Saucer: Savage Planet

15

Adam Solo lay inside the ancient cliff dwelling watching the sunlit sky through the window, which was just a hole in the stone wall. His wound pained him greatly, yet he was thinking about the people he had known here. It was so long ago … and they were of course long dead. Dead for almost seven hundred years.

There had been a man and his wife, and kids, and the wife’s mother, and several young men from the tribe who had yet to find wives. In this place they had planned their lives, their future, their children’s future. They were safe here from the nomads who would have killed and robbed them. Safe. On this tiny ledge facing this great canyon.

There was food if they worked hard to get it, water was accessible. Survival was the challenge. What more did men need?

Indeed. What does anyone need but people to love and cherish, food, water, clothes and shelter?

The Indians had lived their lives, loved, raised children, passed on what they knew and surrendered to their own mortality eventually, when enough years had passed, leaving another generation to carry on … and a generation after that, and so on.

Solo knew that was the way of life. The way of life wherever it was found in the universe.

So he lay on a sleeping bag trying to ignore the pain, thinking of these things and of those people who had lived here whom he had known. Remembering.

Ah, I have too many memories, he thought. Too many people who have gone on before me, leaving me here to struggle and try to survive. And in the end, I was shot by a fool who saw the glimmer of a big reward. Those Indians who lived here, the Vikings, the Iroquois, the white settlers who tried to wrestle a living from the land and so often failed, what would they have thought of the Internet? Of flying saucers? Of starships?

Most of those people had been happy, like the Indians who had lived in this house overlooking the Grand Canyon. Happy! They had been contented with their lives in a way he had never been.

He had always been searching for a way home. For a way back to the life he had once known. Oh, he had tried. Tried to be as content as the people around him. Tried to be content with a good hunt, a good crop, or with rain when the fields needed it. Tried, but it was never enough.

Now as he lay in pain, trying to ignore it, he thought about being content. Somehow that great gift had escaped him. He had never been content. Never accepted life on its own terms. Always he wanted to escape from this savage planet. Wanted a starship to rescue him.

What a fool he had been! A fool!

He had everything life had to offer for hundreds of years, over a thousand, over half a hundred earth generations, and hadn’t appreciated it.

He could hear Egg and Charley and Rip talking outside. They were worried about him!

Adam Solo began weeping.

Soon he drifted off to sleep.

He awoke when Charley Pine tried to gently roll him over to check the wound below his right shoulder blade.

“Sorry,” she muttered and rolled him over anyway. She took the sodden bandage off, left the bit of rag in the exit wound and used one of Rip’s old tee shirts as a body bandage.

When she rolled him back onto his back, her face was drawn, pale. “You’re still bleeding,” she said. “No doubt internally too. You really need a doctor that can pump you full of platelets.”

“Too big a risk,” he muttered.

“Don’t be such a cynic.”

You know as well as I do what might happen if a DNA sample from me fell into the wrong hands. The people of this planet aren’t ready for knowledge like that. They aren’t politically, ethically or morally ready. When they are, they’ll get there by themselves.

“You’re dying. You know that, of course.” It was a flat statement, not a question.

I should have died a hundred times already. I’m ready for what comes next. If anything.

“Christ, you are a cynic!”

I’ve seen many people die. It’s as natural as going to sleep. I don’t fear it.

“So what was your closest escape from the grim reaper?”

Adam Solo thought about that, sorting through the memories. Finally he told her, It was a cattle drive, bringing a herd up from Texas. Crossing the Canadian my horse got into quicksand. I threw a rope at something on the bank — I forget what — and missed. The horse struggled and sank and I tried to get off and got trapped. If I had gone down with the horse I would have died. I knew it. My body’s ability to repair itself would have counted for nothing. Then a friend of mine rode up and threw me a rope. He dragged me out. His name was Billy Vance, and he was nineteen, a young nineteen, full of himself.

“So you made it.”

Yeah. Lived to die another day.

“So what happened to Billy Vance?” Her face was serious, pensive, as she tried to understand.

We made it to Dodge; the owner sold the herd and paid us off. I talked Billy into going with me to Colorado to hunt for gold, and he agreed. But on our last night in Dodge he caught a gambler cheating at cards and called him on it. The gambler got a bullet into Billy and two into me. Billy died and I didn’t. A month later, when I recovered, I went to Colorado by myself.

