Saucer: The Conquest (5 page)

“Sorry, Unc. I’ll take this thingamabob outside.” With that, the truck crept forward out of the hangar. It slowly accelerated until it was moving at about the speed a man could trot. It crossed the runway, heading for the trees on the other side.

Egg could hear Rip cussing. He was saying some rather nasty words in a loud, clear voice when the truck smacked into a large tree on the far side of the runway.

There it sat intimately embracing the tree, the nose several feet in the air, the rear still sagging dangerously. Rip climbed out of the cab and jumped to the ground. He was standing with his hands on his hips staring at the damaged grill and bumper when Egg reached him.

“Another technical problem rears its ugly head,” Egg murmured.

Rip shook his head in frustration.

Then the batteries powering the antigravity device began losing their charge. The truck eased toward the ground inch by inch until it was once again sitting on all four wheels.

“Darn,” Rip said mournfully.

Egg couldn’t help himself. He exploded in laughter.

When he finally calmed down, he asked, “Why, pray tell, are you putting antigravity rings on that old truck?”

“Actually I’m trying to figure out how to put them on the Extra. Then I’d have a fast, maneuverable airplane that could land anywhere. We could make airports obsolete. Thought I’d start with the pickup to see what the problems were.”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah, I know. If I’d done this two months ago maybe Charley would still be here.” He raised his hands and dropped them. “What can I say?”

The sliver of new moon had set hours ago. Egg and Rip were lying side by side in the grass looking at the stars through gaps in the clouds when Rip said, “She’s on her way.”

“Wish you were with her?”

“Well, heck yeah. Big adventure. ’Course, she’s an older woman and all. You just knew a romance like that wouldn’t work out. She’s a good pilot, though.”

“So what are you going to do with your life, Rip?”

“Get on with it. Nothing else I can do, is there?”

• • •

Jeanne d’Arc left earth orbit with a long burn designed to accelerate her to escape velocity. With the Global Positioning System (GPS), automatic star trackers and the small onboard computers that didn’t exist in the mid-1960s when the Apollo craft were designed, the French ship was much more self-contained than the American moon ships had been. Due to the vast strides in computer technology, each computer on Jeanne d’Arc contained more computing capacity than all the NASA computers together had when Apollo 11 successfully voyaged to the moon.

The crew had taken off their space suits, positioned the ship in the proper orientation, checked the computer programs, locked in the autopilot and waited.

The burn, when it came, was a rush of acceleration and emotion. The trajectory they hoped to achieve was a parabola that would take Jeanne dArc to within sixty miles of the lunar surface. If the spaceplane didn’t decelerate as it circled the moon, it would slingshot around it and return to earth. Tears leaked from the corners of Charley’s eyes and were pulled back into her hair by the acceleration, which was designed to raise their velocity to a trifle over thirty-five thousand feet per second.

An hour later, with the engines secured, all the checklists finished and the planet slowly falling behind, Charley and Lalouette unstrapped and floated out of their ergonomically correct couches.

Lalouette gave Charley a big grin and said, “You did very well. I have never before flown with a beautiful woman.” Apparently the fifty hours he had spent with Charley in the simulator this past month didn’t count.

“I’m so happy for you,” Charley Pine said sweetly.

“We’ll get to know each other much better in the coming weeks,” he said confidently.

“Down, boy. Remember the cameras.” Small cameras in the cockpit were sending continuous streams of audio and video back to Mission Control in Paris. Unfortunately there were no cameras in the sleeping compartments.

Well, she had known the French were romantically challenged when she signed up for this gig. She hadn’t given that aspect of the adventure much thought, though, because she had been so busy. She didn’t even know if Lalouette was married. Hadn’t asked, hadn’t looked at his ring finger, wasn’t the least bit interested. The worst of it was that the more difficult she was to conquer, the more the Frenchman would enjoy the chase.

With that gloomy thought in mind Charley Pine floated down the passage toward the head.

