Saucer (33 page)

Just now Rip couldn’t see anything through the canopy. He was afraid to use the landing lights, so when the computer said they had arrived, he told it to land. That was literally an act of blind faith. Still, he was wound as tight as a banjo string until he felt the landing gear touch something solid, and all motion ceased. A warm flood of relief brought tears to his eyes.

Charley was asleep on a reclining couch. The side of her head was heavily bruised where Rigby had kicked her, and her right arm was numb, partially paralyzed. She probably had some cracked ribs too. The G’s of acceleration over Australia had made her faint. He should have thought of her injuries before he told the computer to goose the throttle.

He stood in the darkness of the saucer’s cabin thinking about all that had transpired in the last few days.

Ah, me! Ramming a screwdriver into that maniac’s neck… Charley shooting him eight or nine times…

Was the saucer worth it?

He opened the hatch and dropped through.

The warm, moist air smelling of the earth enveloped him. Reeling, he climbed the gentle grade toward Egg’s house.

His uncle would be sleeping with an open window. Rip stood outside the window and called his name.

“Is that you, Rip?”

“Yeah, Uncle. It’s me. I need some help.”

“I’ll get dressed. Be right down.”

“Come down to the hangar.”

“Okay.”

Together they woke Charley Pine and assisted her up the hill and into a bed. It was the same bed where Rip spent his summers growing up. Egg didn’t turn on any lights. They got her into bed and Rip held onto her hand.

“No use letting the neighbors know I have visitors,” Egg said. “I’ll get you to a doctor in the morning,” he told Charley.

“Is the press still camped out at your front gate?” Rip asked.

“Yeah, but I’ll have her lie down in the front of the truck where they can’t see her. The sheriff keeps them back a bit.”

“Sorry to do this to you.”

“Glad to help,” Egg said and left the bedroom.

Still holding Charley’s hand, Rip knelt by the bed.

“Thanks for everything,” he whispered.

“You could have flown the saucer out of there any time,” she said. “You weren’t going without me, were you?”

“I sorta thought we should leave together.”

She squeezed his hand.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks,” he whispered. “You get well.”

“You could kiss me good-bye, if you wanted to.”

He wanted to.

• • •

Egg was making a pot of coffee in the kitchen when Rip came downstairs. He had the lights on. Rip opened the refrigerator and stared in. For the first time in his life he wasn’t hungry. He sat down at the table.

“There was a guy in the saucer when we got in. He tried to kick Charley to death, then tried to strangle her. She shot him six or eight times and I stabbed him with a screwdriver.” He wiped the sweat from his face as the memory swept over him. “There’s blood all over the floor of the cockpit.”

“It’ll wash off,” Egg said calmly. “Why don’t you tell me the rest of it?”

Rip had finished his third cup of coffee when he ran out of words.

“Seems to me you didn’t have any choice about stabbing that guy,” Egg said.

“Charley shot those men, boom, boom, boom.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Maybe I should have let the bastards have the saucer, got Charley out of there somehow.”

Egg snorted. “You can’t go through life as a doormat, kid. You did the right thing.”

“So tell me about what’s been happening here.”

“Rip, I don’t even know where to start. The saucer is still a media event. The television only does three or four hours of coverage a day now, the soaps and talk shows are back on, but the whole country is buzzing. The media is hunting desperately for you and Charley. This is your fifteen minutes of fame.”

“They can have it. I don’t do interviews.”

“You may ultimately have to. You own the saucer.”

Rip gaped at Egg. “You mean legally?”

“Wellstar Petroleum has given you a bill of sale for the saucer in return for an interest in the propulsion technology. Tomorrow morning—no, this morning—your Uncle Olie is filing a lawsuit in federal court in Washington. We’re asking the court for a temporary injunction against the federal government, a cease-and-desist order. Of course, there are no guarantees, but Olie thinks we have a good chance.”

Rip whistled softly.

“I’d like to take Charley to Washington with me in a few days, whenever they schedule the hearing. She’ll make a great witness.”

“She needs rest.”

