Saucer (8 page)

“Bet being a test pilot takes a lot of education, huh?”

“It’s a specialized field. I have a masters in aero engineering too. That’s why Mike is so testy at times.” A faint smile crossed her lips.

“I’ve had a few aero courses myself,” Rip said.

Charley merely nodded and brushed a loose hair from her forehead.

Rip gestured toward the saucer. “Flying that thing couldn’t be too hard,” he suggested.

Charley cocked her head, looked at the saucer as if weighing his comments. “Shouldn’t be all that difficult,” she agreed, “if all the systems were in working order and we had the manual to study. Everything isn’t working, of course. Not a chance in a million.”

“You’re serious? You could fly that thing?”

“No. I couldn’t. Not unless we have a crew of Martians check it out, repair it, service it, and sign it off as ready to fly. And I would need to read the manual; I don’t fly anything without reading the book.”

“Bummer.”

“That’s one of the really big rules.”

“That’s cool,” Rip said. “Only two small caveats. I like that.”

Rip tried to envision what it would be like going Warp 7 in the saucer with the controls in your hand.

“The major there,” he said after a bit, “I’ll bet he’s a pretty good pilot.”

“He designs planes, he doesn’t fly them,” Charley Pine said, a bit vinegary Rip thought.

He grinned at her. She managed a small grin in return.

“So why did you get out of the Air Force, anyway?”

“My being in uniform was driving Mike crazy.”

“Umm…”

“It was time… time to move on. I’ve landed a job with Lockheed Martin that starts in six months. The Air Force asked me to stay with the UFO team until they can order in someone else.”

“I see.”

“Sorry to bore you. My life is a mess.”

“So exactly what does a UFO investigation team do?”

“Learn all we can. Write reports. Debunk the myths.”

“Are there UFOs?”

“That’s classified,” Charley Pine said curtly.

“Government’s been doing UFO stuff for fifty years or so, hasn’t it?”

“About that, I guess.”

“Seems like they could tell us something, after all that time.”

“If the authorities chose, perhaps they could.”

“Must be a lot of flying saucers to justify spending all that money.”

“There certainly are a lot of people who think they’ve seen one,” the test pilot admitted.

“Have you guys got any other flying saucers lying around? Out there in Nevada or somewhere else?”

Another tiny smile crossed Pine’s face. “Not to my knowledge. Of course, if we did and I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

Rip smiled easily. “Maybe we oughta call you Charley Manson.”

“Just kidding, of course.”

“You’re sorta cute,” Rip told her. “For an older woman.”

Charley Pine rubbed at the dirt and sweat mixture on her forehead. Sitting in the desert in front of a flying saucer with an amorous kid! She looked at the Aussie’s troops with their big flop hats and their rifles and gritted her teeth.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

At lunchtime Bill passed around some freeze-dried fruit sealed in see-through bags. “This is it?” Rip asked incredulously.

“I’ll eat yours if you don’t want it.”

As they munched, Rip tried to make conversation with Haagen, who was in a dark mood. He got like that sometimes, and Rip usually tried to avoid him until the mood passed. Today he decided to take his chances.

“What do you think these Air Force types really want, Dutch?”

“They want the saucer, kid. Believe it. So does the Aussie.”

“If the Air Force gets it, this will be big back in the States, huh?”

Haagen ate another piece of dried prune before he answered. “If the Air Force gets that saucer, you’ll never see or hear of it again. The government’s position is that saucers don’t exist.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Why do you think the Air Force has UFO teams? I’ll tell you—to rush to the site of any ‘unexplained phenomenon’ and explain it away, get everybody calmed down. The people who saw strange things are dismissed as kooks.”

“But saucers do exist. There one is!” Rip pointed with his head.

“You know that and I know that, but the powers that be don’t want Joe Six-Pack and the Bible thumpers to get all sweaty. My God, kid, where have you been? There are still people in America who think evolution should not be taught in schools. Darwin will rot impressionable little minds, destroy their faith in religion, bring civilization crashing down around our ears, et cetera and so on.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Doesn’t matter what I believe. What matters is that the bigwigs in the government believe it.”

• • •

Major Stiborek dozed some during the heat of the day. He did it sitting up, with his head back against one of the poles that held up the shade tarp. It didn’t look comfortable, but he snored a bit.

