would be to compromise the entire decoding operation.

'This mess keeps getting worse,' the president said. He put the palms of his hands over his eyes while he thought. After a bit he removed his hands and regarded O'Reilly with a morose stare. 'It will be bad if the Russians or Chinese get the thing, worse if Japan takes it home, but the Europeans would be a disaster. They have the capital and infrastructure to take immediate advantage of the technology.'

O'Reilly looked as wrung out as the president. 'I had lunch with the chairman of the Federal Reserve. He said that the saucer's technology could make Europe the world's dominant economy.'

'Any chance the Europeans might pay too much?' 'How much is too much? If you expect the technology in the saucer to grow your gross domestic product by five percent a year for the next ten years, how much could you pay Hedrick? Ten percent of that increase? Twenty? Thirty? True, the stimulus might be less than five percent of GDP, but I'll bet it'll be more. Perhaps a lot more.' 'And the Australian government?' 'They deny that the saucer is in the country.'

Rip Cantrell concentrated on staying on his side of the road as he piloted the delivery van out of Bathurst at ten o'clock in the morning and headed west for Hedrick's station. He was wearing the delivery driver's shirt and cap. He had left the man in a bar, determined to drink up the Australian equivalent of a thousand American dollars. Rip had solemnly promised to bring the van back that evening. The promise was a sop to the driver's conscience. He didn't even ask Rip why he wanted the van. The display of cash had been enough to seal the deal.

So here he was, wearing his new jacket against the morning chill, wearing a shirt that said 'Fred' above the left breast pocket and a cap with the market's name above the bill, driving this old van full of food.

He hummed as he drove, trying to keep his mind off his fluttering stomach. Maybe food would help. After all, two hours had passed since breakfast. Well, why not?

He pulled over and rummaged through the load until he found a box of doughnuts. With the box open beside him and a doughnut in his mouth, he got the van back on the road and rolling westward.

So far so good, he told himself. He was going into Hedrick's home camp… unarmed. With no plan. To find a woman and steal a saucer.

Chance of success? Damn near zero. But what else could he do?

He didn't have a gun, wouldn't shoot anyone if he had one, didn't know if Charley was there, didn't know if the saucer was still there — though it probably was since he had seen it airborne yesterday — didn't know how many guys Hedrick had around him.

He ate another doughnut.

All too soon he came to the long straight stretch. The gate was three or four miles down there on the left. He slowed down, flexed his hands and arms, sped back up.

Well, all he could do was his best. Pray for a little luck.

He brushed the crumbs off his lap and set the cap on his head just the way he liked it, then began slowing for the turn.

Three guys in the guard shack by the gate pole, which was down. He pulled up at the shack and stopped.

One of them came out, looked him over. 'Have I seen you before, mate?' he asked.

Rip just shook his head no.

'New man, eh?'

Rip nodded, then said, 'Uh-huh.'

'Righto. In you go.' The guard pushed down on the weight on the butt end of the gate pole, and the pole rose.

Rip slipped the clutch and got the van moving. Then he took off the cap and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

The gravel road ran straight as a bullet for about a mile before it left the flat creek bottom, then it wound over rolling terrain for another two miles. The main station complex sat on a small hill surrounded by a grove of trees. Scattered around the complex were large trucks. Around the trucks were men in uniforms, soldiers. Yes, soldiers in uniforms with weapons. Near one of the trucks he spotted a bunker with a machine gun poking out of the firing slit.

Hedrick didn't have a private army — he had the Australian army! Rip wondered whom you had to know and how much you had to pay to get the army to guard your house. Guard it? Heck, they had fortified it. Who did they think was going to attack?

He saw the parked airliners and the hangar, of course, and figured the saucer was in the hangar, but he couldn't just drive down there and walk in. Not past all these troops. He kept going, past the horse barn and main garage toward the main house.

The kitchen, he thought, would be around in back. He drove slowly around the house. Sure enough, there was a loading dock on the back of the building. He backed up to it and killed the engine.

He went through the door, saw a man wearing an apron and chef's hat. 'Food delivery,' Rip said and jerked his thumb in the direction of the truck.

'Cold storage?'

'Most of it.'

'Stow it in the meat locker.' Then the cook hustled off.

The locker was easy enough to find. Rip opened up the van and got busy. He was done in fifteen minutes.

With the bill of lading on a clipboard, he walked through the kitchen. Only two people there, one scrubbing big pots and the other making a cake, a cake shaped like the saucer!

Rip walked on through the swinging door out into the dining area. A maid was arranging place settings. Rip continued into the main hall. He took off the cap, stuffed it into his hip pocket.

