Saucer: Savage Planet (20 page)

*   *   *

The drug moguls’ Boeing was descending into Sydney when the call came from Johnny Murkowsky’s Space Command spy. The saucer had left Australia and was in orbit.

Douglas and Johnny Murk cussed vividly.

“We can’t just go chasing them around the world until the aliens arrive and they hop in some starship and go tootling off,” Douglas protested.

“Our strategy is wrong,” Johnny Murk mused. “Well, let’s land and refuel and head back for the States.”

“Man, I could use a bath, a decent meal and a good night’s sleep,” Douglas said, yawning.

“Enough already,” Johnny Murk shot back. “I would also desperately like to get laid. All right? Are we going to tough this out and get filthy rich, or are we going to watch television in some Aussie hotel as the aliens ascend into heaven to sit on the right hand of God?”

Douglas yawned again. “We haven’t been doing so well so far. Frankly, we’d have been better off staying at home. If you have a better strategy, I’d like to hear it.”

The plane’s wheels squeaked on the concrete. As it taxied Douglas and Murkowsky analyzed the situation yet again and plotted their course.

*   *   *

When the president was told about the saucer coming out of orbit—headed once again for the United States—his heart fluttered. The
western
United States, the aide said.

Well, at least it isn’t coming here,
the president thought.

He recalled his conversation last night with his wife. She and a few friends were vacationing in the south of France. She told him in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t coming home until this whole mess was over and things returned to
normal.
She had bought several cases of wine that she was shipping home. She was thinking about getting a face-lift. The French plastic surgeons were excellent, she had heard, and very private; the press wouldn’t get wind of it. By the way, she needed some more money.

Normal?
What was that?

He marched down to the situation room with Petty Officer Hennessey in tow to find out if the crowds on the streets were going to storm the White House. P. J. O’Reilly was very much in charge. He informed the president that after his announcement that the starship was days away, the crowd was dissipating, a few actually going to work, some going home, the rest filling up restaurants and bars eating or getting drunk, or both. Everyone looked at the monitors that showed video of the crowds on the streets.

“Fifteen senators and twelve congressmen and -women want to meet with you. They want a statement they can pass along to the press and their constituents.”

“Have someone write out something. But I want to read it first.”

“Yes, sir. A delegation of preachers also wants a few minutes of your time, Mr. President. They want some reassurance they can take back to their congregations.”

“Tell them to read their Bibles. Who am I to compete with Jesus and the prophets?”

“An excellent point,” O’Reilly said with just a detectable hint of sarcasm. “And a delegation of foreign ambassadors, about a dozen at last count, wants to meet with you, today if possible. As bad as things are here, they are beginning to spin out of control in foreign capitals.”

The president scowled. “If we can keep the people in the Washington area and out in Peoria calmed down, that will be a feat. What on earth could I possibly say that will oil the waters in Paris and Rome and Beijing?”

Petty Officer Hennessey cleared his throat. The president looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Perhaps, sir, you could say that you are actually
looking forward
to the aliens’ visit. That you plan to bring your granddaughter along. I’ll bet she’d get a real charge out of meeting the alien captain.”

The president’s first reaction was that
his
daughter would never, ever let
her
daughter within ten miles of an alien. Then again, maybe she could be finagled. His daughter was a nervous Nellie, but his granddaughter, Amanda, who just had her tenth birthday, certainly wasn’t. Heck, she had even ridden with him in a saucer flown by Charley Pine six weeks or so ago, when Charley and Rip were preparing to zip off to the moon to fight it out with the Frenchies and save the world. He would ask Amanda and let her handle her mother. Yeah.

“That,” he told Petty Officer Hennessey, “is a darn good idea. When we get back upstairs, I’ll call Amanda to see if she is up for the adventure.” He skewered O’Reilly with his eyes. “Wish we had some other folks around here doing some serious thinking.”

