Saucer: Savage Planet

17

The flight back from the volcano on the island of Hawaii gave Charley Pine plenty of time to think. She again tapped into Solo’s memories that were embedded in the saucer’s computer. She saw Solo as an Indian, killing enemy wounded and the wounded of his own tribe who were too grievously hurt to travel. Too grievously hurt to survive. She saw him gun German airplanes in World War I, saw them fall in flames, and felt his emotions. She forgave him. Forgave him everything.

It was after midnight when she landed the saucer in front of Egg’s hangar in Missouri and Rip dropped through the hatch to open the hangar door. Inside, she set the saucer down and secured the power. She and Egg eased themselves through the hatch.

Rip closed the door, and the trio climbed the hill to Egg’s house. Turned on lights. Egg busied himself in the kitchen making a meal. Rip went upstairs, found another box of cartridges, filled the Winchester’s magazine and his pockets, grabbed an empty grocery bag and trekked off to Egg’s mailbox by the front gate. It was full. In the darkness of a Missouri night, listening to the night sounds, alert for anything, Rip emptied the mailbox into the sack and walked along the road through the woods back to the house.

In addition to all the usual mail, there were dozens of letters from children addressed to Adam Solo, in care of Arthur Cantrell. Rip and Charley read a few of them, then had to quit. Their emotions were too raw.

After a quiet, subdued meal, the three of them went to bed. Charley found she wanted and needed Rip badly. With his rifle propped against the dresser, they made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

P. J. O’Reilly briefed the president about the saucer going into orbit from Lake Mead. The National Guard in Phoenix had had two helicopters stolen the day before, and they were seen on the ramp of the Grand Canyon Airport when a chartered 747 dropped the pharmaceutical titans. The president told him to have the National Park Service look around the canyon when the sun came up.

Just before he went to bed, the president was told about the saucer arriving in Hawaii and soon departing. An aide woke him up later to inform him the saucer was back in Missouri at Egg Cantrell’s farm.

The president lay in the darkness thinking about things. He suspected the pharma moguls had been outmaneuvered and perhaps outfought by Rip Cantrell and Charley Pine. Now there was a pair to draw to. It seemed logical to the president that those two thought Douglas and Murkowsky were no longer threats or they wouldn’t be hiding in plain sight at the Cantrell farm. Along with Adam Solo. The self-proclaimed alien. The guy who stole the Roswell saucer after it was raised from the Atlantic, stole it right from under Harrison Douglas’ nose.

He reviewed the few moments he had spent with Adam Solo … what, ten days ago? It seemed like ten years. Yet he remembered that humorless face, the eyes that bored right into you, almost as if the guy were reading your thoughts. Solo … the guy who got the whole world fired up.

A pox on him!

Ah me.

When are these damned aliens going to arrive? The spring is getting wound tighter and tighter. That starship is circling the earth, almost every whacko, nutcase, screwball and nincompoop who doesn’t live near Washington is on his way here, the politicians are over the edge of sanity promising their constituents a Fountain of Youth pill … and the people most responsible for this state of affairs are probably in bed in Missouri sleeping like babies.

As it happened, he was right about the sleeping.

Late the next morning Uncle Egg, Rip and Charley awoke to the sound of rain on the windows. They snuggled a while in bed, then finally dressed and went downstairs. The smell of coffee and bacon frying assaulted them as they descended the stairs. Uncle Egg was busy, busy, busy, wearing an apron and wielding a spatula.

Rip leaned his rifle in a corner; then he and Charley dived into fried eggs and potatoes, bacon and sausage. There was no bread. Egg apologized. The bread had gone moldy and he had thrown it out for the squirrels and birds.

The television in the corner blared away. The White House had announced that the people in the starship had talked to them and were going to land tomorrow, the announcer said. The president, the first granddaughter, and all the members of her fourth-grade class, plus a delegation of scientists, would meet the intergalactic voyagers. Tomorrow, the announcer assured his audience, would be the most historic day in the history of the planet. Tomorrow.

Rip finished his breakfast and went over to the coffeepot for a refill.

