Saucer: The Conquest

16

The 140,000-year-old saucer Rip had dug from a sandstone ledge in the Sahara Desert crept slowly through the mountains of the moon a hundred feet above the valley floors. Charley Pine sat in the pilot's seat wearing the headband. The sight reticle of the antimatter weapon was projected on the canopy in front of her. She saw it with every sweep of her eyes.

Rip stood beside her holding tightly to the instrument panel and the back of her seat. He too was looking, ahead, above, as far behind as he could see, and of course to the right and left.

The cliffs were jagged, sheer jumbles of rock and lava raised billions of years ago when the moon was born, torn from proto-earth and ejected into space by the impact of a meteor. The only weathering had been through differential heating caused by the sun's unfiltered rays, and here and there huge impact marks where ancient meteors had crashed.

Yet there were gullies and canyons, as if at some time in eons past water had rushed down these slopes.

Charley flew the saucer up a canyon, rose slowly to the top of the ridge and paused there momentarily with just the canopy sticking up. She and Rip scanned carefully, looking. The sun was low in the sky, casting long, deep shadows. Mountains, ridges, cliffs in every direction. And far beyond, the lava sea.

"If he's hiding in one of these shadows, we'll never see him," Rip whispered. The only sound in the saucer was the faint, almost inaudible hum caused by liquid coursing through the reactor pipes. Beyond the saucer was a vacuum that would carry no sound. Still, Rip whispered. His palms were perspiring. Without thinking, he wiped each hand on his jeans.

Charley crossed the crest and began descending into a canyon that pointed toward the lava sea.

She and Rip had dropped from lunar orbit an hour ago and were wending their way through the mountains in the general direction of the lunar base using only the antigravity rings. On earth they were capable of lifting the saucer to a height of two hundred feet; on the moon, with its reduced gravity, they would hold the saucer twelve hundred feet above the surface, if Charley wished to keep it that high. She didn't. She was skimming the rocks, loafing along. They were still at least fifty miles away, an hour's flight at this rate of speed. Charley Pine was in no hurry.

Somewhere ahead was the other saucer, the Roswell saucer that had rested in a secret hangar in Area 51 since 1947. It would be waiting.

Jean-Paul Lalouette was probably at the controls. His job was quite simple. He had to shoot down the Sahara saucer.

Charley and Rip were absolutely certain that Pierre Artois intended to destroy the saucer they were in. His life and the lives of all his followers depended upon keeping the Roswell saucer intact, able to fly back to earth. Charley and Rip were a mortal threat.

After millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of civilization, the wheel had turned full circle. Once again the law was kill or be killed.

The saucer was still a mile or so away from the floor of the lava sea, only a hundred feet above the rock but perhaps a thousand feet in elevation above the lava, when Charley brought it to a stop in the shadow of a steep ridge that rose precipitously into the black sky.

"So where is the base?" Rip asked, still speaking softly.

Charley pointed. "About six or seven miles that way." She stared. Fortunately, in the absence of an atmosphere, the visibility was perfect. She could plainly see the base's solar panels. She could even see the radio tower. "I don't think it's there." She meant the other saucer.

"He's around," Rip said, thinking of Lalouette. He had never met the man, knew only what Charley had told him. Charley was certain, and Rip agreed, that Lalouette would be flying the Roswell saucer. Rip wondered if Lalouette had ever killed anyone.

They sat hidden in the shadow, watching and waiting. A slow hour passed, then another. Finally Charley climbed from the pilot's seat and used the makeshift toilet facility, then got something to eat and a bottle of water to drink. She stood beside Rip sipping water as the minutes ticked by.

"He's out here, somewhere," Rip remarked, "waiting for us, just like we're waiting for him."

Rip was absolutely right, of course. Jean-Paul Lalouette was hiding in a shadow cast by a ridge, about five miles from the lunar base. He had the Roswell saucer inside a meteor crater with just the canopy protruding. He too was waiting.

Lalouette had more than his share of patience, but his passenger, Newton Chadwick, certainly didn't. Chadwick didn't know the meaning of the word. He had tried to read a book, tried to study the saucer's computer via a headband and tried to nap, all to no avail.

There was a shootout coming — perhaps soon. Newton Chadwick knew that someone was going to die. Despite Lalouette's sangfroid, Chadwick thought the odds excellent that the dead men might be Lalouette and… him. We're two fools waiting for Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to come strolling along on their way to the OK Corral, he told himself. It was not a happy thought.

After hours of waiting he sealed himself inside the tiny toilet compartment and prepared an injection of youth serum. The liquid was clear and colorless. He drew the proper dose into the needle, slipped it into his arm and pushed the plunger.