“You’ve buried a lot of friends.”

More than I care to remember.

“What happened to the gambler?” she asked.

He didn’t make it. Billy and I each got a slug into him. Took him a long week to die. They buried him with his marked deck.

“We need to bring the saucer back and get you to a doctor.”

No.

She crawled through the low door and went back out onto the ledge above the kiva. A good woman, he reflected. He hoped Rip realized just how good. Maybe he did. That Rip … he was a lot like Billy Vance. Billy with the wicked smile and crooked teeth and terrific thirst for life. Billy Vance, dead of a gunshot wound to the gut at the age of nineteen, but game all the way.

Solo lay thinking about those days long ago, about the American West and the Indians he loved and longhorns and thunderstorms, blistering hot endless days on horseback, nights of exhausted sleep and the cow towns at the end of the trail. Thinking of the men. Companions for the trail of life. If only he could do it all again, see all those men and women he had known and loved through the centuries one more time, hear their laughter and voices …

He had been so blessed. Adam Solo knew that. That fool who stole the saucer long ago and marooned Solo on this savage planet had done him a great favor. The thought gave him peace.

“We need a panel of experts,” P. J. O’Reilly had told the president. “A panel of experts will give the public the assurance that you are talking to the right people, getting yourself fully informed.”

“Experts in what?” the president had asked skeptically.

“Oh, you know, whatever. Experts are experts, people with degrees from out of town. It’s a PR thing. Keep the Joe Six-Packs calmed down.”

The president groaned inwardly. He was certainly a master of listening to bullshit and making appropriate noises, but he doubted if he would get any light at all from any group O’Reilly could assemble. Another waste of time. Yet he was politician enough to appreciate that O’Reilly had a point. The art of politics is to appear to be leading, even when groping in the dark. Petty Officer Third Class Hennessey from Oklahoma had nodded sagely, so the president had reluctantly agreed to an audience with some “experts.”

Now, as he faced the hastily summoned group, he was tempted to make some excuse to dismiss them, but refrained. The White House photographer was snapping pictures, and the mouthpiece, the press secretary, was standing against the wall, ready to spin the event for the media in the White House Press Room.

O’Reilly introduced the delegation. There was a philosophy professor from Harvard, an astrogeophysicist from the University of Houston, a scientist from NASA and two women from the National Science Foundation who had been looking for intelligent life in the universe for some years now, at government expense, with no results to show for their efforts. The president was tempted to ask if the women had checked in Washington but held his tongue. There was also some guy who wrote bestseller science fiction, none of which the president had ever read. He was famous, though. Even the guy from Harvard smiled warmly at him. All were duly introduced, and all had something to say.

The president listened carefully.

The experts agreed, more or less. The aliens would be more technically advanced than we are and would have high moral and ethical principals. Very high. They would not be eaters of flesh. Would not be here to conquer and enslave. Would be very “progressive,” according to the Harvard philosopher. Since that was a loaded political term here on this little round rock, in this day and age, the presidential eyebrows rose a fraction of a millimeter. The chief executive glanced at Hennessey, whose face was deadpan.

“What about weapons?” the national security adviser asked. O’Reilly had let him attend this soiree, the president thought sourly.

Well, of course the aliens had weapons. The Sahara saucer and the Roswell saucer both had antimatter weapons; technological progress being what it is, no doubt the coming alien delegation had death rays of some sort to protect themselves from monsters and predators and dragons on whatever planet they happened to visit.

“Dragons?” said the national security adviser.

The president glanced at Petty Officer Hennessey, who had one eyebrow raised. The president had always admired people who could do that. He had tried for years but couldn’t.

“Who knows what forms of life other planets in the universe might contain?” the science-fiction writer asked rhetorically, warming to his subject. “They must be prepared. We must assume they are; ergo, superior weaponry.”

The universal nods of affirmation from all the experts silenced the national security adviser.

Ergo, indeed!

When O’Reilly finally ushered the experts out, the president asked the petty officer what he thought.

“These aliens are just sailors. Kind of like Christopher Columbus’ guys. They fly starships because it pays fairly well, but the brains are back on the home planet, wherever that is. These guys didn’t design and build the starship or figure out how to fly it. They will be just a bunch of average Joes. You’ll see.”

