Saucer: The Conquest (13 page)

“So, you married?”

“No.”

“Fool around?”

“Listen, Mr. Hooker. Joe Bob. I have a boyfriend. I think it might really lead to something. I want it to lead to something. You’re a nice guy, but let’s leave it there, shall we? Stifle yourself until you get home to your Junior Leaguer.”

“We could be the first couple to do it in space.”

“Wow, we’d be a footnote in the history books. It’s tempting, but no thanks.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “Had to ask. You’re mighty nice, and I wouldn’t want to go on down the road not knowing. Owed it to myself.”

“I understand. No hard feelings.”

“So who we gonna call?”

“Damn if I know.”

• • •

The news that Charley Pine had stolen Jeanne d’Arc was a bombshell worldwide. Within ten minutes of the announcement by the French ministry, she was one of the most famous women on the planet, right up there in the pantheon with Britney Spears and Madonna.

The premier of France watched the media circus on television sets in his office with great misgivings. The accusation that Pine was mentally ill was met with media skepticism. Two hours after the announcement, CNBC had a clinical psychologist on camera pointing out that if she were really bonkers, she probably couldn’t fly Jeanne d’Arc.

Of course, no one knew the spaceplane’s exact location, so the talking heads had a lot of fun with the possibility that a crazy woman pilot and a Dallas car dealer were on a doomed voyage into the sun, or out of the solar system. Or perhaps they were going to immolate themselves in a spectacular fiery reentry to the earth’s atmosphere.

It was great television, the biggest thing to hit the tube since the great saucer scare last year. And Charlotte Pine had been involved in that! What was Artois thinking?

The premier had never really trusted Artois, but had hitched his wagon to Pierre’s lunar base scheme anyway. The spending had kick-started the French economy and made France the acknowledged leader of Europe. With 350 million people and the world’s largest economy, the European Union was a superpower, and the premier was in the driver’s seat.

That is, he was until Charley stole Jeanne d’Arc. The television announcers’ uninformed speculation gave the premier a queasy feeling. In truth, the minister had known next to nothing when he briefed the premier via telephone before he announced the theft. The minister had grabbed at the straw profferred by Artois: Charley Pine was a deluded paranoid who had snapped.

Watching the story unfold on television, the premier felt like a man on a runaway train. He had no control, no way to stop the thing, no idea where it was going or what was going to happen when it got there. Except that the wreck was going to be bad. After an adult life spent in politics, he had a sixth sense about unexpected events. Artois could have gotten a German test pilot, or an Italian, but no, Pierre had to assert his independence, not to mention thumbing his nose at the premier, and bring in the American woman who flew the saucer last year.

The premier didn’t think Charlotte Pine had gone crazy. He had met her once, and he came away thinking her a competent professional. If she hadn’t gone crazy, Artois was lying.

By craning his neck, the premier could see the moon in the evening sky over Paris through his office window.

• • •

In Washington, the American president was also watching television, and he was in a fine mood. It was nice to watch a crisis unfold that would not cause him grief regardless of how it ended. No one was going to snipe at him. No one was going to demand legislation to right a wrong, an investigation to fix blame, new statutes to ensure it didn’t happen again or a cabinet officer’s head on a platter.

The president poured himself a diet soft drink and put his feet up on his desk. Aaah!

Amazingly, the woman involved was Charlotte Pine, who had caused him so much angst with the flying saucer scare a year ago. Thank heavens, this time she was picking on someone else.

She had had a boyfriend, he recalled, the saucer guy, ol’ what’s-his-name. Rip. Rip Something. That’s the kid who found a flying saucer in a sandstone ledge in the Sahara and scared everyone on the planet. What a piece of work he was!

At least Rip was out of it. Now, if Pine would just keep that spaceplane out of the U.S. Let the French sweat for a change.

The president belted down a big swing of Diet Coke and belched loudly.

“You go, girl!” he said to Charley Pine, wherever she might be.