“Too bad Adam Solo won’t be around to see it,” Rip said sadly.

Uncle Egg paused in his kitchen duties and watched the raindrops smear the kitchen window. After a moment, he shook his head and went back to scrubbing a frying pan. From where she sat at the counter Charley Pine could see that he was weeping.

“Hey, you two,” she said. “Adam Solo lived a long life, a life filled with living and love and adventure. Stop the moping: He would tell you that. He told you that someday he would see us on the other side. Let’s rejoice. All of us will come to our end eventually, and after that … well, he had faith. We should too.”

Egg swabbed at his eyes. Rip put his coffee cup on the counter and hugged Charley. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

Egg dried his hands on a towel and said, “I’m thinking of going to town. Going to visit the local television station and tell them what happened in the Grand Canyon. Tell the world that Solo is dead.”

Rip nodded his concurrence. “Someone is going to find that shot-up chopper and those bodies on the mesa before long,” he mused. “Might be better getting our version out there before the FBI swoops down and arrests us.”

“Charley?” Egg asked. “What do you think?”

“Better put on a tie and jacket, Uncle Egg. We’ll hold the fort and watch you on the tube.”

So Egg suited up, got into his pickup and drove away.

Charley poured herself another cup of coffee and began opening random letters to Solo. After reading two or three, she passed them to Rip with the comment, “Someone should answer these.”

“Let’s each pick one to answer,” Rip suggested. “Then I need to refuel the saucer and clean it out, just in case we have to boogie again.”

Charley took back a letter from a girl who said she was twelve years old. She wanted to know how Solo liked living on earth, and if he was looking forward to going home.

With paper and a pen, Charley sat for a moment composing her thoughts, then wrote:

Charley was still answering letters an hour later when Rip scampered into the kitchen and turned on Egg’s counter television and flipped the channel to the one he wanted.

There was Uncle Egg. The caption below his visage read ARTHUR CANTRELL.

The local host was wise enough to stay out of the picture and merely let Egg tell it, which he did. About Adam Solo coming to the farm, about the president and the Big Pharma moguls, about Canada and Australia and the Grand Canyon.

Uncle Egg described the battle of the canyon in detail. He gave Charley and Rip all the credit. He explained about burying Adam Solo, who fell to his death after being shot again by Johnny Murkowsky, in a cauldron of molten lava in the Kilauea volcano on the island of Hawaii.

When Egg ran out of things to say — the interview took forty-five minutes — the off-camera questioner prodded him on his thoughts about the aliens’ visit tomorrow to Washington. Egg begged off. “I am not the one to comment on that,” he said. “The event will speak for itself.”

That was about it.

Rip flipped channels and found that the networks had shared the feed from the Missouri small-town station. Fox was running the entire interview a second time.

Rip turned the television off and sat staring at his toes.

“What are you thinking, Ripper?”

“I think the comfortable little world you and I grew up in is gone forever,” he said slowly. “I am not sure whether that’s good or bad. I’m going to miss it, though.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Charley shot back.

The doorbell rang. Rip glanced out the kitchen window. “It’s a television crew.” He snatched up the Winchester, checked that there was a round in the chamber and went to open the front door.

“Mr. Cantrell,” the female reporter said as a male with a camera on his shoulder stood so he could get them both in the picture, “we’re with WXYZ-TV. I wonder if you would be so good as to show us your saucer?”

Rip glanced over his shoulder at Charley, who was standing behind him in the kitchen doorway. She shrugged.

“Sure,” he said without enthusiasm. “It’s in the hangar. Follow me.” He led them down the hill on the path he had trod since he was a boy.

The president was hastily summoned from a cabinet meeting by P. J. O’Reilly to watch the Arthur Cantrell interview on television. The president motioned Petty Officer Third Class Hennessey to sit beside him, and together they watched Uncle Egg.

“So Solo’s dead,” the president murmured.