The president felt reassured. With Amanda there at the great event, he didn’t want anything to go wrong. His wife and daughter would never forgive him. Of course, there was the future of the human species to consider too: Aliens, First Contact, and all that.

The experts had agreed unanimously: The future of the humanity, indeed, the future of the whole planet and every species on it, hinged on how he, the president, handled this first meeting with the representatives of an advanced civilization with unknown but extraordinary capabilities. After all, voyaging between the stars … “Not to put any pressure on you, Mr. President, but facts are facts.”

Back in his office the president remarked to Hennessey, “Damn, this will be historic,” and glanced at the television, which was still showing that saucer sitting over the South Lawn with no visible means of support.

“Yes, sir,” the navy said.

Just a bunch of sailors driving a starship. Yeah. Hey, how are you? Did you have a nice trip?

Amanda wouldn’t be here for a few hours, so the president asked Petty Officer Third Class Hennessey, “Want another drink?”

“One more wouldn’t hurt,” the sailor admitted and held out his glass.

P. J. O’Reilly was shook after the experts left. He went to his office and had a snort from a Scotch bottle he kept in his desk. This time His Arrogance wasn’t up to the challenges that lay before him, O’Reilly thought. He looked kinda pasty and had that sailor with him all the time now. O’Reilly had caught those glances at Hennessey when some expert had said something rather startling, something almost profound but not quite.

None of them had anything profound to say, O’Reilly thought. Rather humdrum, actually. No doubt the experts were pontificating on the networks just now — telling the boobs watching worldwide what they had told the president — and this weekend, if the aliens hadn’t destroyed Washington and the planet, they would have op-ed pieces in all the big newspapers. An expert’s reputation must be constantly polished.

O’Reilly put his face in his hands and sat that way for a long moment. If this went bad, he was going to be dead sooner rather than later. The aliens might decide that all humans were equivalent to stink bugs and just step on them. Or they might want some humans to take aboard their ship as protein. Protein must be hard to come by on a starship. How many cows or hogs or chickens could one of those things carry, anyway?

Hollywood movies from the past sprang to mind. He remembered the one in which a gruesome alien sprang from someone’s stomach. It had taken a really sick mind to think of that! And the aliens as zombies! Then there was the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Predator: invisible ten-foot-tall sport hunters who crossed interstellar space to kill for the thrill of it.

Oh, baby …

He put the bottle away and tried to arrange his thoughts.

What if some horror along those lines was really what First Contact was going to be like? The president and that kid sailor didn’t seem worried, but the old man always did lack imagination. The kid from Oklahoma … well, who knew? Two dimwits had found each other.

P. J. O’Reilly looked again at the TV in the corner with its permanent display of the hovering saucer just outside the building. What to make of that? What kind of twisted intelligence would park a saucer there, of all places?

The phone on his desk buzzed. His executive assistant. O’Reilly picked it up and grunted.

“That saucer that came in from orbit went back up, or so say the FAA and air force. They aren’t absolutely certain, but they think it’s probably the same saucer. Thing’s now in a polar orbit.”

“Has the press got this?”

“Not to my knowledge. We’re keeping a solid lid on information about saucer and starship movements. Should I inform the president?”

O’Reilly thought His Greatness had enough on his plate just now. “No, and don’t let this leak.” After all, even if hundreds of saucers were scattered from pole to pole in every pond, lake and fishing hole, what could the U.S. government do about it?

O’Reilly was meditating on what might happen if the aliens weren’t the space-cruising diplomats the president seemed to think they would be when the press secretary popped in without knocking. He handed O’Reilly a list of the points he intended to make with the press.

“The First Granddaughter will arrive in an hour,” the mouthpiece said brightly as the chief of staff scanned the list. He kept his job, the chief of staff knew, because he was a consummate actor who could make the most outrageous lies sound plausible.

“We’ve got television crews from every network on the planet out there,” he continued smugly, “to film Amanda coming down the stairs of the helicopter and the president waiting to welcome her. I called her mom to ensure Amanda is bringing her teddy bear. Having Amanda here for the alien arrival has really calmed down the crowds and pols. That teddy bear will be the icing on the cake. Her arrival will make her the most popular female on the planet. Great television, great politics.”

