Saucer: The Conquest (16 page)

“What can we do to thwart this maniac?” the president demanded. He looked at the uniformed generals, scanning each face.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, an army four-star, pulled at his tie. “Uh, in the short term, nothing, sir. Given enough time, we can mount a nuclear warhead on a rocket and shoot it at the lunar base. If Artois doesn’t destroy it with his beam weapon before it gets there, it should do the trick nicely.”

“How long would that take?”

The chairman’s eyebrows rose while he considered. “Oh, six months or so, I would imagine.”

“Six months?”

“Maybe more.”

In the disappointed silence that followed that comment, the secretary of state said, “Actually a world government isn’t such a bad idea.”

O’Reilly looked at her in stupified amazement.

She continued, “Someday we’ll have a world government, with or without Pierre Artois. Why not start now? Artois won’t last forever. In fact, one suspects he won’t last long.” She rubbed her hands and continued enthusiastically, “We can tackle global warming, third world starvation, universal medical care, the equitable redistribution of the world’s wealth—”

“Holy moly!” O’Reilly said, interrupting. “You’re suggesting we rescind the Declaration of Independence and tear up the United States Constitution. If I may indulge in understatement, I don’t think the electorate is quite ready for that bold step, Madam Secretary.”

“I don’t think that Artois intends to give the American electorate a choice in the matter,” the lady retorted tartly.

“And you want to take advantage of that happy fact. You remind me of a bystander watching a robbery who decides to help himself after the clerk is tied up.”

“That’s outrageous,” the secretary shot back.

While she and O’Reilly squabbled the telephone rang. The president picked it up, listened a moment, grunted, then put the instrument back on its cradle. After silencing the pugilists, he announced, “Artois has just zapped one of the space shuttles at Cape Canaveral. It rose five hundred feet in the air and fell back to earth. NASA thinks they may be able to salvage some of the smaller parts.”

“We should probably evacuate the White House,” the national security adviser advised. “Artois will undoubtedly target it too.”

The president frowned. “Artois isn’t going to go after this government until he learns we have no intention of surrendering. We have a few hours yet.”

The secretary of state was plainly appalled. “You intend to let this maniac hurt innocent people?”

“I have no intention of surrendering the United States to anyone or anything, madam. Not now, not ever. At my inauguration I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and I intend to do just that. If Artois harms a single American, that is his choice, not mine.”

The president shifted his gaze to the Joint Chiefs and national security adviser. “Presumably Artois doesn’t intend to rule earth from the moon. As I recall, there are only four spaceplanes capable of making round trips. Charley Pine stole one from the lunar base, and the other three are in France. Target them. I want bombers aloft, over the Atlantic, twenty-four hours a day, ready to cross into French airspace and destroy those spaceplanes on ten minutes’ notice. Place submerged submarines off the western and southern coasts of France. Have them target the spaceplanes with cruise missiles. Those spaceplanes are not to leave the ground.”

“You’re going to attack France?” the secretary of state asked disbelievingly.

The president didn’t answer right away. He was apparently taking the time to choose his words carefully when the secretary of state, unable to wait for his answer, broke the silence.

“I strongly suggest consulting with Congress before we do anything rash.”

“We try to never do anything rash,” O’Reilly shot back, obviously miffed.

The president didn’t let those two get into another squabble. “Artois may be a tool of the French government,” he said. “He may actually be following orders.” The president toyed with a pen on his desk. “Even if he is a rogue, he must have many allies in the French space agency. In any event, it is plain that he thinks the French government will cave. I suspect he’s right.”

The president cast a cold eye on his audience. “Regardless of what happens anywhere else, the British will never surrender, and of course we won’t. Artois may cause a great deal of havoc, but he isn’t getting any supplies from earth or a ride home from the moon without my permission.”

The president smiled. The secretary of state had never liked his smile, and she didn’t like this one.

