Saucer: The Conquest (20 page)

A half hour later, as they ate breakfast in the diner, the news broke that the three spaceplanes in France had just taken off, and had presumably gone into orbit on the first leg of their journey to the moon.

Charley and Rip sat frozen, watching the film clip of the spaceplanes taking off, a minute apart, on the television at the end of the counter.

“They have to get fuel at the orbiting tank,” Charley remarked thoughtfully. “I didn’t think there was enough there for three spaceplanes.”

“What if there isn’t?” Rip asked, speaking softly so no one seated at the counter would hear them.

“One of the spaceplanes may have carried up excess fuel for the other two. The crew would pump the excess into the tank, then the receivers would take it out. Much easier than rigging hoses between orbiting bodies.”

They soon paid the tab and drove away in the rented car, with the space suits and accessories in the trunk. They stopped at a convenience store and purchased six bottles of water and three bags of jerky. Then they drove to the parking lot of the old RFK football stadium, which was empty. They parked, locked the car, and walked to Independence Avenue, where they found a bus stop and waited. When the local came along, they climbed aboard.

“Going to be a pretty day,” the bus driver said to Charley after she smiled at him.

Rip and Charley took a seat and rode into the heart of the city.

• • •

The news that the three spaceplanes in southern France had taken off from their base hit the president hard. He had let the military professionals talk him into waiting to attack, and now it was too late. He said three or four cuss words.

While he waited for his blood pressure to return to normal, he thought about the situation. Due to the fact that the moon was overhead during the middle of the night when public buildings in Washington—such as the Capitol, White House, Supreme Court Building, Pentagon and Treasury—were empty, the government didn’t yet have to panic the electorate by evacuating those buildings during the day, in effect shutting down official Washington. During the day the government could continue with business as usual. For a week or so.

Across the street in Lafayette Park several thousand demonstrators were cavorting in front of television cameras.

They were demanding the United States surrender to Artois. His promises sounded pretty good, they said. A handful of stars were there with the demonstrators, telling everyone watching on television that the man in the moon was a better deal than the United States Constitution.

What the heck, the president thought, I might be dead in a week. There might be a revolution, a meteor might strike the earth, Yellowstone might explode, or California might slide off into the Pacific. A whole week…

• • •

Standing outside the National Air and Space Museum on the side that faced the Mall, the northern side, Rip examined the huge glass facade. Just beyond this wall of windows were the most important treasures the museum possessed, the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Bell X-l, and the saucer Rip had found in the Sahara. Behind him Charley Pine was purchasing sunglasses, baseball caps and sweatshirts from a pushcart vendor.

She donned her sweatshirt, cap and sunglasses and offered Rip’s to him. Her sweatshirt sported an American flag on the front and the Capitol dome on the back. Rip’s sweatshirt had a likeness of the president on it. “This the only one they had?” he asked.

“It was the cheapest,” Charley replied.

“If they took the reactor out of the saucer,” Rip said, “you and I are going to spend the next ten or twenty days in the city jail.” One of the conditions Rip had put on his donation of the saucer to the museum was that the reactor be removed, rendering the saucer incapable of flight.

“You know they didn’t,” Charley said. “They don’t have a place to store nuclear materials.”

The lack of adequate storage was the reason the museum had been sued by local antinuclear activists, who had obtained an injunction against removal of the reactor from the saucer.

“But if they did…” Rip said.

The sunglasses were plastic wraparound mirrors that cost three dollars a pair. With glasses on and ball caps pulled down, they joined the queue for the security checkpoints at the north entrance. There weren’t a lot of tourists here today—most folks were probably huddled around a television somewhere, trying to catch the latest news—so Rip and Charley breezed through the metal detectors and soon found themselves inside the museum.

The saucer was on the main floor, with the Spirit of St. Louis hanging from the ceiling above it. They walked to the velvet rope that surrounded it. Rip could see that the hatch in the belly of the saucer was closed.

“What do you think?” he whispered to Charley, who was looking at the armed security guards. They had to get into the saucer and close the hatch before the guards could react.