He studied his reflection in the shiny metal above the sink. It wasn't much of a mirror, but it was adequate.

He looked, he decided, about mid- to late thirties. Perhaps forty.

Talk about a miracle drug — the serum had indeed stopped aging. The drawback, of course, was that he had to take the drug at regular intervals for the rest of his life. Forever! Newton Chadwick smiled broadly. Forever!

Artois had insisted that he accompany Lalouette so he could answer any questions about the saucer. This flight was an unnecessary risk, of course, but if this saucer were destroyed, the people at the lunar base would be stranded. They would die when the food ran out, because the hydro-ponic ponds couldn't make enough, or when the chemicals that were used to generate oxygen and scrub the air were exhausted.

Even if the number of people were lowered to match the food supply — by whatever method — the chemicals were finite, and inevitably equipment casualties would take their toll. The machinery that scrubbed and purified the air and recycled human waste would eventually fail to work. The machinery in the lunar base wasn't like the machinery in the saucer, which had been built to essentially last forever without failure, or so it seemed.

Chadwick removed a comb from his pocket and used it on his hair. He tugged at a tangle — and lo, the whole tangled knot of red hair came out with the comb.

He stared at the comb and the wad of hair. He grabbed his hair with his free hand, tugged on it — and more came out.

God in heaven! He was losing his hair.

This wasn't supposed to be happening!

He leaned toward the mirror, blinked mightily — for some reason, his vision was a little fuzzy — and stared at the face that stared at him.

Crow's-feet around his eyes!

He backed away from the mirror a trifle — and the image blurred.

His eyes! His vision was deteriorating.

He turned away from the mirror and fumbled with the fanny pack. The serum was in two bottles. He jabbed the needle of the syringe into one, took the tiniest amount and squirted it onto his finger.

He tasted it.

Oh, my God! Water!

Chadwick's mind raced. Someone had stolen his serum, obviously. Who?

Any of them could have done it while he slept. Any of them. Including Lalouette.

Newton Chadwick charged from the head screaming and leaped across the saucer with his hands outstretched, going for Lalouette, who was still in the pilot's seat.

Jean-Paul heard the ungodly howl and turned in his seat just in time to see Chadwick stretched out in midair, flying at him like a human missile. He deflected the outstretched hands and smashed at Chadwick's neck with his fist as the American flew by, right into the instrument panel. The collision with the panel, or perhaps the pilot's fist, knocked Chadwick out; he collapsed unconscious on the floor of the saucer.

"Let me back in the seat," Charley said to Rip, who willingly changed places.

Charley fastened her seat belt, then aligned the sight reticle with the base radio tower.

"Let's let Pierre know we're here," she said.

"Okay," Rip said, and grinned.

Fire!

The light appeared beside the reticle. Sparks began to appear on the base of the radio tower. Thousands of antipro-tons, perhaps tens of thousands, were passing through the metal of the tower every second. Some found protons in the metal; some continued on to burrow into the ridge a mile behind.

Fifteen seconds after she ordered the weapon fired, Charley noticed that the tower was no longer perfectly erect. It was leaning slightly. As the antimatter particles continued their bombardment, the tower slowly tilted and, in agonizingly slow motion, collapsed, raising a cloud of dust.

Ceasefire!

"I hope you didn't ruin Pierre's day," Rip said.

Pierre Artois was in the com center dictating an ultimatum to the United Kingdom when the radio tower collapsed. Pierre finished a page, released the transmission key to clear his throat and heard nothing from the operator on earth who was recording his words.

A long five minutes passed — a silent five minutes— before the radio technician gave him the bad news. Something was wrong with the base antenna, which appeared incapable of functioning. Engineers would go outside onto the lunar surface to inspect it, a chore that would take most of an hour.

Julie looked at Pierre. "Charley Pine. She's here with her saucer."

"So it would appear," Pierre said, trying to look calm and collected. He picked up the handheld radio. "Jean-Paul, our base radio antenna seems to have become inoperative. Ms. Pine may be in the vicinity."

One word came back, embedded in static. "Roger."

Jean-Paul Lalouette had seen the flashes as the antimatter particles annihilated themselves inside the metal of the tower, and he had seen the tower fall. By sheer happenstance, he had chosen a location in which to wait that prevented him from spotting the impact point of those particles that went through the tower and failed to find positrons, so he wasn't sure precisely where the other saucer was.

That it was nearby, with its optical sight centered on the radio tower, was a given. But where?

He craned his neck, searching in every direction.

Newton Chadwick was curled up in a fetal position on a chair in the back of the compartment, apparently oblivious to Lalouette and his problems.