• • •

Charley slept in the pilot’s seat of Jeanne d’Arc on the trip back to earth. She tried sleeping in the hammock she had occupied on the flight out and found that with no one in the cockpit monitoring the ship’s systems and the navigation computers, sleep was impossible. So she went back to the flight deck, strapped herself into the seat and promptly dozed off. Every few hours she awakened and checked every system. Satisfied, she would allow herself to drift off again.

When she was fully awake, she thought about the situation. She discussed it with Joe Bob Hooker, who had no strong opinions. After all, she realized, he had only her word that Pierre Artois was a maniac. Anyone she talked to would have only her word, until such time as Artois and Claudine Courbet began zapping the earth with an antigravity beam.

In fact, she even doubted herself. What if Courbet had pulled a grotesque practical joke on her? If that thing wasn’t an antigravity beam generator, then what was it? Why the reactor? And where, pray tell, had Artois and his minions learned how to build an antigravity beam generator? If Artois didn’t need the reactor to power the beam generator, what did he need it for?

Try as she might, she could come up with no other explanation for the use of the reactor. The lunar base didn’t need the kind of electrical power that reactor was capable of generating unless they really did have an antigravity beam.

She had been convinced then and she still believed. Pierre Artois, Henri Salmon and Claudine Courbet were rats. Even if she could feel a little worm of doubt gnawing at her.

From time to time she fingered the radio controls. No. The French wouldn’t believe her. They would declare her insane before they admitted that Artois was a venal traitor who had duped the government and all the scientists associated with the lunar base project. After all, if they stood by him and he changed his mind and didn’t use the beam generator, they would be vindicated. The presence of the reactor and generator on the moon could be hushed up, with no one able to prove anything.

But would Artois give up his dreams of glory? The man wanted to be emperor of earth. He had spent the family fortune preparing for this moment—what were the odds that he would chicken out now?

Perhaps the wise thing to do was wait for Pierre to hoist his flag. She lost nothing by choosing to wait, she decided.

Perhaps that was her only choice.

Charley Pine sat watching the cold, hard, immovable stars and the living earth as gravity accelerated Jeanne d’Arc toward the waiting planet. From this distance she could actually see the motion of the planet and the sun line moving across clouds and mountains and oceans. Mesmerized, she watched by the hour.

When Joe Bob came to the flight deck wanting to talk, she chatted with him about inconsequential things, and kept her own counsel.

• • •

Egg and Rip spent the morning putting the finishing touches on the antigravity ring installation in the Extra 300L. The problem was not the rings or converter, which were simple to install, but the aircraft’s engine. When it was being used to power the generators—there were two—the prop had to be disconnected somehow so all the power of the engine would be available to make electricity.

“You need a transmission that allows you to disconnect the propeller from the crankshaft,” Egg said. “That is going to require some serious machining at a properly equipped shop.”

“For now, let’s just take the prop off the plane,” Rip said.

Egg continued thoughtfully, “The saucer has enough electrical power to keep the rings activated until the rockets propel it to flying speed. Even with a transmission, you’ll lose electrical power when you engage the propeller. You’ll be in a fully stalled condition and will drop like a stone.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Rip said. “This airplane will never fly like the saucer.”

“Then why the experiment?”

Rip tossed his wrench in the dirt. “What else am I going to do?” He hugged himself and glanced at the moon, which was still visible. “I’m spinning my wheels, I know. But I don’t know what to do. Charley and I needed a challenge and we didn’t have one.”

“Making a living is a challenge for most folks. If you don’t have that, you need to find another to make life worthwhile.”

“Umm,” Rip said, and patted the fuselage of the Extra. “Well, let’s get the prop off. A scientific experiment, just for the heck of it.”

Two hours later they were ready. Sitting in the cockpit, Rip started the airplane’s engine while Egg stood by the hangar watching. He watched the voltage meter he had installed on top of the instrument panel as he revved the engine, let it drop to idle, then revved it again.

When the oil and cylinder head temps were in the green, he smoothly took the engine up to redline. With the engine roaring sweetly, the airplane rose smartly into the air.

He stabilized at fifty feet, using the control stick, which varied the voltage to various portions of the ring system, to keep the plane level. By easing the stick forward he could induce forward motion. Pulling it backward stopped the plane in midair, and continued rearward deflection made it move backward.