He heard voices in one of the rooms and put his ear to the door. Japanese or Chinese, he couldn't tell. He walked on.

He came to the main entrance. Looking across the porch he could see the hangar. It was several hundred feet away down a gentle grade. Three soldiers were idling by the personnel door on this side of the structure.

Tomorrow. He would come back tomorrow with the delivery driver and bring a set of civilian clothes. While the driver was off-loading the order, he could hide, and after dark, when the coast was clear, he could search for Charley. If he could just find her…

'What are you doing in this part of the house?'

He turned, found himself facing a formidable matron in a maid's uniform.

Silently he extended the clipboard and a pen.

She glanced at it. 'Cook will sign that. Now scat. Back to the kitchen with you, like a good lad.'

He marched, with the housekeeper right behind. As she came through the door behind him, she shouted, 'Cook!'

The man with the chef's hat popped out of an alcove off the kitchen, his office apparently.

'This jackeroo was wandering about the main house. This is your tradesman, Cook.'

'Right, Miss Padgett.'

'Sign the bill and shove him off.' Cook signed. 'See you tomorrow, laddie.' With a last glance at the cake, Rip went back to the van. He closed the rear door, started the engine, and drove slowly down the driveway, all the while looking around for any clues as to where Charley might be.

Just before he rounded the corner of the horse barn, he caught a glimpse of her, hair in a ponytail, wearing her flight jacket and flight suit, walking between two men toward the hangar. Charley Pine!

He kept the speed down, took his time, drove slowly by the army guys. He looked back over his shoulder one last time… and saw a tank parked under a tree.

The soldiers were a surprise for Charley Pine. She had seen only a few armed men prior to last night, perhaps a dozen total, and now this morning they were everywhere, at least a hundred. She too saw a tank sitting under a tree. Another was snuggled down in the midst of a pile of hay bales; all that stuck out was the turret and gun barrel.

As she neared the hangar she could see that troops were digging foxholes at the foot of the slope that led down from the house.

Three soldiers were standing in front of the hangar personnel door, all carrying assault rifles on slings over their shoulders. One of them opened the door for Charley and her escorts, a Japanese engineer and the ubiquitous Rigby. The swelling in Rigby's face had gone down somewhat, but the yellow and purple splotches were still stunning.

The engineer had his camera bag with him. He wanted more digital pictures of the engineering spaces, which he could then fax via satellite telephone to the big muckety-mucks in Japan. Hedrick detailed Charley to accompany him, escorted of course, which went without saying. Everywhere she went, there was Rigby, with his taped nose and magnificent bruised face. He didn't look directly at her even when she faced him. Perhaps Rigby sensed that looking into her eyes would be more annoyance than his constitution could stand. It was a fact she noted and filed away.

The saucer sitting in the middle of the empty hangar took her breath away again. It looked as spectacular as it did the first time she saw it, that night in the Sahara by flashlight. Smooth, sleek, dark, and ominous, with complex curves. The sight of the thing made her pause. The Japanese engineer paused too, stood momentarily taking it in, then he walked toward it.

She opened the hatch in the saucer's belly, stood aside while the engineer climbed up. She followed. Rigby could fend for himself. He entered right behind her, of course, and climbed into the pilot's seat. His logic was unassailable: Charley Pine wasn't going anywhere with him in the pilot's seat. She reached for the reactor knob and pulled it to the first detent, about an eighth of an inch. The saucer's interior lights came on.

Charley and the engineer got down on their hands and knees and crawled into the engineer bay. The light panels were quite adequate.

The engineer wanted her to help with the tape measure, to hold it against the piece of equipment being photographed while he snapped pictures.

While he was photographing the hydrogen separator and accumulator tank, the thought occurred to Charley that the best place on the ship for a bomb was probably behind the accumulator, against the bulkhead where no one could see it.

She waited until the engineer had snapped his photos and turned his back momentarily to root in his camera bag. She reached behind the accumulator. And touched something attached to the side of the tank. Something with a thin wire dangling from it.

Hell's bells! That asshole Hedrick did put a bomb in here!

She tugged at the thing. It took a serious pull to overcome the attraction of the magnets, but the bomb came loose in her hand. She lowered it to the deck, shielded it with her body from the engineer's sight.

It was wrapped in tape, plastique explosive with a hard cap, about four inches by two by two, from which a foot-long naked wire dangled. Antenna. A radio-controlled bomb.

Charley left it there. The engineer was facing this way again. She took off her flight jacket and tossed it over the bomb.