“And Johnny Murkowsky and Harrison Douglas,” O’Reilly said. He passed the president a message from the Department of the Interior. One stolen National Guard helicopter had been found damaged and abandoned at the Grand Canyon Airport. The totally destroyed carcass of the other was on top of a mesa in the canyon. There were six bodies on the ground near the shattered chopper, four more in the canyon and three on a nearby rim. Many of the bodies were flattened “like road-killed possums.” Lots of weapons lying around. Preliminary indications were most of the men were thugs from a Philadelphia Mafia family. Murkowsky had been flattened, and Douglas was dead of apparent massive internal injuries.

The president handed the message back and concentrated on Egg Cantrell’s image. Listened. Watched his face. Wondered what he was leaving out.

When the interview was over, this network went back to a graphic feed from NASA that showed the current location of the starship in orbit. It was currently leaving the Indian peninsula, ninety-six miles above the surface of the planet. The president sat watching the blinking symbol as it moved, almost as if he were mesmerized. Finally O’Reilly turned off the television with the remote.

“These aliens might be a bit unhappy tomorrow if they think they are going to rescue their castaway, Solo, from the cannibals,” O’Reilly said pointedly.

“Bad news rides a fast horse,” Hennessey observed. “Bet they know as much as we do right now. They’ll have until tomorrow to digest it. I doubt if it will be a problem. The United States government didn’t kill Solo — criminals did.”

The nation’s chief magistrate shook his head, as if he were clearing his thoughts. “So how are we coming on the welcoming ceremony tomorrow?” he asked O’Reilly.

“We’re doing an honor guard walk-though. The kids and teachers and scientists won’t be here until later this evening. The television networks are setting up cameras and lights. Beyoncé has volunteered to sing the national anthem … for free.”

The president made a noise. “She’d probably be underdressed for this,” he said sourly. “This isn’t the Super Bowl. No singers.”

“Do you want the honor guard to have loaded weapons, just in case?”

“Holy catfish, O’Reilly! Are you nuts? These people just crossed interstellar space, for God’s sake. They didn’t come all this way to gun down people on the White House lawn in front of every camera on earth!”

“You hope they are people.”

“You’re damn right I hope. I don’t care if they turn out to be giant green beetles, we’re going to do it my way! I’m the president!”

“Yes, Your Magnificence.”

“What?” asked the surprised Hennessey.

“Forget it,” the president said and shooed O’Reilly away. When the door closed behind the chief of staff, the president explained to Hennessey. “He thinks he should be president and I should be running an Ace Hardware selling nuts and bolts.”

“Oh.”

“My dad was in hardware. Wish I’d taken his advice and helped him with the store instead of getting into politics. Oh, well, all that’s water under the bridge now.”

“I see…”

“Have any suggestions?” the president asked the Oklahoma sailor.

“Maybe you should ask the Cantrells and Charley Pine to fly their saucer here in the morning. Seems like a good opportunity to return these saucers to their rightful owners. Get rid of them once and for all.”

The president thought that the best advice he had heard in years.

He snagged the telephone on the desk and spoke to the White House operator. “Get me Arthur Cantrell’s residence, Toad Summit, Missouri.” The telephone operators in the White House were justly famous for getting anybody anywhere on the line when the president wanted to chat.

The president hung up and waited for the operators to work their magic. Thought about getting rid of all these saucers. Of life getting back to political backstabbing, scurrilous lies and shady deals. Of nothing more on the morning plate than Islamic jihadists and the euro crisis, Chinese ambitions and nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran. Normal. The president longed for normal.

“Want a drink?” he asked Hennessey.

“One surely wouldn’t hurt,” Hennessey said with a smile.

The president got his bourbon bottle from his desk drawer and poured into two glasses. He didn’t have any ice. Hennessey didn’t seem to care.

When the phone rang, the operator told him she had Charlotte Pine on the line.

“Ms. Pine, this is the president. How are you?”

“Fine, sir.”

“Mr. Egg around?”

“No. He went to town for a television interview and hasn’t yet returned.”

“Yes, I watched that interview. Too bad about Dr. Douglas and Johnny Murkowsky.”

“And Adam Solo.”

“Indeed. A tragedy.”

“Those cretins attacked us and we defended ourselves. Are we going to get any flak about that?”