Stiborek awoke when the Aussie, Sharkey, brought Professor Soldi back to the camp and helped himself to some water. After he had a long drink, Soldi grunted at Dutch and Bill, then went into the sleeping tent and lay down on one of the cots.

Sharkey tried to make conversation with the Air Force officers. He gave that up after a few minutes as a waste of time.

When Sharkey wandered back toward the saucer, Rip went over to where Stiborek was sitting on one of the camp stools.

“Captain Pine says you’re a pretty good engineer.”

Stiborek merely grunted. He didn’t even look at Rip.

“Bet a good aeronautical engineer like you has that saucer all figured out, huh?”

“What do you want, kid?”

“Just trying to be nice, Major, get acquainted. Let bygones go by the by.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How does it work?”

“Amazingly enough, it burns hydrogen. Cracks water into hydrogen and oxygen in some sort of electrolysis process.”

“Ever see anything like that?” Rip asked casually.

“It’s an extraordinary engineering triumph.”

“What holds it up when the hydrogen engines aren’t going?”

“That’s the mind-boggling part. It uses a force field of some type to modulate the earth’s gravitational field.”

“Does Charley know that?” Rip asked with a glance at the female pilot, who was sitting at least fifty feet away, well out of earshot.

“She was there when we discussed all this.”

“I see.”

Mike Stiborek frowned, glanced at Charley Pine, then studiously ignored her.

“Think the reactor is intact?” Rip asked.

Stiborek laughed. “You do the dumb kid act very well. Have I told you anything you don’t know?”

“What about the reactor?”

“We brought a small radiation detector with us, and as near as we can tell, the reactor is still a sealed unit.” Stiborek shrugged. “Can you believe it? A flying saucer?”

“Whoever flew it here, why did they leave it?”

Stiborek took his time before he answered. “I don’t know, kid. I really don’t. I don’t think the answer is in the saucer. It looks like it was parked there yesterday.”

“But it wasn’t,” Rip replied. “I dug away most of that rock myself. That’s real sandstone.” He took a small piece from a pocket and passed it to Stiborek, who gave it a cursory glance and rubbed it between his fingers.

When Stiborek passed it back, Rip pocketed the stone, then asked, “Could Charley fly it?”

Stiborek laughed. “Now, I never even thought about that. That woman can fly anything. But, no. There isn’t a chance that saucer is airworthy. Or spaceworthy. Whatever. Not a chance in a zillion.”

“Why?”

“My God, man. Everything deteriorates over time. Metal crystallizes, dissimilar metals react to each other, corrosion eats on everything… Entropy in a closed system increases over time—that’s the second law of thermodynamics. Time has taken a toll on that ship, even if the toll isn’t readily apparent to our eyes.”

“If it could fly, I mean. Could Charley fly it?”

“Kid—what’s your name? Cantrell? Well, Cantrell, if elephants had wings, car windshields would be made of bulletproof glass and it would be dangerous to walk around outside. ‘If’ is the biggest word in the English language.”

“Okay.”

“All those systems in working order, after a hundred and thirty thousand years? Whoever made that thing was good, I’ll grant you, but not that good.”

“One hundred forty thousand.”

“Give or take. What’s ten thousand years among friends?” Stiborek picked up a small rock and tossed it a few feet. After a bit he added, “The reactor is the critical unit.”

Rip looked puzzled. “You said you guys checked the reactor. Isn’t that a radiation counter there?” Rip pointed to a small battery-operated device lying on the sand near Stiborek’s feet.

“I made a cursory check,” Stiborek acknowledged, “with a battery-operated unit that is used only to ensure personnel safety. We found only background radiation. Which proves nothing.”

“At least—” Rip began.

“Insulation—that ship probably has several hundred thousand miles of wire in it. If the insulation has come off a wire in just one place, you got a short, maybe a fire.”

“The insulation looked okay to me,” Rip murmured. “In the places I could see.”

“Kid, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Let’s look at one more example, just one. If you try to fire off that reactor and something critical breaks, that ship will melt down. If there is no explosion—and there might be—the whole ship will dissolve into a puddle of molten-hot radioactive goo. You won’t care because you’ll have already been fried.”