The president glanced at the Joint Chiefs. “Let’s not waste any more time, gentlemen. I want those bombers armed and airborne as soon as humanly possible. I want a plan on my desk within the next two hours that tells me precisely how many hours it will be before we have the bombers and subs in position to destroy those spaceplanes.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Madam Secretary, I suggest you pop over to the State Department and work the phones. Keep me advised.” He shooed her out.

When only the president and O’Reilly were left in the room, the president stood and stretched. “After the military destroys those spaceplanes, I’ll make a televised address to the American people. We’ll dither until then. In the meantime get the congressional leaders over here and consult with them. Have the speechwriters do a draft of the speech.”

He started for the door before adding as an afterthought, “After the speech Artois may zap the White House. Better get the staff and the valuable paintings out. Don’t let the television people see you doing it.”

“Yes, sir. What should the press secretary tell the press in the interim?”

“We’re consulting with allies, congressional leaders, talking to the UN, all that stuff.”

“In other words, nothing.”

“That’s usually best.”

“Where will you be if we need to find you?”

The president looked at his watch. “I think I’ll go to the gym and work out. Call me when you have a draft of that speech ready for me to look at.”

O’Reilly looked at his watch, then his notebook, which he carried everywhere. “You have an appointment in ten minutes with a Sports Illustrated reporter who wants to know if you think baseball should reinstate Pete Rose.”

“Ah, the burning question of our time. Tell him I’m meditating on the matter and reschedule.”

“May we say cogitating or ruminating?”

“Meditating. It makes me sound smarter.”

• • •

Newton Chadwick and the Frenchmen huddled around a radio in the dilapidated hangar in the Nevada desert, listening to the news of Pierre Artois’ announcement. They had rigged an antenna on top of the building and were tuned to a station in Reno.

Egg listened from his perch on a crate of canned food in the back of the room.

An antigravity beam weapon! On the moon. Egg scrutinized Newton Chadwick, who was hanging intently on every word from the radio. Yep, without a doubt, Chadwick gave or sold Artois the technology, which was right out of that saucer in the middle of the hangar—Egg would have bet every last dollar he ever hoped to get on that proposition.

And Artois intended to conquer the world. Egg knew he was the only person in the room to whom that was news. Chadwick and the Frenchmen were excited, intense. They looked like athletes on a team that was several touchdowns ahead.

So what else did Chadwick give Artois? The youth serum?

It wasn’t a serum, really, but a gene blocker. The chemical latched on to the aging gene that was present in every human cell and inhibited its functioning. When he had first discovered it in his saucer computer, Egg had been so excited he couldn’t sleep. Medical researchers were today attempting to find a formula that would affect the aging gene so that they could come up with some way to attack the diseases aging caused, diseases such as Alzheimer’s, senility, diabetes and Parkinson’s. Egg was ready to call them up, give them the formula.

Yet the more he thought about it, the less he liked the idea. Someone would undoubtedly realize the economic value of such a drug, and the vision of fantastic wealth would be irresistible. Listening to the announcer translate Artois’ demands and the reaction of governments around the world to them, Egg thought about the impact upon human life—upon all life on this planet—that the ready availability of such a drug would have. The demand for the drug would distort the world’s economy, the death rate would plummet, and the population would explode in a Malthusian nightmare that would crowd out other life forms and destroy civilization.

When Egg added it up, the human conquest of death didn’t seem like a red hot idea. So he had said nothing to anyone about it, not even Rip or Charley. Nor had he been tempted, like Chadwick, to make a small batch of the drug for himself. He had perhaps two or three decades of life left, and that was enough. When his time came, he would be ready for the next adventure.

So Chadwick wanted to go to the moon. That figured. Charley Pine had stolen the only spaceplane on the moon; the other three might be destroyed or damaged at any moment, leaving Artois and his crew marooned high and dry. Obviously Artois was betting that Chadwick could deliver, that he could get the saucer there.

Egg shook his head, trying to clear his mind of extraneous thoughts. If he didn’t take Chadwick where he wanted to go in the saucer in the hangar, this crowd would kill him and go after Rip. Artois had to have a ride home, and no doubt he would do whatever he could to get one.