“I understand. I’ll take care of her. For the next few weeks you must keep the saucer hidden where no one can find it. And you stay out of sight.”

After a moment’s thought Rip said, “I’ll go home. The hired men won’t tell anyone I’m there. They’ve worked for us over twenty years, have lived in tenant houses on the place ever since Dad died. They’re loyal friends.”

“Hide the saucer so it can’t be found.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

Egg stood. “Can you fly out of here before the sun comes up?”

“I just talk to the computer, and it does the flying.”

“We’d better get you on your way. Every minute that ship sits here is another chance for the wrong people to find it.”

“Thanks, Egg.”

“I’ll take care of Charley, Rip. And Olie will take care of the government. You stay hidden.”

Rip hugged his uncle. “I love you, Egg.”

“I love you too, Ripper. Now come on. I’ll help you fill up the saucer.”

“Do you have a pocket knife I can borrow?”

Egg handed him the one from his pocket.

“Some fishhooks and matches?”

“In the hangar. Take what you want.”

• • •

They were standing with hands in their pockets listening to water running into the saucer’s tank when Rip asked, “You said Wellstar retained an interest in the propulsion technology. Does that mean we have to keep the saucer?”

Egg hesitated before answering. “Not necessarily. Why do you ask?”

“I helped kill a man because of the saucer. He got what he deserved and I’m not sorry I did it, but I don’t want to have to do it again.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I want the saucer, yet I don’t want to have to kill people to keep it. I don’t want it that much.”

“You risked your life to get it back from Hedrick.”

“I risked my life to get Charley back. Okay, okay—and the saucer. But everyone born has to die. Dying is the easy part. Killing—that is something else.”

• • •

Not a hint of the events in Australia at Hedrick’s station ever reached the press. Which was, perhaps, a good thing: The press splashed the news of Olie Cantrell’s lawsuit naming the president and Bombing Joe De Laurio as defendants on front pages all over the nation.

In Missouri, Egg enlisted the help of the county sheriff to sneak through the press mob besieging his gate. Charley was X-rayed at a local clinic. The doctor said she had two cracked ribs and a badly bruised shoulder. The feeling in her arm and hand had returned, but the deltoid muscle was so sore she couldn’t lift her arm. The doctor prescribed ice packs to combat the swelling and a sling for a few days.

Egg and Charley didn’t return to the farm. They hit the road for Washington.

Charley found that she liked Egg a lot. As Rip had promised, he was extraordinarily smart, with a wit and personality to match. After her adventures in Australia she found Egg’s company pleasant and relaxing. Part of the reason, she suspected, was that Egg liked to talk about Rip. As the pickup rolled through the American countryside, he told her the family history and every anecdote about Rip that he could remember.

Rip, Rip, Rip, she couldn’t hear enough about him. Just the sound of his name brought a smile to her face.

Oh, it was pleasant driving through America on a hazy late-summer day with the windows down, the corn high, farmers making hay, and road crews laying hot asphalt. Egg and Charley talked and talked as the radio broadcast a ball game and the miles rolled by.

Two days after they left Missouri, Egg and Charley came to rest in an expensive New York City hotel with an excellent security system. “We guarantee privacy, Mr. Cantrell,” the manager promised. “Heads of state pick this hotel for their New York visits for that very reason. The press wouldn’t dare.”

They wound up with a two-bedroom corner suite on the eighteenth floor.

“Uncle Egg, let’s go dutch. I have some money. Hedrick threw some chump change at me.” She extracted a wad of bills from a pocket.

Egg waved her money away. “Don’t worry. I drive a pickup and live on a Missouri farm because I want to, not because I have to. Now go put some ice on your arm while I make telephone calls. We’ll have some clothes brought over, you can choose several outfits. Jeans won’t do where we’re going. And I’ll see if I can make a hair appointment for you here in the hotel.”

“That would be fantastic,” said Charlotte Pine. “I’d like to feel like a woman again.”

• • •

That evening Charley and Egg had an invited guest.

Charley opened the door on his knock. “Professor Soldi, please come in.”