That comment merely bounced off O’Reilly. He had spent too many years with the president to let the old fart’s jibes bother him. “About the saucer just now reentering the atmosphere after launching from Australia … perhaps an announcement by the press secretary? He’s feeling a bit left out of the excitement.”

“No announcement. Tell that moron if he opens his mouth I’ll throttle him. Tell Space Command to keep the lid on too.”

People nowadays get too much information,
the president told himself,
and they don’t know what to do with it.
He often found himself in precisely that situation.

Just for the heck of it, he flipped a television to CNBC, the business channel. Another rough day on Wall Street. Would the impending alien visit be good or bad for business? Apparently the day traders, speculators, mutual fund managers and mom-and-pop investors couldn’t decide, so the market was going up and down like a pump handle. The richest old crock in America, multibillionaire publicity hound Warren Buffett, gave a two-minute interview. He was buying on the dips, he said. “The world is not coming to an end. People will still need food, clothes, housing and wheels. Plus cell phones, liquor, diapers, pills and all the rest of it.”

The president glanced at Hennessey, who met his gaze and nodded. Yep, more common sense.

Reassured, the president began to feel better. His stomach stopped aching, at least for a moment.

“Mr. President,” P. J. O’Reilly said, in his take-charge persona, “I want to have the photographer take some shots of you at your desk in the Oval Office looking pensive and serious. Somber, but in charge. Thinking deep, complex thoughts, conscious of your moral responsibility for the fate of the world, which you are holding in your two mortal hands. Maybe we could get a couple of shots of you actually looking at your hands. I’ll release the photos immediately. The world will see that you are on the job, managing the alien crisis, like JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

The president’s eyes rolled back into his head. He fought to refocus on his chief of staff, who looked particularly loathsome today. Perhaps he could offer him to the aliens as a protein snack.

“Okay. Hennessey, come with me. O’Reilly, have someone bring us dinner.”

14

After they refueled from Lake Powell, Charley Pine flew the saucer south through the deepening canyon of the Colorado River. It was a night full of stars, with the moon still down, so she hoped that no one along the canyon would see the black saucer ghosting along at about a hundred knots low above the river. She could see on the computer screen the canyon walls rising vertically on both sides above her vision, so she felt as if she were a little girl tiptoeing along a hallway.

She was perhaps thirty miles below the Glen Canyon Dam when she hit some power lines stretched across the river. She had about a second’s warning—they appeared as thin filaments across her screen—then she hit them. The saucer slipped between them effortlessly, forcing one line over the top and one underneath. A power surge shot through the saucer, and the instrument panel went black.

Charley Pine felt the adrenaline surge through her veins.
The Roswell saucer crashed during a lightning storm.
Then the computer screens came back to life and all again appeared normal. To her infinite relief, she saw that she was still in the center of the canyon, still level, still in control …
Am I in control?

She flicked the stick automatically. The saucer responded, like an obedient dog. Five degrees left wing down, now five right, now level again.

“That was exciting,” Rip said. He was standing beside her.

“That was a lummer,” she told him nervously. “A shot of cold urine to the heart.”

“You live for those.”

“Right. How is Solo?”

I am okay, Charley. Now I need to explain what to do. There is a beach on the north side of the river, perhaps a hundred miles ahead. It is not sand, but erosional debris that washed down a canyon and accumulated for perhaps ten million years. The river won’t move it for a long time. We will land there, get out of the saucer, and get on top of it.

“On top?”

On top.

On they flew, deeper and deeper into the Grand Canyon, with Charley keeping the saucer about a hundred feet above the ribbon of water that stretched like a crooked road on the computer screen before her.

About an hour later she found the ledge. It slanted toward the river but looked okay. She gingerly lowered the legs of the saucer and set it down.

We will need all our supplies. We can remain here until they come.

They
.

Until
they
come.

Charley Pine felt a shiver run down her spine.

Rip opened the hatch and began shoving sleeping bags and sacks through the opening. Egg helped Adam Solo walk over to the hole, sit on the edge and ease himself through; then Rip assisted him out from under the saucer.