“Let’s hope the aliens don’t eat her first as an hors d’oeuvre,” O’Reilly snarled.

The press secretary’s smile disappeared. “Yeah,” he said slowly, his face growing pale. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a moron?”

“My ex-wife. She said that’s why I landed this gig.”

“Get out of here,” P. J. O’Reilly snapped, pointing toward the door. “And knock next time, dammit!”

“So the list is okay?”

“This administration has the situation well in hand — that’s the company line. If you panic the peasants, I’ll have your empty little head bronzed and use it as a paperweight.”

“What about the Russian government? The Russian president says they have known for dozens of years that aliens are here, sneaking around, planning to take over.”

“Aliens could probably do a better job of running Russia than those idiots in the Kremlin.”

“And what about the French government? They say—”

“The aliens can land in Paris if they want the French government’s considered, enlightened, progressive opinion. Or if they want to gobble garlic-flavored snail-eaters. By God, I wish they would make a French port call!”

After the door closed behind the press dude, he got out the Scotch bottle and had another swig. “Screw the French,” O’Reilly muttered.

With bottle in hand he sat staring at the saucer on the television screen. After two more snorts he swiveled his chair and looked out the window at the real thing.

There was a delegation of Philadelphia thugs waiting on the tarmac at Grand Canyon Airport when the Boeing 747–400 deposited Harrison Douglas, Johnny Murkowsky and their mercenaries, whose ranks were swelled by six men waiting for them. Nearby were parked two National Guard attack helicopters.

The two pharma moguls conferred with their troops.

“We know where they are,” one Philly soldier told Douglas. “Got them pinpointed with infrared. Used one of the choppers.”

Johnny Murk looked the choppers over. They had sensors and machine guns sprouting all over and looked rather fierce. “Where in hell did you guys get those things?”

“You can get anything on this planet if you are willing to pay for it. Douglas said you were.”

“Damn right. We want Adam Solo, dead or alive, and hang the cost.”

The Philadelphia contingent smiled benignly. It looked as if they had struck the mother lode. This was almost as good as having access to the U.S. Mint.

“What are we waiting for?” Harrison Douglas shouted, loud enough to be heard by all the troops. “Let’s man up and go get those bastards before the sun sets.”

Johnny Murk put a hand on Douglas’ arm. “Let’s you and me stay out of the choppers. I’ve got this feeling…”

“Bad vibes?”

“Those choppers look tough, but a saucer would make short work of them. Let’s let these guys earn their pay, and you and I will take a guy with a sniper rifle out as close as we can get to the edge. Now wouldn’t be a good time to wind up dead.”

Most days aren’t, Douglas reflected soberly. They climbed into a van with a shooter with a rifle — his name was Vinnie, he said — and away they went. They were through the gate in the airport fence when the helicopters went over their heads, heading for the rim … and Adam Solo.

The helicopter carrying the first granddaughter landed on the White House lawn just a hundred feet from the stationary saucer. When the door opened Amanda emerged with her teddy bear clutched in her arms. The president was there to meet her. It was the most-photographed arrival at the White House in the history of television. Every network on the globe carried Amanda’s arrival live. The queen of England and Vladimir Putin didn’t get a reception like this, nor did the president of China.

A band played lustily. Amanda waved to the cameras and federal employee gawkers as she walked across the red carpet through a double line of saluting soldiers, sailors and airmen standing at attention, the honor guard, to her grandfather, the president. She gave him a hug, kept a firm grip on the bear with her free arm and took his hand to walk into the White House. Halfway there they paused to examine the hovering saucer. Amanda pointed at some feature, the president nodded knowingly, and they resumed their stroll toward the Executive Mansion.

Reporters shouted questions, which the president and First Granddaughter ignored, yet Amanda let go of her grandfather’s hand to wave. Then she again grasped the presidential appendage and they disappeared into the presidential mausoleum together.

The talking heads on television instantly began analyzing the Little Arrival. She had done it well, they agreed unanimously. The president looked relaxed, and everything seemed well in hand. Experts speculated about what saucer feature Amanda found interesting in light of the fact there were no obvious knobs or appendages protruding from that dark, perfect, ovoid shape.