The archaeologist stood there for a second looking at Charley with a furrowed brow. With her new hairdo and new clothes she felt like a new woman and looked like one.

“Ms. Pine, I despaired of ever seeing you again.”

She smiled broadly and closed the door behind him.

After Charley, the professor, and Egg Cantrell had discussed the saucer situation for fifteen minutes or so, Egg said, “I invited you to meet with us, Professor, because I have been very impressed with your grasp of the importance of the saucer. I certainly haven’t been glued to the television, but I’ve seen several of your interviews. Your theories are well thought out and provocative.”

Soldi bowed his head a fraction of an inch. “Thank you.”

Egg continued, “I wanted you to be the first to know that your theories about the saucer are absolutely correct in every major detail.”

The archaeologist sat openmouthed, at a loss for words.

Egg got out his biggest suitcase and opened it carefully. From it he took a bundle wrapped in bubble wrap. “This computer was in the saucer. It’s the one Hedrick’s men partially disassembled in the Sahara.”

“Oh, yes,” Soldi said.

Charley looked surprised. “I had forgotten all about it.”

“Rip and I removed it from the saucer at my farm in Missouri the first afternoon you were there, before Hedrick arrived. While you were napping we experimented with the computer, learned some extraordinary things, and decided to remove it from the saucer so I could study it at length.”

Charley shook her head. “I was too busy to notice that it was no longer in the saucer.”

“I managed to determine the proper wattage and voltage to run the computer and put together a transformer so that we can power the computer even when it is out of the saucer.” Egg removed the transformer from the suitcase, plugged a power cord into a wall socket, then plugged another cord into the computer. “I have also incorporated a surge protector to buffer voltage surges.”

From the suitcase he removed the headband, the wire of which was already attached to the computer.

“This past week I devoted three days to this computer.” Egg chose his words with care. “I believe there is enough information stored on this computer to keep a large research university’s faculty fully employed for a century. I haven’t even scratched the surface.”

Soldi pursed his lips thoughtfully as he eyed the machine. He laid fingertips on it.

“As you will see, Professor, the main pathway offers you a dozen choices. Rip and I chose the first one, which turned out to be a maintenance and operations manual for the saucer.”

Charley’s eyebrows rose. “Rip never mentioned this computer to me.”

Egg grinned. “Rip is discretion personified.”

“Learned it from you, apparently,” Charley shot back.

“The second pathway is the one I want you to take this evening, Professor,” Egg said. “That is the path that fascinated me, that absorbed my every thought for three days. It is my hope that in a few months I will be able to devote the rest of my life to exploring that pathway.”

“And the other paths?” Soldi asked.

“I haven’t had the time to journey down them. For all I know they are even more compelling than the second one. Still, tonight I ask you to take the second pathway. It proved to me that your theories were correct. I wanted you to personally experience this… moment?”

“I will do as you ask,” Soldi promised.

Egg looked at the headband. “This headband is the way you communicate with the computer. Merely move along the pathway you choose, approach any selection that interests you.”

Soldi nodded.

“I found that it helps if I make myself comfortable and relax. You will not go to sleep.”

Soldi nodded again, with just a hint of impatience.

Egg adjusted the headband over the archaeologist’s head.

Soldi leaned his head against the back of the couch. His eyes remained open but unfocused.

After about a half minute, Charley rose from her chair and went to stand by the window, where she could look out at the lights of Manhattan. Egg joined her.

“What is on the second pathway?” she asked.

“An encyclopedia. I suspect that it covers everything the makers of the saucer knew about the universe.”

“Are the saucer people our ancestors?”

“At this point the evidence is circumstantial. In all probability… yes.”

After she had thought about that for a moment, Charley said, “My father had a flip comment that comes to mind. He said that the world is full of idiots, an indisputable scientific fact that proves that evolution is bunk.”

Egg chuckled. “It isn’t bunk, but it’s an extremely complex process, and it takes place over enormous stretches of time. The human mind just cannot fathom time in the quantities available to Mother Nature.”

Charley turned to check Soldi. His eyes were closed now.

“Did the saucer people discover the Grand Unified Theory, the theory of everything?”