“Not from the federal government, Ms. Pine. I can’t speak for the Arizona authorities, but I imagine they have better things to do than hassle you folks about dead pill pushers and Mafia soldiers.”

“Let’s hope,” she said coolly.

“The reason I called,” the president said smoothly, for he was a smooth man, “is to invite you, Rip and Arthur Cantrell to fly your saucer to Washington tomorrow. You can land it right here on the lawn. It would be terrific if you could get here about eleven so we can have time to chat before the aliens arrive. They said they’d show up about noon, in time for lunch.”

“How did you hear from them?”

“Well, it’s sort of weird. Actually, very weird. I just heard this voice in my head. I said ‘Hello’ out loud and we talked. So either I’m going crazy, which my wife and the pundits have predicted for years, or that was a real communication.”

“It was real communication, all right. They read your thoughts. Did you say lunch? Uncle Egg would like that. We’ve been on a very low-cal diet this past week.”

“Indeed. Lunch it is,” the president said. “See you tomorrow.”

When the president hung up, Hennessey flashed him a thumbs-up.

The president also jabbed a thumb at the sky.

Yeah! Gonna get rid of all these saucers. Yeah!

As the president sat in the Oval Office with his drink, he tried to digest Charley Pine’s statement that the aliens read thoughts. His thoughts. Holy smokes! If he looked at an alien female with lust in his heart, like Jimmy Carter, she would know it. The polite lie would go the way of the Model T. How would politicians function? Lawyers? Marriage counselors? Priests? Lovers? Adulterers?

The people of earth, he decided, probably weren’t ready for that method of communication, which would bankrupt Apple and all the other cell phone manufacturers, plus the telephone companies and the spavined postal service, already on its last legs. The postal and communications workers unions would go nuts.

The future was arriving way too fast.

“Here’s to mendacity,” he said to Petty Officer Hennessey, then raised his glass and drank.

“So do we sally forth to Washington in the morning?” Uncle Egg asked Rip and Charley. He had stopped at the supermarket in town for a load of fresh groceries and was now grilling three steaks. They were sizzling nicely, which reminding him of the fresh fish they and Adam Solo had roasted on sticks in the old Viking hideaway beside Hudson’s Bay. Of course, Charley had complimented him on his television interview and told him and Rip about her telephone conversation with the president and his invitation.

Rip was drinking a beer. “Why not?” he asked. “Gotta confess, I’m curious about Solo’s people. Would be fun to meet them up close and personal. Just to say we did.”

“My concern is,” said Charley Pine, “what are we going to do afterward?” She was having a glass of white wine.

“Do you mean immediately, or in the larger sense?” Rip asked, scrutinizing her face.

“Good question, Charley,” Egg said, and turned over the steaks as he talked. “After you’ve had the world’s greatest adventure, indeed, where do you go from here?”

“Precisely,” Charley agreed.

Rip shook his head as he eyed his lady. “Did you see the size of those royalty checks that came in the mail from the computer people? We can ski down an Alp, canoe down the Amazon, camp out under a bridge in Paris, stalk man-eating lions in darkest Africa, or sail the Pacific in our own yacht. Or all of the above.”

Charley Pine gave Rip the Look. “Maybe I’ll just go get a real flying job,” she said and strode away toward the kitchen to refill her glass.

“Guess we do have a problem, Uncle,” Rip said thoughtfully.

“Looks like it.”

“One we aren’t going to be able to solve today. So tomorrow morning let’s pack clean underwear and toothbrushes and saucer off to Washington to watch our representative democratic government in action. The day after tomorrow is going to have to take care of itself.”

“If you still like your steaks medium rare, yours is ready,” Egg said.

“I still do,” Rip replied. “I’ll get a plate.” He rushed off for the kitchen.

Egg Cantrell shook his head. Well, Rip and Charley had their own lives to lead — and they were going to have to figure out how to do it. Just like the rest of us.

Rip came back with his plate and a telephone, which he offered to his uncle. “It’s your girlfriend,” he said with a smile. “Professor Deehring. She saw your interview. Poor woman thought you looked handsome.”