Chadwick had been that way for the last hour, ever since he regained consciousness. "Someone stole it," he muttered, looking wildly at Lalouette, reaching for him.

The French pilot pointed toward the rear of the saucer and raised his right fist threateningly. The American shrank away, still muttering. "It came out," he said mysteriously. "I'm aging quickly. I need more serum. God in heaven, how am I going to get it stuck on the moon?"

Lalouette didn't know what to say. Chadwick seemed to have come completely unhinged.

"My serum," the American shouted at him, "someone has stolen my serum."

After that he fell silent. He sat in a chair, and seemed somehow to shrink into it, becoming smaller and smaller.

Lalouette forgot about Chadwick.

Pine wasn't out on the lava sea. He would see her ship if she were there. No, she was somewhere in these mountains, either to the right or left, or perhaps above him.

He turned his saucer and began climbing the steep gully using only the antigravity rings, trying to stay in the shadow of the ridge as he did so. He had plenty of water on board— he had filled the saucer's tanks in the two days he had been waiting for Charley Pine to fly to the moon.

So he had the fuel to use his rockets whenever the tactical situation required. Pine couldn't, not if she planned to ever get back to earth. The surplus fuel gave Jean-Paul a huge tactical advantage, and well he knew it.

Every fighter pilot since Roland Garros had used every advantage they had to kill the enemy and avoid being killed themselves. Only fools liked fair fights, and Jean-Paul Lalouette wasn't a fool. Nor, he reflected, was Charley Pine. She would shoot him in the back without the slightest iota of remorse.

Unless he killed her first.

He intended to do just that.

Charley lifted her saucer from the shadow that had shrouded it, lifted it until the canopy was just clear of the ridge line and she and Rip could see.

They watched expectantly. Sooner or later Lalouette would come looking for them, and they intended to see him first. They had to see him first.

The minutes passed, one by one, agonizingly slow.

So where is he? she asked the computer. The holographic display was blank. The ship's radar and computer system had yet to detect the other saucer, and until it did, it could not answer the question.

There — a flicker of movement, on top of the ridge to the left. As fast as Rip saw it, it disappeared.

He pointed. "The other saucer just crossed the ridge there. Seconds ago. Going away from us."

Charley started up the hogback using only the antigravity rings. She thought the French pilot would silhouette himself somewhere on the irregular crest when he crossed back to this side, the southern side of the range. He had to know that she had just shot up the radio tower; Artois could be relied upon to pass that word along using a short-range radio of some sort.

Climbing the hogback, watching the crest for the flash of movement, Charley was ready. If Jean-Paul came over the crest to the right or left — and she saw him — she would get a quick squirt with the antimatter gun. Maybe that would be enough.

But where was he?

And why had he crossed over to the northern side of the range?

On a hunch, she moved laterally off the hogback, placing the crest of it to her left. Now she had some room to duck down, if necessary, or to dive away. Just in case—

The rock to her left began popping, as if bullets were striking it. Or antiprotons.

She jammed the stick forward as Rip shouted, "There!" and thrust out an arm. To the left.

She glimpsed the other saucer just as she sank behind the hogback. It was nestled in a deep V, a cleft in the rock. Jean-Paul had let himself be seen crossing the mountain crest so that she would follow and he could ambush and kill her.

The canyon she was in wound its way up the steep slope above and dropped quickly away toward the lava sea. Up or down?

She continued upward for a few seconds, then stopped the saucer, spun it 180 degrees and tilted it. Lalouette would be popping over that hogback, ready to pounce.

She didn't have long to wait. The larger Roswell saucer crossed the ridge banking sharply. What Jean-Paul didn't expect was that she was waiting for him. She jerked the crosshairs onto the bigger machine and shouted, "Fire?

Most of the antimatter particles were deflected by the Roswell saucer's streamlined, stealthy shape. However, a few of the particles penetrated the saucer's skin, roaring ahead until sooner or later, inevitably, they encountered positrons buried in atoms' nuclei. One popped harmlessly in the saucer's water tank; another met its positron in the food bay, and the resultant small explosion scattered cans and plastic-wrapped goo willy-nilly. One of the particles hit the instrument panel and blew out a multifunction display, showering Jean-Paul with shards of a hard glasslike material.

He was already on the juice, trying to accelerate over the smaller ship using the rockets. As the G hit him he went over the small ship and pulled the nose up hard to avoid the rising slope of rock. Accelerating hard, the big saucer shot up the slope and across the crest before Charley Pine could turn her ship and send a river of particles after it.

Off the juice, turning hard in a 120-degree angle of bank while pulling four Gs, Jean-Paul whipped his saucer around and decelerated. He didn't think Pine had the water to maneuver with him; yet if he persisted in riding around her like an Indian riding around a circle of covered wagons, he was going to get shot out of the saddle.

