Saucer: Savage Planet (7 page)

“Good genes,” Solo responded.

“Apparently so,” Charley said with her eyes narrowed.

“Well, come help us with this wheel,” Rip said finally, waving a greasy hand. “Maybe you can help us figure out how to get it back on correctly.”

Solo dropped his backpack and waded in.

*   *   *

When the wheel was back on the landing gear and the jack was removed, so that the plane again sat on its own wheels, Rip said to Solo, “Come on up to the house. I’d like you to meet my Uncle Egg.”

“Yes,” Solo said thoughtfully and finished wiping the grease from his hands on a red mechanic’s rag. Then he picked up his backpack and shouldered it.

They were about to start climbing the hill toward the house when a large SUV raced along the driveway and slid to a stop in the gravel parking area, right beside the rock with the small saucer on top of it. Another SUV was right behind and parked beside the first. Television cameramen and sound techs piled out, complete with cameras and lights and satellite transmission equipment. A sign on the side of one SUV said
FOX NEWS
.

“Uh-oh,” Rip muttered. He raised his voice and shouted, “This is private property. You people must leave. You don’t have permission…”

His voice trailed off because no one was listening. The cameramen scattered like quail, carrying their equipment. A reporter with a microphone braced Rip and Charley. Behind her stood the last cameraman, looking through his eyepiece.

“This is Rip Cantrell,” the reporter said breathlessly into her microphone, “the man who found a flying saucer in the Sahara and flew it to America last year. Mr. Cantrell, what can you tell us about the drug formulas in your saucer’s computer?”

“Not a damned thing,” Rip snarled into her microphone, which she had thrust toward his face. “Now you people get off this farm, which is private property.”

Whether the reporter and cameraman would have left under their own steam will never be known—this was, after all, award-winning television journalism. What happened next was totally unexpected and gave great joy to the producer of this television news show.

Two more SUVs came roaring into the parking lot.

Four men climbed out of each vehicle. Rip recognized the man who climbed from the passenger’s seat of the first SUV. Dr. Harrison Douglas of World Pharmaceuticals.

“Well, well, well,” Douglas said nastily. Ignoring the television reporter and cameraman, he produced a pistol from his coat pocket. “I thought we would merely have a quiet chat with the Cantrells and Charley Pine, and instead we hit the jackpot and found you here, Solo. You thief! Where in hell is my saucer?”

Solo said nothing. The television cameraman moved so he had a nicely framed face shot of Solo, whom he had ignored up to now.

The men from the SUVs surrounded Rip, Charley and Solo as Douglas waved his shooter around.

“I’m only going to ask you one more time, Solo.
Where is my saucer?
”

Solo ignored everyone except Douglas, whom he regarded calmly.

“Better tell him,” Rip whispered. “I think he’s a few cards short of a complete deck.”

“Up there,” Solo said, jerking a thumb skyward. “Don’t you watch television?”

“Who is flying it?” Douglas demanded. His face was red; his hand holding the pistol, a semiautomatic, was shaking. The reporter was waving the microphone around, trying to catch every word.

“A friend of mine,” Solo replied slowly.

Douglas lowered the pistol and looked at the three of them. Then he put the gun in his pocket. “Let’s go up to the house. We’ll have a little talk.”

Before they could take five steps, another vehicle roared into the parking area and stopped beside the first. A tall man got out, followed by two musclemen and a woman, a brunette with short hair.

“Johnny Murkowsky, you bastard,” Douglas exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see what it is you are trying to steal, Douglas.”

“I’m not—” Douglas roared but was cut off by Rip.

“Murkowsky? Haven’t I heard that name before?” he asked the newcomer.

“Of course you have,” Douglas thundered. “Murk Drugs. That’s the bastard, right there, along with his masseuse. Never goes anywhere without her. Hey, Heidi, still giving ol’ Johnny the happy endings?”

“Let’s go up to the house, get acquainted and have a pleasant conversation,” Johnny Murkowsky said and began shooing the others up the path. The female reporter for Fox News and her cameraman followed faithfully.