He was experimenting, getting the feel of the controls, when two cars pulled up to the hangar and four men got out. Rip saw them from the corner of his eye. When he turned to look, he realized one of the men was holding a pistol on Egg.

What—?

Two of them grabbed Egg by the elbows and hustled him toward one of the cars. Rip turned the Extra and nudged it toward them. One of the men stopped, aimed a pistol at the airplane and began shooting. The muzzle flashes of the pistol were plainly visible.

Rip jammed the stick forward. He felt bullets thumping into the plane as the gunman disappeared under the nose. He knew what would happen—the gunman would be lifted up and trapped in the zone between the plane and the ground.

He kept the plane moving forward.

The car with Egg in it peeled out, leaving muddy streaks in the grass in front of the hangar.

Should he fly over the car, see if the antigravity system in the plane could lift it from the ground? If he did, Egg might be injured. Or killed.

Reluctantly he veered off at the last second and went after the other car, whose driver was attempting to follow the first. Glancing back, Rip saw the gunman fall to the ground. He lay motionless with his stainless steel pistol on the ground beside him.

Rip flew in a circle, his eyes on the two cars, which had circled the hangar and headed for the road that led to Egg’s gate. Coming out of the turn he shoved the stick as far forward as it would go and began closing on the second car.

As it disappeared under the nose he pulled back on the stick, stopping the plane over the car. After a few seconds, he eased the stick sideways. The first car, with Egg in it, was speeding toward the gate.

Well off to one side, he looked back. The second vehicle was lying on its side with its rear wheels spinning.

Perhaps he should follow the fleeing car. One glance at his cylinder temp gauge nixed that idea—without the flow of hundred-plus mile-per-hour air over the cooling fins of the engine cylinders, the engine was overheating. Oil temp near the red line, too. He set the Extra on the ground a hundred feet from the hangar, let the engine idle for thirty seconds to cool it, then turned it off.

The gunman crumpled near the hangar never moved.

Blood oozed from his mouth, nose and eyes, which stared fixedly at nothing. From the way he lay, it was obvious that his neck was broken.

Rip left the body and walked to the car lying on its side. The engine was still roaring, the rear wheels spinning. The man at the wheel had not fastened his seat belt, so he had been thrown partially out of the car. His head was under the driver’s door. The windshield was shattered, glass fragments strewn everywhere.

Rip reached inside and turned the ignition off. He pulled the key far enough out of the switch to silence the beeping and left it there.

He thought of Egg’s good pickup, sitting near the house. Egg always left the key in it. He could jump in it and follow the car that held Egg.

Yet he didn’t move.

If he caught it, what then?

The kidnappers were armed. If they knew they were being followed, they might kill Egg.

The dead gunman had a wallet in his hip pocket. Rip flipped through the contents. A French driver’s license—Maurice Neri, an address in Nice. French credit cards. He put the wallet back in the man’s trousers, felt his other pockets and found something stiff… a passport. French. He returned that to the pocket where he found it.

The Extra was leaking fuel. He inspected the belly of the plane. Fuel was dripping from two bullet holes in the bottom of the right wing.

Then he remembered the guard at the gate, a retired local farmer named Ike Pingley. Rip began to run. It was five hundred yards through scrub forest to the gate; he saw Pingley sitting beside the guard shack while he was fifty yards away. As he got closer he could see that Pingley was bound with gray duct tape. He even had a strip across his mouth.

Rip jerked it off.

Pingley groaned. “Are my lips still on?”

“You okay, Ike?”

“Sorry, Rip. They pulled pistols and got the drop on me. There was nothing I could do. Taped me up. Didn’t say doodley.”

“They kidnapped Egg.”

“I saw them go by. Get this tape off me, will ya?”

As Rip jerked tape, Pingley said, “I heard gunshots. And the plane. What was that all about?”

“Guy opened up on me with a pistol. Shot a couple holes in the plane. He and one of his pals are dead.”

“You want me to call the law?”