“Check to see if the reactor is there.”

Well, why not? The light from the wall of windows fell directly upon the saucer’s skin; that electrical current should be enough to maintain a minimum charge on the battery.

Saucer, power up! Last year, when Rip flew the saucer, the computer memorized his brain waves. If it had enough electrical power to pick them up now…

He thought he heard a faint whine from the direction of the saucer, but he couldn’t be sure. It would take a moment or two for the reactor temps to rise enough to begin generating electricity. In the interim, Saucer, flash the interior light.

He saw the blink inside the dark cockpit.

So did Charley, who squeezed his arm, then said, “I think you should pull the fire alarm in the men’s room while I open the hatch.”

“I’ve got a better idea. You pull the fire alarm in the women’s room while I open the hatch.”

“Too late,” Charley told him. “I suggested it. Go do it, Ripper.”

“You sure about this?” Rip whispered to Charley. He knew it was the right thing to do, but still… “If you thought stealing Jeanne d’Arc got them in an uproar, wait until you see what happens after we fly out of here.”

“Are you going to stand here all morning talking, or are you going to get on with it?”

The man beside Charley tapped her on the shoulder. He was in his forties and balding, wearing baggy shorts and a sweatshirt. “Say, aren’t you Charley Pine, the saucer pilot?”

“Uh—”

“Well, if that don’t beat all!” the man loudly exclaimed. “I recognized you right off. You’re a mighty pretty woman, and I knew you were somebody. Matilda, come over here. There’s somebody I want you to meet. Here she is, Charley Pine, the woman that swiped that spaceplane from the moon and left that idiot Frenchie high and dry.”

Everyone within earshot turned and stared at Charley.

• • •

“Are you trying to say someone really stole the Air Force’s Roswell saucer out of its hangar in Area Fifty-one?” the president demanded.

“Yessir,” the aide stammered. “That’s what they said.”

“Area Fifty-one is a top secret base. How in the world did thieves get in there?”

“They drove through a gate, sir.”

The president eyed the aide without affection. Young, with a terrible haircut and baggy pants, the aide had to be the dullest of the first lady’s cousins, the president thought. Then he remembered that last family picnic he attended. Perhaps not. “Who let them through the gate?” he asked with more patience than he felt. “Why didn’t the security forces find the thieves and arrest them before they flew away?”

“I don’t know the answers to those questions, sir. The Air Force and FBI are investigating, Mr. O’Reilly said.”

“So where is the saucer now?”

The aide jabbed a thumb at the ceiling. “Up there.” When O’Reilly came in a few minutes later, the president had his feet on his desk and his chin on his chest. O’Reilly had two Secret Service types with him. O’Reilly pointed, and they began taking paintings down from the wall. The president watched morosely as each agent carried two from the room, one in each hand, and then returned for more.

• • •

The tourist had a voice like a carny barker, Charley Pine thought. Or a leather-lunged politician. A dozen people were staring at her. “We’re from Ohio,” the man brayed, “just here visiting, you understand, staying with my brother’s in-laws—they’re retired from the government—and taking in some of the sights. The White House people wouldn’t let us take a tour with all this craziness going on, so we came to the museum this morning. Terrorists, demonstrators, idiots on the moon, and look who we run into! If this isn’t something—”

The wail of the fire alarm cut him off.

As everyone looked around for smoke or flames, Charley ducked under the velvet rope and scooted under the saucer. She put her hand on the latch to warm it, trying not to hurry.

“Hey, you, get out from under there!” The shout could be heard even above the howl of the fire alarm.

Now. The latch rotated in her hand. The hatch dropped open and Charley shot up through the hole.

Rip was right behind her. So was one of the guards.

“Sorry, pal, you didn’t buy a ticket,” Rip said, and slammed the hatch shut in his face. In seconds he had it latched.

Charley Pine was already in the pilot’s seat. Through the canopy she could see horrified tourists and running guards. In front of her the computer displays came vividly to life.