The photographs took another fifteen minutes or so. The engineer was packing the camera equipment when he inadvertently knocked his bag over. He began apologizing and making tiny bows as he picked stuff up and restowed it.

Charley took the opportunity to pick up the jacket and bomb. She slid the bomb into an inside pocket of the jacket, folded the jacket so it wouldn't show.

The engineer got all his things collected finally, and after three or four more small bows, crawled from the bay ahead of her.

Charley was right behind him. As the engineer's rump filled the entrance to the bay, she reached behind the reactor and retrieved the bomb he had just placed there. It too went into her jacket.

Ten minutes later, in a ladies' room of the main house, Charley examined her trophies. Both were radio controlled, both had magnets to hold them to metal surfaces. She picked up the first bomb, the one she had found behind the hydrogen accumulator tank. Who put this one there? Hedrick, the Chinese, the Russians?

Maybe Hedrick's bomb was still on the saucer.

The actual auction began after lunch in Hedrick's library on the ground floor of the house. The room was large, twenty feet by thirty, with a desk for Hedrick and smaller desks scattered about the room for the bidding groups. In the corner near where Charley Pine sat was a large, black safe, a huge thing, which bore the markings of the Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide Railroad Company, the B,S & A.

Charley settled in to watch with her flight jacket on her lap.

At lunch Hedrick invited her to the table where he and Bernice sat. 'When the auction is complete, I wish to hire you to fly the saucer to where the new owner wishes it to go. I will pay you for your time as we agreed and give you enough additional money to pay for airfare back to America. I will also ask that the new owner pay you ten thousand dollars for flying the saucer for them.'

'You keep saying you'll pay me, but I haven't seen any money.'

Hedrick reached into his pocket and removed a stack of hundreds. He tossed it in front of her. 'There's ten thousand American there. I'll pay you the rest when we figure the airfare.'

She tapped her finger on the bundle. 'What if I take this, then swear out a kidnapping warrant when I get back to the States?'

Hedrick shrugged. 'Do as you think best.'

'Why don't you give me a check instead? That way you have proof you paid me.'

'Let's not play games, Ms. Pine. Check or cash, which do you prefer?'

Charley picked up the bundle of banknotes. 'Doesn't matter,' she said as she slipped the bundle into a pocket.

'It is possible that the deal might be consummated tonight, but more likely tomorrow sometime. Please avoid the wine, so you can fly.'

Charley nodded. Bernice smiled at her, as if to say, See, he's really very nice.

Charley managed a smile as she arranged her napkin on her lap.

'Perhaps,' Hedrick said, 'you would like to watch the auction?'

'That sounds interesting,' Charley Pine said, trying not to sound over- or underwhelmed. After all, she didn't have anything better to do unless she wanted to go for another Land Rover ride with Bernice, and her back was too sore for that foolishness.

'Working for me didn't turn out so bad after all,' Hedrick said with a smile. The bastard could really turn on the charm.

'I guess not,' Charley said and smiled in reply. 'I really enjoyed breaking Rigby's nose.'

She did feel somewhat relieved. Perhaps neither of those bombs were Hedrick's, she thought as she sat listening to dear, earnest Bernice chatter away.

Now, sitting in the library watching Hedrick, she realized that he had paid ten thousand dollars so she would relax, not try to escape, so she would agree to fly the saucer for the successful bidders, and die with the Russians.

Ten thousand dollars was chump change to Roger Hedrick. Bernice spent that much every half hour she shopped.

This afternoon Bernice and another secretary did the necessary paper shuffling and legwork. There were several people sitting near Hedrick whom Charley didn't know, so she asked Bernice at one point. One of the balding gentlemen was with the Australian tax ministry. Another was from the prime minister's office.

Anyone who didn't think Roger Hedrick had connections, think again!

Each of the bidding parties had already prepared their first bids, so the first round went quickly. All four parties bid the minimum, ten billion dollars. As they were preparing their bids for the second round, Bernice wandered over to where Charley was sitting beside the safe.

Charley asked her about Siberia.

'I think Roger made some agreement with the Russians,' Bernice whispered, 'but I don't know what. He doesn't like it when I ask him about business matters.'

'I see.'

'If he doesn't want me to know anything, then why does he want me to help out with these business things?' Bernice asked. 'I think he sees me as cheap secretarial help.' She smiled when she said that. Actually, Charley thought, Roger wanted Bernice around so she would think he liked her. That was his hold on her.

The thought that she was overthinking this whole thing irritated Charley. Maybe Hedrick really did like Bernice. What the hell did it matter?