He halted the saucer and waited to see if she was going to pop over the crest in hot pursuit.

His heart was pounding. He tried to get his breathing under control as he waited under the crest for Charley Pine, waited for his shot. For he knew he would get one. He would win. He would kill her and everyone else in the enemy saucer. He was good and he would live and they would die. It was as simple as that.

So where was she?

Egg awoke in the dispensary, across the corridor from the com center. The door was open, and he could hear the people in the com center gabbling in French. They were not happy — that was obvious from their tone. He tried to move his arm and found he was tied to the gurney. He was only half awake, and it took a few seconds for all of it to come back. Moving the saucer over the antigravity beam generator, Julie Artois and her syringe…

Augh! He blamed himself. If he had had more courage when Chadwick kidnapped him, he would have refused to fly the Roswell saucer. Would have told them to go to hell.

But he didn't. Now Charley and Rip were up there somewhere, risking their lives, and these fools were trying to take over the world.

As he came fully awake he began working on extracting an arm from the cloth ties that held it. His right was looser. He worked it, tugged, pulled and strained, trying to create some slack. The more he pulled, the angrier he got.

The holographic display panel in front ofJean-Paul literally exploded. He was wearing the computer headband, so the rocket engines ignited as quickly as thought and the saucer was instantly accelerating — but not before he heard a series of bangs behind him as positrons and antipositrons detonated like firecrackers.

In seconds he was out of the antimatter particle stream, accelerating rapidly at six Gs, heavy on the juice. He began weaving, right, left, up and down at random. Finally he went into a turn and looked back over his left shoulder. By leaning left he could see almost dead aft.

There was the other saucer, moving slowly along the crest, not using its rockets. The distance was at least five miles, opening fast. Now it was turning toward him, barely moving.

He tightened his turn, put the other saucer over his head and pulled as hard as he could. The Gs began graying him out. He tensed every muscle, moaned against the weight, fought to keep his head erect, watched the nose come around and the enemy move slowly under the reticle. He was still on the juice, still accelerating.

Straighten out and fire!

Now the other saucer lit its rockets. He saw the fire from its exhausts, and it squirted out the bottom of the sight reticle.

He dumped the nose, trying to hold the crosshairs on it as the G threw him upward against the safety belt, tried to throw him out of his seat. He couldn't get the crosshairs on the enemy ship — and the dive angle was steadily increasing. Now he pulled hard, upward.

My God. His nose was well down. He was below the ridge-line, which filled his canopy. He was going to crash into it! No! More G. The lights began to fade as the G mashed him downward, six, eight, ten Gs… His peripheral vision came rushing in; he was screaming as his vision shrank until he could see only the rocks ahead… then everything went black.

The G was taking him out… With the last of his consciousness, he asked the computer for more G.

Jean-Paul recovered consciousness as the G eased. I lis saucer was still accelerating at about four Gs. He thought about weaving to throw Charley's aim off if she was behind him, and the ship automatically responded.

So where is she?

Even as he asked the question, the display in front of him gave him the answer. She was diving down between two mountain ranges, the one north of the base and the one beyond it. Jean-Paid, you fool! You should have been asking the computer to track her all along. She is diving into that steep chasm.

He brought his ship around in a wide, gentle turn, slowing as he checked the display, matching it to the real world beyond the canopy.

He would get her this time. With the system's help, he would keep the stream of particles on her until something vital blew apart or she crashed into the rocks.

Coming over the ridge he lowered the nose and let his saucer accelerate downward. Yes, the symbol for the other saucer was right there, ahead and low.

He was below the rock walls now, dropping swiftly, the sun shining full upon his face. He had to squint to see the display. He held up a hand to shield his eyes, kept zooming down.

Shallow the dive, close the distance.

The valley was steep and narrow and twisty. He threw the saucer right, left, then right again to avoid the steep walls. They rushed past in a blur.

He glanced at the display—

And Charley's saucer was no longer there!

Of course not! She'd disappeared from radar. The computer—

As he rounded a turn the enemy saucer was only feet away on his left, motionless. He glimpsed it as he shot across in front of it.

His left arm exploded. Blew apart at the elbow. The hand and forearm fell onto the instrument panel in a spray of blood.

The cliffs were right there, on either side.

Full power, nose up, Jean-Paul told the computer.

He grabbed at his stump as the nose began to climb and the G came on steadily, increasing.

He forced himself to lift his damaged appendage and hold it straight up so the G would help stanch the flow of blood.

He kept the nose rising and the juice full on. Ahead through the canopy he could see stars. And the earth.

Earth, he told the computer. Take me home!