*   *   *

Egg Cantrell was on the telephone with Dr. Deborah Deehring discussing the latest media speculations on what the government might know about the information on the Roswell saucer’s computer. He liked the sound of her voice and the speed with which her mind worked. Although he hadn’t said so to anyone and probably never would, Egg thought smart women very attractive. He was thinking about that as he listened to her talk when he glimpsed through a window Rip and Charley and a bunch of other people climbing the hill path toward the house.

“Uh-oh,” he told Deborah. “Gotta go. Looks as if the crisis has found us.” Even as the words were leaving his mouth, he saw a person at the window aiming a television camera at him. “Turn on your television. I’ll try to call you later.” He hung up.

He glanced across the hallway at the kitchen. Someone was at the window there too, with a cameraman and microphone.

Before he could sort it out, Rip and Charley came blasting into the house trailed by a small army. “Uncle Egg,” Rip began, then saw the cameras and faces in the windows.

It was Harrison Douglas who first lost his grip on the situation. He pulled his pistol from his pocket, aimed at the nearest window and pulled the trigger.

The report nearly deafened the people in the house. The window exploded outward; cameramen and reporters and sound engineers ran for their lives.

Douglas was so bucked up by the sight of people running that he pointed the pistol at another window and put a bullet through it.

“Stop!” Egg roared. He was an outraged pillar of quivering flesh, such a large amount of quivering flesh that Douglas had second thoughts about the wisdom of shooting at television people through windows. Douglas engaged the safety on his shooter and put the thing away.

“If you want to shoot at them,” Egg told Douglas, “go outside and do it.”

“Maybe later.”

Adam Solo grinned at Charley and went into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, snagged a soft drink from the interior, popped the top and took a swig.

*   *   *

The president was summoned from an Important Meeting by P. J. O’Reilly to watch the unfolding drama on Fox News.

“These TV people invaded the Cantrell farm, apparently, just before the drug company moguls arrived. Adam Solo was already there.”

The president watched the chaos in silence. He saw Harrison Douglas wave his pistol around, and he heard Solo tell Douglas the saucer was in orbit. Up there.

Inside the Cantrell farmhouse, Douglas and Johnny Murkowsky cornered Egg Cantrell and bombarded him with questions about an antiaging drug.

“Isn’t it true that Newton Chadwick found the formula for a Fountain of Youth drug on the Roswell saucer computer,” Douglas demanded savagely, “the same saucer that I salvaged from the Atlantic and this son of a bitch, Adam Solo, stole?”

A television camera was back at the window again, the broken one. You must have large gonads to operate one of those.

“You aren’t going to give the formula to this bastard Douglas, are you?” Murkowsky demanded of Egg. “Deprive mankind of the benefits of the most important pharmaceutical advance since the invention of antibiotics?”

“I don’t have a formula, so I can’t give it to anybody,” Egg replied, trying to keep his temper.

“What kind of man are you, to make a moral judgment that the American people—hell, everyone on earth—should be deprived of the benefits of antiaging technology?” Murkowsky was belligerent. “Tell us, how is this drug administered? A pill, a cream, an injection?”

“It’s a suppository,” Egg shot back.

“Then you admit it? The drug does exist?”

“You people get the hell out of my house!
Out! Now!
Rip, call the sheriff! I want all these people out of here or I will prefer charges and the whole damned lot of them can go to jail.”

*   *   *

“Well, that’s plain enough,” the president muttered. He liked plain talk, probably because he heard so little of it.

The television picture went blank; the network turned the show over to the hot babes in the studio. The president hit the mute button on his remote.

“What do you think?” he asked P. J. O’Reilly.

The chief of staff rubbed his hands together. “Can you imagine the political windfall that will settle on the party that can deliver a Fountain of Youth drug to the American people? Such a drug might even lead to the demise of the two-party system.”

A vision of his political enemies being swept from office passed before the president’s eyes. The moment was almost orgasmic. Then reality reared its ugly head.

“Medicare and Social Security will bankrupt the nation,” he said bitterly.

“We can raise the retirement age to a hundred,” O’Reilly shot back. “Or two hundred.”

The president regarded his chief of staff with a jaundiced eye. The man was a fool, no question, but most politicians were. The president wished he had had the good sense all those years ago to join his father in the hardware business.