Obviously the White House wasn’t sweating First Contact with the aliens, the Big Arrival, and the rest of humanity shouldn’t either. After all, they knew things at the White House that the rest of us didn’t. Or so the commentators said.

Perhaps, one curmudgeon suggested on Fox, the Russians had shared what they knew about the aliens with the United States government. This comment led another iconoclast to wonder why the Russians knew more about the aliens than the good guys in the white hats. Away they went on this tangent. One network segued away to various politicians for their thoughts. A competitor network sent its crew across the street from the White House to Lafayette Park for man-in-the-street interviews, carefully ensuring that they got a diverse sample of ages, races, genders and airheads.

Another producer, more enterprising, aired a live interview with a group of old farts forted up in Idaho. The aliens were already here, their spokesman said, and were probably running the White House and Congress. That was the only logical explanation for the last ten years of political theater in Washington. The militia in Idaho shook their rifles at the cameras and flipped the world the bird.

In his office, P. J. O’Reilly nodded in silent agreement at the comments of the forted-up crazies in Idaho, then used his television remote to surf on to yet another network.

Jim Bob Spicer’s face appeared on the screen, and his booming voice filled the room. “Washington is at the root of this evil. The wickedness of the sinners who inhabit this Sodom on the Potomac has dragged us to the edge of the pit. We must repent to earn salvation!” Spicer had more to say, a lot more.

There, P. J. O’Reilly thought, is a truly poisonous man. He had another snort from his Scotch bottle.

The sound of the helicopters, faint at first but getting louder, alerted Charley, Rip and Uncle Egg. The sound began echoing from the cliffs of the great canyon and sounded somewhat like a percussion band gone mad.

Rip darted into the first room of the ancient cliff house and grabbed his old Winchester and the rest of his box of shells. He climbed to the top level of the house — it was only two stories — and knelt to look out a window. The first helicopter, an evil-looking Apache, circled some distance away.

Then he went back downstairs to join Charley and Egg. “What now, Ripper?”

“Better get that saucer here, Charley, if you can. We’re going to need it.”

“Take a while,” Egg suggested.

“Better late than never.”

Adam Solo dragged himself toward them. The bandage on his back, under his shirt, was leaking again, staining his shirt with blood.

“Just sit here,” Charley said, helping him seat himself against a wall. “You should have stayed where you were.”

“They want me,” Solo said. “Or my body. If they kill me, throw my body into the canyon, then use the saucer to shoot them down.”

Rip said nothing, merely checked that the Model 94 had a shell in the chamber and set the hammer on half-cock. He didn’t take his eyes off the helicopter. It flew out of view to the right.

“They’ll put people on the top of this little mesa,” Charley told him. “They’ll rappel down. When they’re on the ropes, shoot ’em.”

“Better to just scare them off until the saucer arrives,” Egg advised. He was worried. Who knew how many thugs the Big Pharma guys had out there? How, he wondered, had the bad guys found them in this aerie? If the thugs were here, were the U.S. government’s legions close by, coming fast?

Almost on cue, Rip said, “Those are Army or National Guard helicopters.”

“Maybe these are the good guys,” Egg said hopefully, his voice rising in pitch.

The Apache appeared again, this time from their right. Now a loudhailer could be heard. Amid the whop-whop echoes and exhaust noises, the words were hard to distinguish. “… Throw down your weapons and come out with your hands up … two minutes … we only want Solo … let you go.”

“I didn’t get all of that,” Rip muttered.

“They just threatened to kill us all if we don’t surrender,” Charley Pine said acidly.

“Saucer on its way?”

“Oh yes.”

Now they heard a chopper on the mesa directly behind them, just out of sight from the Anasazi ruin where they were.

“They’re rappelling down,” Charley shouted, because the engine and rotor noises were now very loud.

“Get your heads down,” Rip roared and settled in with his rifle on the sill of the window. Almost as if he had planned it, the chopper turned so that he had a good look at the right engine nacelle. About a hundred yards, he figured.

He cocked the rifle, aimed and fired. The report was almost lost amid the noise. He worked the lever, chambering another round, and fired at the engine nacelle again. Then a third time.

The chopper accelerated away to their right with its tail up and nose down.

