Saucer

Chapter Seventeen

Rip Cantrell was amazed when he saw what the soldiers had accomplished at Hedrick's station overnight. Foxholes and bunkers had appeared everywhere, as if a giant groundhog were in a digging frenzy. A half dozen tanks were arranged around the main station building complex.

'I haven't seen this many soldiers since I got out of the army,' the delivery driver said.

'Looks like an army base, doesn't it?'

'What In the world are these people doing here?'

'Maybe Hedrick is entertaining some foreign big shot.'

'Yeah. Maybe so.'

The driver backed in to the kitchen loading dock. 'How about helping me unload.'

'Sure,' Rip said. 'But remember, this is a one-way trip for me. Just drive out of here innocent as all get-out and go on back to town. No one will be the wiser.'

'Man, I don't like this. All these soldiers…"

'You want to give me my money back?'

'It's your ass, kid. Not mine.'

With that the driver opened his door and stepped down. Rip got out on his side of the vehicle. Inside the kitchen the cook and head housekeeper were nowhere in sight, although two members of the kitchen staff were busy making tea.

Rip made a couple of trips into the food locker carrying bags of groceries while two waiters went back and forth to the main dining room carrying pots of tea. When the kitchen workers turned away and the waiters bustled out, Rip looked through the door glass into the dining room. About twenty people were still eating breakfast. Charley was at one of the tables with her back to the kitchen door: He would recognize that ponytail anywhere. And, of course, there was the Air Force flight suit.

He helped the driver carry one more load into the food locker, then jumped down from the loading dock and walked along the side of the house to a servants' entrance he had spotted the previous day. He tried the door.

Unlocked.

He slipped inside and pulled the door shut behind him.

The hallway where he found himself was long and narrow, a passageway designed to keep the domestic staff out of the main portion of the house. No telling when he was going to meet someone, so he hurried along the passage.

On his left was a door. He opened it a few inches and looked into the kitchen, then let the door close.

Another passage ran off to the right. He took it. Fifty feet ahead was a stairway. At the foot of the stairs were two doors. He opened one: the laundry. The other was the furnace room, and it was empty. Rip slipped in and closed the door behind him.

Two windows high up in the wall allowed daylight to filter in here. He would have had a view of the yard and hangar if the windows had clear glass in them instead of the frosted kind.

Rip went across the hall into the laundry. Sure enough, he found green trousers and a shirt that could only belong to a gardener. The knees of the trousers were faded from kneeling on damp earth.

He skinned out of his clothes and pulled on the trousers. The waist was a bit large, but not too much so.

The shirt was okay as long as he left the sleeves unbuttoned. He put his jacket back on, left it unzipped.

In the furnace room he found a toolbox containing a meager assortment of hand tools. These would have to do.

When Hedrick came into the dining room for breakfast, two of the bidding parties approached him. They wanted more time in the saucer. Charley Pine was sipping on a cup of coffee at the next table. She half turned in her chair to watch the discussion.

Hedrick eyed the Chinese and European team leaders without enthusiasm. 'Everyone has had ample opportunity to examine the saucer. Further examination will merely delay the resumption of bidding, which by mutual consent is scheduled to resume at eleven o'clock…" Hedrick consulted his watch. 'Twenty-seven minutes from now.'

Pieraut spoke first. 'My government has raised questions, Mr. Hedrick, that I must attempt to answer. I merely serve my nation.'

The Chinese delegation leader echoed Pieraut. He also had no choice, he said.

Hedrick had to agree to their request and did so without further argument. He asked Charley Pine to escort the bidders, and she agreed.

On the way to the hangar she passed someone kneeling on the sidewalk working on a junction box. She and her male companions paid the workman no attention. After she passed him, however, he watched her and the four men she was with until they disappeared into the hangar. Then Rip Cantrell went back to messing with the junction box.

Rigby was standing beside the saucer when the little party entered the hangar. He stood watching as the party went through the saucer's hatch one by one, then he climbed aboard too.

Charley spent a dull hour in one of the passenger seats watching the engineers inspect, photograph, and measure. Roger Hedrick had absolutely forbidden any disassembly.

Rigby sat in the pilot's seat watching Charley Pine like a cat watches a mouse. Roger Hedrick was apparently taking no chances. Charley had been paid and promised more, but he wasn't about to take the chance that she would fly away with the saucer before he had collected a mountain of money from someone.

Is Charley going to fly the saucer? When will she come out of the hangar? Rip was toying with these questions as he inspected outdoor lighting junction boxes. He eyed the house. Maybe he should go inside. But where?

Soldiers came and went, presumably on military errands, and a backhoe lumbered by the hangar. Apparently it was being used to dig foxholes.