He had inspected the saucer carefully. It looked intact, as well preserved as the one Rip had found in the Sahara. Larger than Rip’s saucer, it had more capacity to carry water. Of course, it also weighed more. Still, rough calculations indicated that it should be able to reach the moon and land there. Once there, however, it would have to be refueled with water to make the return trip to earth. Was there enough water on the moon?

Egg had asked Chadwick that question and had received a curt nod. Yes.

Well, Chadwick had better be right or there were going to be more people stranded up there, Egg included.

The reactor seemed intact; it wasn’t leaking radiation. Egg had checked with a Geiger counter. The main flight computer was installed, the headbands were there, the hatch seals seemed intact—he had checked everything that he could. As far as he could determine, the saucer was ready to fly.

He hadn’t told Chadwick that, though. He had more things to check, he had said, which gave him more time to think, to come up with the right course of action.

Could he fly the saucer?

He knew how Charley and Rip had done it, but Charley was a highly skilled test pilot, and Rip was—well, he was fearless and a quick thinker, and he had flown repeatedly with Charley before he gave it a try. Egg had had exactly one ride.

Hoo boy!

• • •

Charley Pine cracked her knuckles after she finished programming and checking the navigational computer. She ran through the program twice to make sure she had it right, went over the checklist one more time, then stowed the checklist, sighed and cracked her knuckles.

“You’ll give yourself arthritis doing that,” Joe Bob Hooker said. He was sitting in the right seat, watching.

“Doing what?”

“Cracking your knuckles.”

“Oh,” she said, vaguely surprised. “I’ve been trying to stop that. Bad habit.”

Jeanne d’Arc was in low earth orbit, and had been for two days. The television monitor behind the pilots’ seats picked up broadcasts as the spaceplane came over the horizon and lost them about ten minutes later when the stations sank behind the orbiting ship. Sometimes the signal faded just as the commercials came on, but it seemed that most of the time Charley and Joe Bob got all the commercials and lost the signal in the middle of some significant pronouncement by a political leader.

The snatches of news were clear enough; Pierre was causing havoc with the antigravity beam and making demands. France was in meltdown, it seemed. A great many Frenchmen were ready to march behind the Artois banner; they were loudly demanding the government accede to Pierre’s demands. The small nations of Europe, with token military forces without any real combat power, were making noises, but not threats. Charley Pine got the impression that a lot of the elected persons were merely wringing their hands, waiting.

Everyone was waiting on the United States, which so far had taken no official position. The press secretary said the government was “studying” the matter. Indeed, the press reported that everyone who was anyone in official Washington had trotted over to the White House for consultations, but no one was saying anything for the record to the press. Oh, sure, there were the usual leaks and rumors, but nothing official.

“Where is the president?” one commentator asked rhetorically.

Joe Bob Hooker thought the political theater very entertaining, and watched by the hour as Jeanne d’Arc circled the earth and Charley Pine catnapped in the pilot’s seat. But now the waiting was over. Charley had programmed the navigation computer for reentry and made a last inspection tour through the ship ensuring all gear was properly stowed, and now the minutes were ticking down.

The autopilot turned the ship, lining it up so that it was flying backward with its rocket engines pointing dead ahead. Charley wondered about the main engine. If it wouldn’t start, the computer would automatically fire the other engines longer and adjust the reentry flight path accordingly. As long as the other four rocket engines worked!

“I want to thank you,”Joe Bob said, “for the adventure of a lifetime.”

Charley smiled. “I had nothing to do with it. Write a letter to Pierre Artois.”

“Seriously, flying with you is the adventure of a lifetime. Selling cars will never be the same.”

All four of the smaller engines ignited on cue, to Charley’s intense relief, and the deceleration Gs mashed her back into her seat. Joe Bob Hooker abandoned his attempts at conversation.

When the burn was over, the autopilot gently turned the free-falling spaceplane 180 degrees, until she was pointed along her trajectory like a large arrowhead. As Charley and Joe Bob sat watching, Jeanne d’Arc plunged silently downward toward the Earth’s atmosphere.