Saucer: Savage Planet (6 page)

Douglas merely grunted, “Show them in.”

They were middle-aged and wore sports coats and cheap ties. After he examined their credentials, Douglas tried to look appropriately mystified. “What is this about?”

“Just a few questions, sir,” the agent with the tired eyes said. “We understand you paid for the salvage of the flying saucer from the floor of the Atlantic?”

“I didn’t. World Pharmaceuticals did.”

“But you authorized the operation, and were there on the salvage ship?”

Douglas acknowledged the truth of that statement with a nod of his head.

“Could you tell us why you wanted the saucer?” the other agent asked.

Harrison Douglas launched into his explanation, the same explanation he had given his board and expounded upon to the press after Solo stole his saucer. The search for scientific knowledge and all that.

“Did you hope the saucer would have secrets that would be marketable?” the first agent pressed.

“Of course.”

“What secrets?”

“Well, sir, if I knew that we wouldn’t have spent eight million bucks trying to raise the darn thing. We paid for the salvage on speculation. My attorneys assured me that my salvage of that thing was perfectly legal. Said it was abandoned. Sure looked like it to me, sitting down there on the sea floor. Have you people found it, or that thief Solo, who stole it?”

No, they hadn’t.

Twenty minutes later they left, knowing no more than Douglas had told the press.

When they were gone, Douglas picked up the telephone on the desk and asked his secretary to ring up a number that belonged to one of the guys he knew in Philadelphia.

*   *   *

Adam Solo and Abe and Muriel Stephens rode along in splendor in the big Ford diesel pickup that Stephens used to tow his camper. Stephens produced a violin from a battered case, and Solo inspected it carefully.

“It appears to be a Jacob Stainer,” Solo said, “but it has been altered. The neck angle has been changed.”

Stephens took his eyes off the road to inspect Solo again. “What did you say your name was?”

“Traveler. Adam Traveler.”

“You know your violins, Traveler. Play us something.”

“Ah, it has been a long time. And I haven’t practiced.” Actually, Solo hadn’t played the violin in ten years, but he wasn’t going to admit it. “I once played professionally,” he did say, “and they say muscle memory can be a great thing.”

“Play something,” Muriel urged. “Anything.”

Solo inspected the violin carefully, then the bow. He quickly tuned the violin, tightening the strings and plucking them until he was satisfied.

Fortunately, he reflected, the suspension on the pickup was more stable than one would expect.

He played a few chords to ensure the violin was in tune, then without ado began.

The music filled the cab of the truck and mesmerized the small audience. Stephens pulled the truck over to the first wide place on the road he saw and stopped. He turned off the engine and closed his eyes.

When Solo had finished and put the instrument on his lap and was again inspecting the bow, Stephens said, “Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, Third Movement.”

“Yes.”

“I have never in my life heard the artificial harmonics played better. Or Tchaikovsky, for that matter.”

“This,” Solo said, gesturing to the violin, “is a quality instrument. I once played an instrument much like this, a Stainer, for several years. It is a rare privilege to touch one again. To have it in my hands. To play it.”

“When? With what orchestra?” Muriel pressed.

“Ah, it was long ago. When I was very young.” Solo flipped his fingers dismissively. “Drive on,” he said to Abe. “As I told you, I am a traveler.”

4

When Egg saw the story on Fox News about the
Atlantic Queen
’s stolen saucer being in orbit, he mentioned it to Rip and Charley, igniting a freewheeling discussion.

“In orbit?” Rip asked, incredulous.

“Since the day before yesterday. Apparently it’s still up there.”

“Could Solo be an alien,” Charley asked, “waiting for a mother ship?”

Egg shrugged. “Anything’s possible,” he murmured.

Rip said thoughtfully, “We know the saucer’s computer is also an autopilot. What if Solo programmed it to take the saucer into space so it wouldn’t be found or confiscated here on earth?”

“You mean he might not even be in it?” Charley suggested.

“I thought about sending the Sahara saucer into space,” Rip admitted, “to keep the feds and Roger Hedrick from laying hands upon it. Put it up there for a year or two, then have it programmed to come down in a secret place.”