There were some armed civilians around too, but none of them seemed to give Rip more than a glance.

He couldn't keep opening junction boxes and dicking around inside them for too long, however, without attracting attention he didn't want. He had to go somewhere, do something, until a chance to get away with Charley came along.

But what?

'Well, as I live and breathe, if it ain't the ol' tapeworm kid himself.' An American voice.

Rip looked up, straight into the face of Bill Taggart. Standing beside Taggart was the tall Aussie from the Sahara, Red Sharkey. Behind Sharkey were two other men, both carrying rifles.

Rip got to his feet, wiped his hands on his trousers. 'What are you doing here, Taggart?'

'Becoming a millionaire, kid.' From his shirt pocket Taggart produced a check. He fluttered it in the air. 'O'l Hedrick pays his debts, I'll say that for him. I told him about the saucer. Made myself some serious money.'

Rip was infuriated. 'You had no right to do that.'

'All the right in the world, kid. That saucer belongs to me as much as it does to you. I figured out a way to make a dollar on the damned thing, and by God I did.'

'Enough jawing,' Red Sharkey said and laid a heavy hand on Rip's shoulder. Rip shrugged it off and swung at Taggart, who took the punch on his neck and went down like a stunned ox.

Sharkey and his men grabbed Rip's arms.

'I thought I'd seen the last of you when you stole the saucer in the desert, boy,' Sharkey said. 'Left us to the tender mercies of Qaddafi's camel jockeys, so you did. You owe me.'

Red Sharkey drew back and drove a fist at Rip's chin. Rip managed to take most of the impact on his shoulder and the side of his face, but the blow staggered him.

One of the men spoke up. 'You'll get us fired, Sharkey, scuffling on the lawn.'

'This little bastard deserves it,' Taggart snarled, rubbing his neck. He got slowly to his feet, looking sour as hell.

Red Sharkey twisted Rip's arm up behind his back. 'Come along like a gentleman or I'll twist your arm right out of the shoulder socket.'

Sharkey marched Rip into the house. Taggart stood on the sidewalk watching them go.

They took Rip to a small room with several chairs. 'Watch him,' Sharkey told the two who were with him and left them there.

Rip fell into a chair. He sat there flexing his arm, trying to work out the soreness.

In less than two minutes Sharkey was back with Hedrick in tow.

'Mr. Cantrell, it is you. This is quite unexpected,' Hedrick said, smiling. 'Welcome to Australia.'

Rip didn't reply.

Hedrick's smile faded. 'How did this man get here?' Hedrick asked Sharkey.

'I don't know, sir. We found him outside, playing with lawn lighting junction boxes.'

'Take him down to the hangar, show him to Ms. Pine. Then lock him up somewhere. And leave someone to guard him.'

Rip's legs almost failed him when he saw the saucer sitting in the middle of the hangar. So close and yet so far.

Sharkey called to Charley through the hatch. She came out, stood there looking at Rip, who was flanked by Sharkey's hired muscle.

'Mr. Hedrick said to show him to you. Now you've seen him.'

Rip jammed his hands into his pockets so no one would see them tremble.

Charley looked so beautiful.

She walked over to him, reached for his cheek.

'That's enough romance,' Red Sharkey said sourly. 'I'm getting all choked up.'

They turned Rip around and led him away.

Charley stood rooted, staring at Rip's back. Sharkey paused beside her. 'Hedrick said to make it crystal clear: Any funny business and he gets it.'

Charley Pine climbed back into the saucer.

The engineers announced themselves satisfied a few minutes after twelve o'clock and lowered themselves through the open hatch. Charley went through the hatch after them.

Rigby stayed in the saucer. The engineers wandered toward the main personnel door and left the building.

What is Rigby doing in there?

She stretched, did several deep knee bends, bent over and touched the toes of her steel-toed leather flight boots.

No one else in the hangar.

Where have they taken Rip?

She should fly the saucer out of here. Fly it right through the door, light the rockets and be gone.

Hedrick wouldn't hurt Rip. The man would have to let him go-Even as she thought it, she didn't believe it. She was standing there, forlorn, tired, and dejected, when Rigby dropped through the saucer's hatch. Bent over, he walked toward her.

He was just clearing the leading edge of the saucer and coming erect when she leaped clear of the floor and kicked with her right foot. She was aiming for Rigby's larynx and missed; her flight boot smashed into his mouth.

His head slammed back against the leading edge of the saucer, then he went to his hands and knees, blood gushing from his mouth. Rigby spit teeth, shook his head, trying to get it together.

His head came up and his eyes found her. His lips twisted. He coiled himself to rise.