“Next time, tell them to put the hatch on top,” Rip told Solo.

“The belly was the cheapest spot.”

When he had Solo out of earshot of Egg and Charley, he asked, “So how are you really doing?”

“I’m dying, I think. Bleeding internally. My body isn’t repairing itself quickly enough.”

Rip took that comment in silence.

“Don’t tell the others,” Solo said. “They have enough to worry about.”

“And I don’t? But I think they already know.”

“Perhaps,” Solo admitted. “When we have our gear unloaded and the hatch closed, have Charley lift the saucer and raise the gear, then lower the ship onto its belly so that we can climb on top. The place we want is a cliff dwelling in the side of a cliff about five hundred feet below the South Rim, about two miles west of here.”

“And when we’re there?”

“Program the saucer to go into a polar orbit that will bring it back over us on every pass.”

There were many things Rip wanted to ask Solo, who was the most unique human he had ever met. Twelve hundred, thirteen hundred years on earth, a youth from a planet in another star system, crossing the interstellar vastness … and yet Rip didn’t want to ask. Perhaps, as Solo remarked once in passing, he had lived too long, experienced too much, left too many loved ones behind.

As Rip watched the saucer descend onto its belly, held level by Charley, he helped Solo climb onto its dry, slick surface. He thought about the past, not about the immediate future.

Charley, on the other hand, was thinking hard about the task before her. Flying the saucer with its antigravity rings up the cliffs, finding the place Solo wanted in the starlight, keeping everyone from falling off the rounded top of the ship. My God, if they fell off …

Solo sensed her concern.
If we fall, we fall.

She heard his voice in her head and sensed the wisdom, even if she didn’t like the message. Keeping this flying plate level was going to take all the flying skills she possessed. Sure, the computer would help, but she had to tell the computer what to do. If she screwed this up … well, the fall wouldn’t take so long. Then she and Rip and Egg and Solo would begin the next adventure, whatever that would be.

That’s right.

Your mind reading is very tiresome,
she thought.

There was no reply.

*   *   *

Egg Cantrell was the most frightened. He glued himself to the saucer—he had Solo sprawled flat right on the crest—and held on for dear life. His rounded middle seemed to push him away from the saucer, making him feel like a basketball that was balanced just so and could at the slightest nudge begin to roll.

Charley sensed his fear. She was in front of him, sitting up, where she could see. “We’ll be okay, Uncle Egg. Hang on to Solo.”

“I can’t hang on to anybody,” Egg informed her, trying to keep his voice calm. Even as he said the words, he felt the saucer lift off. Something like an elevator, yet smooth and effortless. He closed his eyes and tried to get a grip with his hands and feet, even though there was nothing but the glass-smooth surface of the saucer to hold on to.

“If it was raining, we’d be in big trouble,” Rip remarked. He was the eternal optimist, Egg thought, with the confidence of youth. Yeah, things could always be worse. That’s one of life’s profound lessons.

Egg could feel the cold air flowing over him. Charley was moving the saucer forward, but climbing. He could feel the saucer pressing against his body, lifting, rising, higher and higher. He risked a look around. The cliffs were visible in the starlight, which made the snow on the canyon rims glow. He couldn’t see much detail. He could see that the saucer was moving, however, and the aspect of the cliffs was changing. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to fight the cold.

The flight seemed to take hours. Charley kept the speed under control. Once the saucer flew over a ledge of a cliff—the sides of the canyon rose like a giant’s stairsteps—and the thing began to tilt. Egg felt the panic rising in his throat. He clung to the ship, which somehow came back level.

Well done, Charley.
It was that damn Solo. The guy had steel balls. Egg pressed a cheek against the saucer’s skin and kept his eyes shut.

After a while Solo gave Charley directions.
Left some. Higher. Along that ledge.

“Use your flashlight, Rip,” Charley ordered.

“Maybe the saucer’s landing light would be better.”

“Too bright. No use advertising. Just the flashlight.”