“You have a devious streak I didn’t know about,” Egg said appreciatively. “Why didn’t you do it?”

“Because I didn’t know if the saucer could pick up my brain waves while in orbit, so I would have to meet it at the rendezvous point, or else.”

“Could Solo have done that?” Charley asked Egg.

“Of course.”

“Who is Adam Solo?” Charley asked rhetorically.

“Better question,” Rip responded, “
what
is Adam Solo?”

*   *   *

The news that the stolen saucer was probably in orbit caused a sensation in the media, but when there was no follow-up, the story went onto the back burner. The Roswell saucer, if that was what it was, was up there circling the earth, but until it came down, the media had column inches and broadcast minutes to fill. Try as they might, enterprising reporters and producers could find nothing on Adam Solo, so he became the Mystery Man. Yet even that angle soon lost its zip. Crime, earthquakes, terrorism, financial shenanigans, sports and politics resumed their normal place in the newspapers and airwaves of the planet.

The FBI report on the interview with Harrison Douglas caused the president more discomfort. World Pharmaceuticals salvaging a flying saucer from the floor of the Atlantic “on speculation”? Douglas used those words to the agents. Obviously, the company was after information that might be in the saucer’s computer database—information about drugs.

What secrets could there be?
the president wondered, then forgot about the question as he went on dealing with the usual political theater, obstreperous congressmen and senators, and big meetings about serious hot important things that filled his waking moments, all day, every day.

Other people noted the presence of Harrison Douglas and World Pharmaceuticals in the latest saucer crisis and, adding them together, got the same answer that Johnny Murkowsky had. One of them was a fellow named Glenn Beck, a gadfly with a syndicated radio talk show.

“Drugs from an alien civilization, developed after hundreds of thousands of years of research and investment, could be a huge windfall for World Pharmaceuticals, if the company could get the drugs approved by the government,” Beck intoned. “Perhaps the drug information in the Roswell saucer’s computer could cure the common cold, cure cancer…” Here Beck paused dramatically—he was very good at dramatic pauses. “And,” he continued, “prevent or cure obesity, prevent aging … How about a skinny pill, or a pill to keep you young? Would you take such a drug? If so, how much would you pay to get it?”

After another little pause, because he was a trained broadcaster, Beck added, almost as an afterthought, “Of course, the government had the Roswell saucer under lock and key at Area Fifty-one, a top-secret base in Nevada, since 1947, and apparently did not investigate the database. Or did they? Would they tell
us
?”

So it was that Glenn Beck lit the fuse and tiptoed away, out of our story.

The stolen saucer went right back onto Page One.

The air force denied mining secrets from the Roswell saucer’s computer, but no one believed them. Members of Congress demanded an investigation. The AARP filed a Freedom of Information request. Packs of hungry trial lawyers began running ads on television and radio, searching for diseased plaintiffs for lawsuits against the government. The old and the fat also felt better now that they might be victims; class-action lawsuits were filed by the dozens all over the nation.

Watching the frenzy on television, the president asked, “Who is Adam Solo?”

*   *   *

The FBI soon found that nothing was happening on the Cantrell farm in Missouri, except the Cantrells went to the grocery store occasionally. Either Egg or Rip drove Egg’s old pickup and came with a list. Once Charley Pine went to the beauty shop for a haircut and ’do. Rip dropped her off, went to the grocery store, and picked her up after she was beautified.

The St. Louis FBI office was up to its eyeballs investigating the usual bank robberies and corrupt politicians, plus a local Yemeni illegal immigrant who wanted to commit an act of jihad that would earn him a ticket to paradise, and two financial advisers who had been running little Ponzi schemes, enriching themselves at the expense of dentists and car dealers who wanted at least a ten percent return on their investments. The special agent in charge of the FBI office was never told that the Cantrell farm surveillance had been ordered by the White House, but even if she had been, the Cantrell surveillance didn’t have a case number, and no Justice Department attorney was breathing down her neck about it. So, after reading reports about grocery store and beauty shop visits, she assigned her agents elsewhere.