She kicked him again with everything she had, with all her weight moving forward into the kick. Her foot caught Rigby square in the nose with a sickening thunk, ripping the bandage off. The impact threw Rigby backward onto the concrete, where he hit with a splat. He lay there totally relaxed.

Unconscious. Blood flowed freely from his mouth and the misshapen lump of flesh that had been his nose.

Steeling herself, Charley Pine bent down and checked under Rigby's armpits. Nothing. She half rolled him and felt the small of his back. A holster.

She pulled out the pistol, a nice little Walther.380, loaded, with a full magazine. She put it in the pocket of her flight suit and climbed into the saucer.

In the cabin she stood erect, trying to get her breathing under control, looking around, trying to think.

If those engineers hid a bomb in here, where would they put it? They must have known that the saucer might be inspected again. Or two or three times.

She started in the equipment bay.

Ten minutes later she was back in the main cabin.

One of the Chinese had looked under the floor panels.

She pried up the panels he had opened. And found a bomb with her fingertips. It was wedged as far forward as one could reach, in a cranny impossible to inspect with the naked eye. She gingerly pulled it from its hiding place and inserted it in a pocket of her flight jacket.

Did the German engineer also look in there? She couldn't remember.

She hunted for another ten minutes, looking everywhere that she had seen any of the engineers look. Nothing.

Rigby was lying on the floor of the hangar exactly as she had left him. He hadn't moved.

Perhaps he was dead.

Maybe she should check to see if he was breathing.

Naw…

Outside on the mat were four large jets. Two of them were Grumman Gulfstream V's, one was a Russian airliner, another was a Boeing 737. One of the Gulf-streams sported the Hedrick family coat of arms on the tail; Charley Pine walked over for a look.

The soldiers in front of the hangar made no move to follow. They were guarding the hangar, not the airliners.

Charley Pine put one of the bombs in the right main gear well of the Gulfstream wearing the Hedrick coat of arms. The Chinese bomb went in a gear well of the Boeing, which carried the insignia of the Chinese national airline.

When she walked away from the airliners, heading toward the house, the soldiers were talking among themselves, paying no attention.

Lunch was a harried affair. The members of the delegations were tense and preoccupied and said little. They ate quickly and rushed from the room to confer with their groups and make last-minute overseas telephone calls.

Charley was dawdling over a full plate, abandoned by her luncheon companions and unable to eat, when Bernice came bouncing in wearing a wide grin.

'It'll be over soon, Roger says. Somebody will get the saucer this afternoon.' Bernice giggled. 'Roger is so excited! He's going to be the richest man on earth.'

'I'm happy for him,' Charley Pine said.

'Oh, I am too,' Bernice gushed. 'He's worked so hard for this.'

'Right.'

'Just think, we're watching history being made! I can positively feel the electricity in the air.'

She strode away, off to the library, probably, leaving Charley to her uneaten lunch.

Charley filled her coffee cup and took it across the hallway to a television room. She settled into one of the overstuffed chairs and began surfing channels.

She stopped when she glimpsed Professor Soldi's tanned mug.

'… Of course, we have no evidence to prove my theories, but archaeologists have none to disprove them, either.'

'But your thesis that Homo sapiens came to earth in the saucer would necessarily mean that the fossil record of hominid development here on earth was wrong.'

Soldi shook his head. 'No, sir; Not wrong. The record is fragmentary at best, and some of it may have been misinterpreted. The fact is that the earliest archaeological evidence we have for Homo sapiens — modern man — is only one hundred thousand years old. Before that we find Neanderthal man and Homo erectus.'

'Could the saucer people have displaced the hominids that evolved on earth?'

'Displaced, killed, or simply survived while the natives perished. We don't know enough even to guess.'

'Professor, you have admitted that your theory is based on the assumption that evolution followed a similar course elsewhere. Could you comment on that?'

'I think evolution follows similiar courses when similar conditions exist,' Professor Soldi explained. 'All things being equal, the evolutionary pressures will also be equal. A statistician might note that while all things are rarely equal, on occasion they may be essentially so. For example, if a star similar in size to our sun had a planet of about the right size, at about the right distance, then we can expect the laws of chemistry and physics to operate to make the planet very similiar to earth. People seem to forget, there are at least a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, our galaxy. There are billions of galaxies.

'There are not one or two planets similar to earth in the universe,' Soldi said with narrowed eyes. 'There are hundreds. Thousands. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. Could any of those hundreds of thousands of worlds similar to ours contain creatures similar to us? I submit that it would be astounding if they didn't.'

'So we are not alone in the universe?' the interviewer prompted.

'Of course not. Ask anyone who has seen the saucer. Ask what he or she thinks.'

Charley Pine reached for the remote control. After she turned the television off, a male voice behind her said, 'I think the damned thing was made in Brazil.'

She turned. Sharkey.