*   *   *

When the drug czars and television people had at last disappeared up the driveway, Egg went after Adam Solo, who was still in the kitchen seated on a stool at the counter.

“Who,” he asked deliberately, “are
you
?”

“I’m a saucer pilot,” Solo answered.

“That phrase has a certain cachet, I must admit,” Egg acknowledged. “When did you arrive?”

“I’m not quite sure,” Solo replied, the amusement evident in his voice.

“When?” This time it was Rip who asked the question.

“Just a few minutes before I saw you in the hangar.”

“No. When did you arrive on earth? The first time.”

Solo finished his soft drink, got off the stool and took the can over to the trash bag under the sink.

When he had disposed of the can, Solo turned his back to the kitchen counter and leaned against it. Rip, Charley and Egg were giving him their full attention.

“I am marooned here on this planet, and I need your help.”

“No doubt,” Rip shot back, “but first you must answer our questions. When did you arrive here on earth?”

Solo took a very deep breath, then exhaled slowly. When the air was gone, he said, “A long time ago.”

“So where is your ship?” Charley asked.

Solo shrugged. “Destroyed, probably. One of my colleagues went mad on the voyage here. After he dropped the team, he stole our saucer and took off. We watched him until he was out of sight. I assume that he flew it into the sun. Or tried to fly home, which would have been a physical impossibility in that ship. In any event, he has been gone for a thousand years. He has never returned. I doubt if he ever will.”

5

Rip, Charley and Uncle Egg each suspected that Adam Solo had a very interesting story, but the thousand-year number left them stunned.

As usual, Rip recovered first. “What about the starship that delivered you?”

“It didn’t return either.”

“If that thousand-year number gets out,” Rip said to Solo, “your life won’t be worth a paper dollar.”

Solo nodded. “They won’t believe a word I say; they’ll kill me and do an autopsy.”

Charley groaned. “Surely not.”

“Oh, yes,” Egg said grimly.

Solo’s lips twisted into a grimace. “I’ve been in tighter spots. Three hundred and some odd years ago in Massachusetts, Samuel Parris decided I was a male witch.
That
was a close squeak.”

Egg seated himself on a stool at the kitchen counter, which he rarely did because the round seat was too small for his fundament. “Convince us you are telling the truth,” he said flatly. “Tell us why you are here on this planet.”

Solo glanced from face to face, then said, “I am a librarian. This planet is a giant DNA library. My colleagues and I came to check the library, to make deposits and withdrawals, as we do from time to time, and to take DNA samples from plants and animals.”

“Roswell, New Mexico, 1947. Were those your colleagues?”

“Yes. Here to look for us, probably. At least I have their ship. Unfortunately someone shot it up with an antimatter weapon and destroyed the communications equipment.”

“That would be me,” Charley Pine said modestly.

Solo smiled at her, then said, “I need your help. I must use the comm gear in the saucer you have sitting outside on the stone.”

“It’s a bit small.”

“That is a problem. I need it brought back to its full size so that I can get inside and talk to the computers. And talk to my controllers, ask them to send a rescue ship.”

“You people haven’t been doing so well on this planet,” Egg observed. “What makes you think they’ll send a rescue mission?”

Solo shrugged. “Who knows if they even can? At least I can report in. The galaxy is a large, hostile place. We are a few tiny blobs of protoplasm, wandering back and forth between the stars. Death could happen at any moment.”

“Or you could live for a thousand years.”

“Either way, one will eventually be dead forever, which is indeed a long, long time.” Solo smiled. “All that matters is the adventure along the way.”

“Do you really believe that?” Uncle Egg asked sharply.

Solo took in a bushel of air and exhaled through his nose. “Well, I used to.”

“Let me see if I understand you,” Charley Pine said with a toss of her head. “You people have introduced DNA samples into living creatures here on this planet? Is that correct?”

Solo shrugged. “That’s essentially correct, but—”

“You are using living creatures here on earth as hosts for alien DNA samples?”

“When you state it that way it sounds bad—”

“Don’t you damned aliens have any ethics at all?”