Rip and Charley saw it at the same time: a wisp of smoke trailing behind the machine, which climbed straight ahead for the rim of the canyon, perhaps three hundred yards away and several hundred yards above them.

Charley Pine pounded Rip on his back.

Her second slap missed. Rip rushed through the low door that led outside. He kept close to the adobe wall of the Anasazi house and worked his way to the corner of the ledge. It sounded as if one of the choppers were right over his head.

What, he wondered, if Uncle Egg was right? Could these be army dudes? What if he shot some soldier? How would he live with that?

Rip scanned the ledge above as the sound of the helicopter changed pitch. It sounded as if it were moving away …

He leaned out slightly to see if he could see it above the mesa … and a bullet smacked into the rock just inches from his head, spattering him with rock chips.

Holy…!

Rip launched himself flat on his stomach as another bullet smashed into the wall — right where his head had been.

He got behind a pile of old stones that had crumbled from an Anasazi tower and looked through a small gap in the stones with one eye, examining the edge of the rim. Two men were standing … one with binoculars, it looked like.

Then he saw the prone man, obviously behind a rifle.

A bullet struck the rock just in front of him and threw rock dust in his eyes. He curled up in a fetal position and rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his vision.

That took maybe twenty seconds. The helo above the mesa was gone now. Soon someone was going to come down the ropes, trying to get onto this ledge.

His eyes were blurry … He blinked mightily and rubbed them some more. Eased up to look through the gap in the stones.

The two guys were still standing there like a couple of tourists from Iowa seeing the big ditch for the first time.

Rip eased the rifle through the gap. Cocked it. Rested it right on the stone. He put the front bead on the man with the binoculars and lowered the rear of the rifle so the bead was sticking up a little in the notch.

Then he squeezed that old Model 94 off ever so gently. He knew the muzzle flash would give him away, so he ducked down and was pulling the rifle toward him when another bullet smashed into the rock right above him and whined away.

“I’m hit! I’m hit! The bastard shot me!” Harrison Douglas fell to the snow clutching his right arm with his left hand. He looked down. Blood oozed between his fingers.

The prone shooter didn’t look up. He had his cheek weld and was trying to reacquire the kid on the ledge. Lucky. The kid was lucky. He was bobbing and weaving and staying down, showing himself too briefly for the rifleman to get a shot.

As Douglas moaned, Johnny Murkowsky pounded on the rifleman’s leg. “They told me you were good. Prove it! Get that kid! Get him, I say!”

“You wanta do the shootin’, old man?”

Johnny Murk whacked him again. “That’s your job, you Philadelphia moron. But if you keep missing, I might as well. Couldn’t do any worse.”

The sniper kicked Johnny Murk. As the mogul recoiled away, he settled back into position and looked again through his scope. Actually, his target — he never thought of people he was shooting at as people — had found a good position, by luck or happenstance or … skill? The kid had made an excellent shot, 312 yards. Wounded his target but didn’t kill; still, a fine shot for open sights.

Harrison Douglas lay writhing in the snow, which was three or four inches deep. His wound, bleeding from both the front and back of his arm, was beginning to hurt terribly. Maybe the bone was broken. He tried to move his hand and couldn’t. He moaned softly. Johnny Murk and the rifleman ignored him.

As he lay behind the pile of stones, Rip Cantrell reloaded his rifle. He filled up the tubular magazine and made sure he had a live round in the chamber. He left the rifle cocked.

He was safe here behind this rock pile, he thought. Safe enough, anyway. That sniper couldn’t see him.

With the rifle reloaded and ready, he lay waiting, watching the ledge above him. They would have to come over that, he thought. Rappel over the edge and try to get onto this Anasazi ledge. There was only the narrowest of ledges leading away from the cliff dwelling behind him, a path so narrow that only a suicidal fool would try it. The far end of the ledge ended in a sheer wall; a great slab of the old rock had slipped away sometime in the ancient past, carrying the old Indian trail, if there had been one, with it into the great canyon.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Come and get it.”

A bullet slapped into the rock above him. Then, fifteen seconds later, another. They were trying to make him keep his head down. The bad guys were coming …

Above him, a rope came snaking out into space, then fell to hang vertically. Then a second one, a bit closer to the sniper. Then a third.