“Jean-Paul Lalouette said you are rich. Is it true?” The person asking was Claudine Courbet, an engineer on her way to the lunar base for a six-month stay. She and Charley Pine shared a tiny cabin. Neither had any say in the pairing since they were the only women on the flight.

Since Claudine asked the question in French, Charley had to translate the question in her head, then think of an appropriate response. “Oui, ” she said, not knowing enough of the language to deflect the question.

“Some people think that explains it.”

“What? Explains what?”

“Why you are here. Did you or your family agree to pay money so you could be on the crew?”

“No.”

“Someone said you probably did after they heard Jean-Paul’s story. Pierre has invested his fortune in this project. Some say he is down to his last euro. That’s why he sold a round-trip to the American. Still, he’ll never get the money back.”

“Easy come, easy go,” Charley Pine said.

“On the other hand, some people said you are Artois’ next girlfriend,” Claudine confided, then hurried to add, “but I do not think that. He has a girlfriend, an extremely rich one—her grandfather is one of those Italian car people. She is very pretty even though her breasts are not real.”

“The curse of the store-bought tits,” Charley murmured in English. “I thought he was married?”

“Oh, yes. Julie Artois. But men like Pierre also have women friends. It is expected.”

“I see,” said Charley Pine, who didn’t. The thought of being some married man’s mistress left her cold. She began the process of zipping herself into her hammock so that she could sleep. This was the first time she had tried it in the weightless environment, and she was finding it a serious chore. When she was in training, the French had told her all tasks in weightless environments took more time and effort. “How do you say ‘damn’ in French?” she asked Claudine.

Her roommate ignored that comment. “Pierre was under extreme pressure to include a European in the flying crews or lunar team,” she continued earnestly. “For political reasons, you understand. The European Union and all that. He refused to be pressured, but he had to do something since the government is investing so much in the lunar project. He would have been wise to hire a European scientist long ago and be done with it, but he did not wish to chance a breach in security. I think he recruited you to silence his critics in the government.”

“Those pesky critics,” Charley replied. She managed to tug the zipper home and sighed in relief. She had hated sleeping bags since her camping days as a preteen. Just when you finally get zipped in, you have to go to the bathroom. Thank God she remembered to go before she started this evolution.

Before Claudine could get started on another juicy tidbit, Charley asked, “How do you like your first spaceflight?”

That got Claudine revved up. Her husband refused to allow her to go, but she signed up anyway. This was the adventure of a lifetime; the view of the earth from space was fantastic; she had dreamed of standing on the moon looking at earth all her life, ever since she saw those photos of the Apollo crews as a child; she would just get another husband when she returned to earth. She was still chattering away when Charley drifted off to sleep.

Charley Pine awoke when Claudine Courbet closed the compartment door behind her as she left. Charley lay floating weightless in her hammock for a few minutes trying to get back to sleep. It was a lost cause.

She examined the compartment thoughtfully. It was not large; every cubic inch was utilized in some manner. Color-coded pipes and conduits ran through the room against the wall that was the ceiling when the spaceplane was on earth. Emergency oxygen masks were rigged on one wall beside a fire alarm and portable extinguisher. Near the portable extinguisher was a nozzle on a flexible hose that hooked into the ship’s main firefighting system.

Arranged so that she could see it while lying in her hammock was a computer screen. She reached out and turned it on. In seconds she was looking at the main systems displays. A touch of her finger brought up navigation information. Another touch gave her a camera’s view of earth, a huge blue presence surrounded by the blackness of deep space. She lay for a few moments watching the night line move over the surface as the massive orb rotated.

As she watched she realized that the planet was moving ever so slowly away from the camera. This was an illusion, of course. Actually the spaceplane was flying away from the planet in free fall on a course that would put it in orbit around the moon in about seventy hours.