Stiborek tossed another pebble. “Anybody who tries to fly that thing has found a flashy way to commit suicide.”

“Just thought I’d ask. A theoretical question.”

“Go away, kid. Leave me alone.”

“How come you and Charley are on the outs?”

Stiborek frowned. “Did she say we are?”

“Oh, come on! Give me a break. I’ve got a mother and a sister and have even had a couple girlfriends through the years.”

Stiborek looked glum. “She’s going to move to Georgia, be a test pilot for Lockheed Martin. I tried to talk her out of it, but she’s made up her mind, she says.”

“Does she have a reason?”

“Says this UFO team is a career dead end.”

“Maybe it used to be, but it isn’t anymore. You two are about to become famous.”

Stiborek made a rude noise, then picked up another rock and threw it out into the desert.

• • •

In late afternoon Sharkey left his experts in the saucer and settled in to interrogate the Air Force officers in the sleeping tent. Colonel West was his first victim.

West was still in there when the sun set. Dutch passed around cold food to his people and the Air Force crowd.

The Aussie’s men ate food from a cooler they carried from one of the helicopters, which hadn’t moved all day.

When Red Sharkey finished with Colonel West, he sent for Major Stiborek.

Darkness came quickly in the desert. Rip went around lighting the lanterns, checking that they had enough propane.

A small breeze came up, easing the heat of the day.

Most of Sharkey’s troops were gathered around their choppers, eating and talking loudly and laughing, when Rip rooted in his bags for his passport and wallet. Then he made his usual pilgrimage to the portable outhouse. He kept the door cracked while he did his business, watched the two Aussies with guns across their laps sitting outside the tent. They weren’t looking in this direction.

When he got his pants up, Rip eased the door open and slipped away into the darkness.

He made his way to the Jeep. The glove compartment contained a roll of duct tape, which Rip pocketed.

Two five-gallon plastic cans full of water were attached to the rear of the Jeep. Out here in this desert, water was life. Rip checked these cans every day, and both Dutch and Bill did too.

He unfastened them both, lifted them down into the sand. They weighed about forty pounds apiece.

After a last check around, he hefted both cans, one in each hand, and set off in the direction of the saucer, which was still illuminated by two spotlights. The other spotlights, at least six, had been turned off.

Rip could hear Sharkey’s two experts talking inside the saucer. He made sure the water cans were out of sight, then stuck his head up into the thing. The two Aussie technicians had a battery-operated lantern going and were disassembling one of the computer displays. Maybe the whole computer.

“Hey,” Rip said.

“Yeah,” one of the men said, not looking around.

“Sharkey said to tell you guys to go get some dinner.”

“He did?” Now the man looked around.

“Yep.”

One of the men straightened up. “I could use something to eat. Come on, Harry.”

“I’m not hungry,” Harry said. “You go. Bring me back a bite.”

“Okay, mate.”

As the first man climbed down off the ledge, Rip crawled up into the ship. Harry didn’t turn around.

“What are you working on?”

“A computer. Really extraordinary. Never saw anything like it.”

“Did you guys take anything else apart?”

“Not yet.” Harry sat back on his heels. “We really should disassemble that electrolysis unit.” He pointed with a thumb. “I think that thing separates water into hydrogen and oxygen. Ol man Hedrick could make a mint with a thing like that, believe me, mate. Put every oil company on earth out of business. The possibilities are mind-blowing, still, he said to examine the computers first.”

Hedrick could only be Australian billionaire Roger Hedrick, the second richest man on earth. “Hedrick’s rich enough, don’t you think?” Rip asked lightly. “He’s worth what? Fifty billion?”

“More like eighty,” Harry replied. “He owns half of Australia now. But a man can never be too rich. At least Hedrick doesn’t think so.”

Rip tapped Harry on the shoulder. As he turned his head, Rip delivered a haymaker on the point of his chin. Harry went down hard.

Rip got busy with the duct tape. By the time he had Harry’s mouth, hands, and ankles taped, the man was moaning. At least he wasn’t dead.

“Sorry, buddy,” Rip told the half-conscious man and grabbed his ankles. He pulled the man over to the hatch and dropped him through it. There was a satellite phone on the floor near where Harry had been working, and Rip pitched that through the hatch too, along with Harry’s tool kit.