She tore off the ball cap and sunglasses she was wearing and tossed them away. The computer headband lay on the console before her; she placed it on her head. Hello, she said to the computer.

Lift us up about afoot.

She felt the motion as the computer gave the necessary commands to the flight computer and the ship responded.

Gear up!

She heard the whine as the three arms retracted into the body of the saucer, and the final thump as the gear doors slammed shut. Now she turned the saucer, pointing it at the wall of windows.

Do we have any water in the system? she asked the computer.

A graph appeared on the main screen before her. Rip had brought the saucer here a year ago with some water in it, and the staff had apparently never drained it out. The ship was about thirty percent full, she estimated.

Outside the saucer, the crowd was backing away, panic-stricken. A steady stream of people were forcing their way out the main entrance. A half dozen uniformed guards stood in front of the saucer with their pistols drawn. They seemed unsure of what to do.

Charley lowered the saucer to within a few inches of the floor to ensure no one would be crushed under it in the antigravity field. Then she began moving the saucer forward. She thought the command, and the flight computer altered the current to the field just enough to move the machine.

She could still hear the fire alarm sounding, although the sound was muffled. She ignored it and concentrated on moving the saucer.

The guards scattered. A tourist information booth was shoved out of the way, as were several crowd control stanchions and a sign that explained how Rip Cantrell had found the saucer in the Sahara Desert, as the saucer moved slowly toward the window at about half the speed a man could walk. Staring, pointing people lined the walls, including some parents with fierce grips on their kids.

With the saucer inches from the windows, Charley Pine stopped forward motion and caused it to rise until it was about halfway up the glass. She was a little concerned about nudging the Spirit, which was someplace behind and above the saucer, but the higher she hit the windows, the easier they would be to break.

Now the saucer contacted the glass. Forward!

The window directly in front of the saucer shattered, yet the framework stayed intact.

“Better back up and whack it,” Rip suggested. He was standing right beside her.

“I really don’t need suggestions from the peanut gallery,” she muttered, and backed the saucer up about a yard.

“Just trying to be helpful,” Rip said, not a bit apologetic.

She drove the saucer forward as hard as she could. The framework cracked and buckled in a shower of glass. Still it held, preventing the saucer from passing.

She backed up, smashed the wall again. This time the saucer shot through.

No one under her on the patio outside. The shower of glass from the window had moved everyone away.

The saucer was only fifty feet from the building when Charley lit the rocket engines and turned it to the left so she wouldn’t fly over the downtown. The fire from the rocket exhaust nozzles of the accelerating saucer was subdued since she had only asked for a little power, but the noise was awe-inspiring.

It was heard all over downtown Washington.

In the White House the president heard it and wondered, Now what? He went to the window of the Oval Office just in time to see the saucer accelerating toward the Lincoln Memorial trailing a sheet of fire.

• • •

Charley turned hard over Georgetown and came back down the Potomac. She passed the Pentagon, still low, only about a hundred feet above the river so that she wouldn’t interfere with airline traffic into and out of Reagan National, then turned and headed for RFK Stadium. The rockets were silent as she coasted toward the lone car parked in the empty acres of asphalt. She used the antigravity system to lower the saucer onto its landing gear beside the car.

Rip went out the hatch like a jackrabbit. Two minutes later he had the space suits and compressor loaded. The food and water in bags on the backseat took another two minutes, then he popped back up through the hatchway.

“Check the fuel cap to ensure that it’s open,” Charley said. She had told the computer to open it, but it wouldn’t hurt to check.

Rip leaped back out.

A police car roared across the empty parking lot with lights flashing and siren howling. It was still fifty yards away when Rip scampered back up through the hatchway, shouted, “It’s open,” and pulled the hatch shut behind him.

“The cops are coming,” he called to Charley, who was still busy with the computer displays. “Whenever you’re ready.”

She lifted the saucer, retracted the gear and headed back for the Potomac. At the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac, she stopped all relative motion, then lowered the saucer into the river. Brown water covered the canopy. A gurgling could be heard as the water flowed into the open neck of the fuel tank.