Consequently, two weeks after the Roswell saucer was stolen from the deck of
Atlantic Queen,
no one was watching when Adam Solo walked up to the gate of the Cantrell farm, climbed over and, with his backpack slung over one shoulder, continued on along the well-worn gravel road toward the house. He was wearing jeans and a set of leather hiking boots, a sweater and, atop the sweater, a jacket.

Solo swung along with a steady, miles-eating gait, one that had carried him along the roads of the earth for a long, long time. Today the earth smelled rich and pungent. The trees still had a few brown leaves remaining on their stark, dark limbs. Squirrels fought for territory amid the fallen leaves on the ground. A high, thin cirrus layer diffusing the sunlight promised a change in the weather.

There had been other trails through the forest, and he and his companions had run along them, free as only wild creatures can be.

One such day he recalled vividly, because it had also been in autumn, after the leaves had fallen and before the snows came. They were after elk, big animals with lots of meat that would keep them through the long, vicious winter when the rivers and streams froze and the forests were choked with snow.

The sky promised snow then too, so they were in a hurry to reach the elk meadows. Consequently they ran into an ambush; two men were dead in as many seconds as arrows filled the air, and war cries, unexpected howls of glee that froze the blood and paralyzed the nervous system for a crucial few seconds. Ah yes, he remembered all of it. The twanging of bows, the sigh arrows made as they flew through the air, the thud of arrowheads striking flesh, the thundering war cries and the whispered death songs …

Through the trees, today Solo saw the hangar by the grass runway and walked in that direction. Then he saw the small saucer resting on the stone. It was roughly three feet in diameter, sitting atop the stone on its three landing gear.

He approached it, examined it from a distance of six feet, then got closer. He could even see through the canopy into the miniature cockpit. He found himself staring at the pilot’s seat, the controls, the blank instrument panel … and he knew.

Here it was! The saucer from the Sahara, the one Rip Cantrell had found. They had discovered how to shrink it.

It was beyond his reach. He had never worn the headband, never communicated with the computers inside this ship, so it would not recognize his brain waves. It would not obey his orders.

He ran his fingers over the surface, feeling the coolness and smoothness.

With his hand on the saucer, he stood looking at the hangar and the house on the hill and the trees. The autumn wind was gentle on his cheek.

He heard voices … coming from the hangar. Solo reluctantly abandoned the saucer and walked toward the large wooden building.

The main door was open. He stood in the entrance and found himself looking at an airplane. Two people were working on one of the main wheels, a man and a woman. He recognized them from their published descriptions: Charley Pine and Rip Cantrell.

“Hello,” he said.

Rip and Charley both turned to look at him.

“Who are you?” Rip asked.

“Just a traveler.”

“This is private property. You’re trespassing.”

“I suppose so. I climbed over the gate. Hope you don’t mind.”

Rip looked Solo over carefully. Middle-aged, a small, trim man, clean-shaven. “What did you say your name was?”

“Traveler. Adam Traveler.”

Rip went back to greasing the bearings of the wheel that lay on the dirt floor of the hangar and asked, “Know anything about airplanes?”

“A little, yes,” the man who called himself Traveler said.

Charley smiled. “I saw a photo of you on television. You’re Adam Solo, the man who stole the Roswell saucer from the
Atlantic Queen
.”

Solo grinned ruefully. “And you must be Charley Pine.”

Charley gestured toward Rip and pronounced his name.

“Pleased to meet you both,” Solo said, and strolled into the hangar.

“The networks are convinced you are in orbit, waiting for a mother ship to pick you up,” Rip said wryly.

“Ah, the networks…”

“So, do you really know anything about airplanes?”

“As a matter of fact, I once flew them for the British. That was a while back, and the machines were not quite as sophisticated as this, but I am sure the general principles haven’t changed.”

“Aerodynamics being what it is,” Charley suggested.

“Quite.”

“And when did you get all this experience?”

Solo eyed her and decided that, for once, perhaps the truth might be best. “During World War I. I flew Camels.”

“Indeed,” Charley said, intent on Solo’s face.

Rip eyed Solo askance, trying to decide if he was lying—and why. “You are the only World War I vet I’ve ever met,” he said. “All the others are dead. Have been for a good long time.”