Her parents had divorced when she was seven. She grew up with her mother, who taught school in a Washington suburb. During the summers she visited her father, a building contractor in Atlanta. She had an unremarkable childhood, doing all the usual things that bright girls growing up in the American suburbs do. She played soccer, field hockey, basketball and baseball, giggled with her friends, went on dates, made straight As in junior high and high school—and managed to avoid the marijuana and hard drugs that many of her friends dabbled in, and some were consumed by. Was in a bad car wreck and walked away with only a broken arm. Decided she wanted to fly and worked hard to get an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The flying had been challenging, so she applied for the test pilot program and was accepted. Moved in with a few guys along the way and always moved out after a while.

Just when she gave up on the air force, Rip and his flying saucer came into her life.

Rip Cantrell. As she watched the earth on the monitor she thought about him, about his face and smile and touch.

She had it bad. Damn!

The heck of it was that the kid hadn’t really grown up yet. He was willing to lie around doing nothing—well, doing nothing but having sex five times a day and eating three meals—while the days slid past one by one, turning into weeks, then months.

She couldn’t live like that.

Oh, well. She would have to make a decision about Rip after she returned from the moon. She had agreed with Artois to work for the French lunar project for at least one year, making at least three lunar flights. When she returned from the moon in three weeks, she would have a week off. She decided to call Rip and invite him to France.

That decision made, she was still too keyed up to sleep.

She unzipped the hammock, got out of it and stowed the thing, then checked her reflection in a mirror. She had two hours before she had to be back in the cockpit. She decided to explore, maybe visit with some of the other people on board and share the adventure.

Charley Pine opened the door of the compartment and launched herself slowly through it, careful not to carom off the bulkhead. She closed the door behind her.

Charley Pine found Pierre Artois and Jean-Paul Lalouette filming a cell phone commercial on the flight deck. Artois had a small phone in hand and was placing a call to someone while the cameras rolled. Perhaps, Charley thought, Claudine was right about Pierre’s financial situation.

Charley watched a few moments, then drifted back along the passageway. The chef was preparing a meal. No freeze-dried grub on this French space freighter—the crew ate French cuisine and drank small portions of wine with every meal. Preparing real food and serving it in a weightless environment was a serious challenge, but the French were up to it.

The chef offered Charley a sample of several of his creations. She used an eating utensil that totally enclosed the morsel while it was under way from a covered dish to the mouth. The food was delicious and the covered spoon ingenious, and Charley said as much to the chef, who beamed.

The cargo bay was the heart of the ship, its raison d’etre. One of its doors was ajar—it was usually locked—so Charlie opened it. Containers and large assemblies took up most of the sizable compartment. Every container or assembly had to be carefully suspended and braced so that it would not move when the rocket engines were running nor drift in weightlessness. There was little room in the cargo bay for people; the passageways through the cargo reminded Charlie of the passageways in submarines—except you floated effortlessly along this one, propelling yourself with an occasional gentle push, now and then touching something to prevent impacting the sides.

She saw people near the rear of the compartment, where the heaviest items were placed. One of them was Claudine Courbet. With a flick of her wrist Charley started that way. As she neared the container Claudine and a man were working on, she saw that they had taken one of the container’s panels off to expose the contents. Both had their heads inside as Charley approached.

There wasn’t much room, so Charley waited until someone noticed her. Claudine and the man were conversing, in muffled French that Charley couldn’t understand.

Claudine finally backed out into the passage and saw the pilot. A look of surprise crossed her face. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting. And you?”

The man also backed out and turned his back to the container, almost as if he didn’t want Charley to see inside.

“I thought you were asleep,” Claudine said.

“I was. Obviously now I am awake.”

Claudine nodded her head at her coworker, then started toward Charley. “Come, let’s go to the salon where we can talk. Dinner will be ready soon.”

“Fine,” said Charley Pine, and did a somersault to get her head pointed in the right direction. A pull with both hands sent her shooting along the passageway. Claudine followed her.

• • •

From her seat in the cockpit of Jeanne d’Arc, Charley Pine faced a sky full of stars. The moon was off to the right about fifty degrees. The spaceplane wasn’t heading for it, but for a point in space where the moon would be when the spaceplane arrived.