Then again… she was acutely conscious of the heft of the bombs in her coat pockets.

The Japanese and Europeans both bid twenty billion in the second round. The Chinese were next at thirteen billion, the Russians bid eleven billion, the minimum.

After the second round, each group wanted to make telephone calls, so that took some time.

The third round took even more time. This time the bids were in the mid-thirties.

After the fifth round, the high bid was fifty-eight billion and all the players were still in. They were sweating now. Ties were loosened, coats were on the backs of chairs, even Roger Hedrick was feeling a bit of the tension. He had loosened his tie and was watching each group with eyes that didn't miss a thing.

At this point Charley thought the Russians were the least likely group to buy the saucer. The Japanese exuded confidence, but Charley knew of the bomb one of the engineers had planted, so she thought they had a firm top figure that the Japanese government had refused to exceed. The only question in Charley's mind was how close to the limit they had come.

One more round, or two?

The Chinese seemed to be most in control. The senior man was as calm as if he had been playing mah-jong for matchsticks. He was the only man in the room who was still wearing his suit jacket. If he had a limit that he could not exceed, his demeanor certainly gave no hint of it.

That thought seemed to trouble the Japanese, who kept eyeing the Chinese warily.

The Europeans were arguing among themselves. They would whisper vehemently together, then leave the room, come back and whisper some more, then leave again.

It was getting along toward five o'clock and the bids for the sixth round had yet to be filled out when Bernice came over to Charley. 'Roger says this will be the last round today. Would you care to freshen up for dinner?'

'I'd like that,' Charley Pine said and picked up her flight jacket from the floor beside her chair. It felt lighter with only one bomb in the pocket.

She smiled to herself as she walked for the door.

At dinner Charley Pine learned how the sixth round of bidding had turned out. All four parties were still in the game, high bid $62.6 billion by the Japanese.

Charley was wearing one of Bernice's French frocks. Ivan the Russian Romeo was too busy conferring in low tones with his colleagues to pay attention, but Pieraut found the time to give her a very pleasant smile. Ah, those Frenchmen!

That little smile warmed her.

Charley wondered if Rip Cantrell would like the way she looked, then spent the next hour feeling vaguely guilty. After all, the kid was eight years younger than she was.

Well, at least she had ten thousand bucks in her jeans. When, if, she got back to the States, she would call that guy at Lockheed Martin, see if that test-pilot job offer was still open. After the saucer flap maybe they wouldn't want her. If they didn't, hell, there were always the commuters. If she couldn't talk her way into the cockpit of a Beech 1900, she would tear up her pilot's license.

Thinking these thoughts, she attacked her steak.

Rip Cantrell was also eating steak. Amazingly, the delivery driver was still on his feet in the bar when Rip returned the van. He had apparently been drinking beer all day.

'Here, mate,' the driver said. 'Sit and I'll buy you one.'

Rip insisted on buying the driver dinner after he returned the van to the market's parking lot. Now the two of them were eating kangaroo steak.

'Lucky day for me when you came along,' the driver said. He had graduated from beer to whiskey.

'Are you married?'

'Oh, yeah. Little woman at home.'

'Want to call her? Ask her to come down and I'll buy her dinner too.'

'Here? In here? Oooh, no, mate. This is no place for her.'

'Looks respectable enough.'

'It's me reputation, mate. Me reputation. The mates would never let me live it down. Oh, no. The little woman stays at home. I provide for her and she takes care o' me, and that's the way it should be between men and women.' He wiggled a finger solemnly. 'You Americans are far too friendly with your women. That makes it hard for everyone, you see.'

'You're a philosopher, Fred. I can see that.'

'I like you, kid.'

'How about letting me ride along with you tomorrow when you go to Hedrick's?'

'Oh, can't do that, laddie. Against company rules. No passengers, they say. Firing offense.'

'It's worth five hundred American.'

'How much is that in Australian?'

'About eight hundred.'

'Sometimes exceptions can be made, mate.'

'The high bid in the sixth and final round of the first day of bidding was sixty-two point six billion dollars,' the aide told the sleepy president over the telephone.

'Who?'

'The Japanese.'

'Anyone drop out?'

'No, sir. All four parties are still in it.'

The president looked at the illuminated hands of the clock on his bedstand. 4:54 a.m. 'When is the hypersonic plane going to do its photo flyby?'

'A few minutes after true sunrise in Australia, sir, about two this afternoon here.'

'And the radar images?'

'Those are coming in now, sir.'

'Have General De Laurio and the national security adviser come to the White House for breakfast. We'll look at the images then.' 'Yes, sir.'