Charley Pine got up and walked down the hall to the library. The door was closed and there was an armed man sitting on a stool. He didn't say anything. Charley opened the door and went inside.

Rip Cantrell was sitting in an empty horse stall in the barn. There was no door on the stall. In front of the stall on the far side of the barn sat a guard on a stool with a rifle across his knees.

Above Rip a shaft of sunlight shown in through a small glassless window. He sat in the hay trying to think. He wasn't tied up or chained. The only thing keeping him here was the guard's implicit threat to shoot him if he tried to leave.

The guard was maybe forty, slightly above medium height, with a modest spare tire around his middle. The butt of an automatic pistol protruded from a holster under his left armpit. He kept his rifle, some kind of army assault weapon, pointed in Rip's general direction. His right hand rested on the trigger assembly.

'Hi,' Rip said conversationally.

The guard didn't even blink.

Rip moved around a bit, trying to get comfortable.

He still had a screwdriver in his pocket. Sharkey had forgotten to search him. He could feel the screwdriver against his arm as it rested on his lap. About four inches long, the screwdriver had a standard bit.

Without moving, he mentally took inventory of his pockets. He still had his wallet, a key to the borrowed car, a hotel room key, American and Australian coins, some paper money, a paper clip, a ballpoint pen, and a small piece of newsprint that he had torn out of a paper a few days ago at Egg's house, a story about compulsive eaters.

Taggart… he had never even suspected. Well, it was his own fault for trusting him.

He wondered about Dutch Haagen. Did Dutch double-cross him too?

Well, he was good and stuck. until that clown with a gun went to sleep or left, he was going nowhere.

Rip sighed, leaned back against the wall behind him, and tried to relax. After a bit he closed his eyes, tried to sleep.

Charley Pine… he touched his cheek where she had touched him, and shivered.

Charley sat in her usual seat by the safe in the library. The tension in the room was palpable. Of all the bidders, only the Europeans looked halfway relaxed. Roger Hedrick was all business, his emotions buried behind a mask of studied calm. still, Charley thought that she caught occasional glimpses of the man who lived in there, a man who knew that he was holding a royal flush.

Pieraut finished writing on his bid sheet, signed it with a flourish, and put it in an envelope. He handed the envelope to Bernice.

That was the last one. Bernice handed all four envelopes to Hedrick and took her seat with the Australian deputy prime minister and the tax man, who were here again today.

Hedrick opened the envelopes, arranged the bids on the desk in front of him, moved one from right to left, looked up deadpan.

'Gentlemen, we have bids for seventy-six billion, eighty-two billion, eighty-six billion, and one hundred and fifty billion.'

The Chinese, Japanese, and Russians sat stunned, staring at the other bidding parties. Pieraut beamed genially.

The leader of the Chinese team stood and stuffed his papers in his briefcase. His colleagues did likewise. When they were packed, they marched from the room without a word to anyone.

The Japanese slowly picked up their papers. One by one, the members of the delegation bowed to Hedrick, bowed to the remaining bidders, then filed out.

'I must consult with my government,' the senior Russian, Krasnoyarsk, said.

'Please do,' Hedrick said genially. 'We will reconvene here in twenty minutes.'

The Russian left the room.

Pieraut lit a cigarette and savored the smoke. 'If no one else chooses to bid in the next round, I presume we are the winners?'

'Under the rules,' Hedrick acknowledged, 'that is indeed the case.'

'Where do you want the money wired? If we win the auction.'

Hedrick handed a sheet of paper to Bernice, who delivered it to Pieraut. 'Those are the banks,' he said. 'If you win the auction, wire the money. When the banks confirm that they have received the money, the saucer is yours.'

'You expected to sell the saucer for such a large sum?'

'I try to avoid idle speculation. As always with rare and precious things, the price depends on how much the object is desired.'

'Oüi,' said Pieraut and smoked the rest of his cigarette in silence. He looked self-satisfied, Charley thought, as did the two German engineers and the Italian.

She decided she had had enough. She got up and walked from the room.

In the foyer, Krasnoyarsk was grunting into a telephone. The news he was hearing was written on his face.

Charley was sitting on a stool in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee when Bernice came charging through the door. 'The Russians excused themselves from the next round! The Europeans have won!'

'Roger is now the world's richest man?'

'He's so close. In just a few hours. I am so happy for him.'

'He doesn't deserve you, Bernice. Why don't you dump him and find yourself a decent fella?'

Bernice was horrified. She whirled and marched from the kitchen without another word.

It takes all kinds to make a world, Charley decided, and poured herself another cup of Java.

The head cook came over to see if she liked the coffee.

'You got any peanut butter?' Charley asked. 'I could do with a sandwich.'