Saucer: Savage Planet

by Stephen Coonts

  “Yes, dear.”

  * * *

  The cliff at the edge of the lake was about a hundred feet high and ran parallel to the lakeshore for several miles. It was a geological anomaly in this flat country scoured by glaciers.

  Solo cruised just above the water, looking at the cliff. He couldn’t seem to find what he was looking for. If he was looking for a cave, it wasn’t visible.

  “Was the water level lower then?”

  “Higher, actually. The world was warmer.”

  He stopped the saucer and stared through the canopy at a massive round formation that ran right to the water.

  “I think there has been an earthquake,” he said. “Looks like that formation has slipped toward the water.”

  “No cave there now.”

  Solo didn’t answer. He flipped on the saucer’s landing light and let it drop into the choppy water. It went under and he used the antigravity rings to take it toward the cliff.

  In a few seconds the stone formation appeared before them, illuminated by the light.

  “No cave there,” Rip said flatly.

  The saucer went deeper, with the cliff right in front of it. Then it wasn’t there. It ended in a shelf. Deeper still Solo took the saucer, then began creeping forward, under the stone roof. The glow of the landing light helped. The floor of the sea bed rose, so Solo coaxed the saucer up. They broke the surface. The landing light revealed that they were in a large cave, surrounded by rock. Ahead of them was a beach, perhaps a hundred yards long. High on the beach, under another stone shelf, sat a ship. A wooden ship, but without a mast. Sweeping prow and stern. Clinker-built.

  “A Viking ship,” Charley whispered.

  “Still there,” Solo said with a sigh. “Right where we left it.”

  * * *

  “Mr. President, one of the saucers is coming out of orbit.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one that launched from Missouri.”

  The aide gave him the projected flight path. Space Command said the saucer descended over Alaska. The projected flight path had it impacting in the northern Canadian wastes.

  “Ridiculous,” the president said, glancing at the three-foot globe mounted on a stand in the corner. He stepped over to it and gave it a spin.

  “They’ll refuel it in a lake somewhere,” O’Reilly suggested. He was, the president thought, a master of the obvious.

  “The United States government had better find out which lake before anyone else does,” the president said pointedly, frowning at O’Reilly.

  The president was worried. Petty Officer Hennessey’s comment about waiting for aliens had planted a seed. This situation was out of control, with everyone in an uproar over an antiaging drug. Yet if there was any truth to Hennessey’s comment, things could get worse. A lot worse! Aliens!

  A painting on the wall caught his eye. It was an original, on loan from the Smithsonian. A group of almost naked Indians with a few feathers in their hair stood on a beach watching Christopher Columbus’ three ships approach.

  Things hadn’t worked out so well for the Indians after Columbus’ arrival. Would the arrival of people—or creatures—from another planet start a similar collapse of the current civilization?

  The president rooted in his drawer for his Rolaids bottle and helped himself to a handful.

  * * *

  Solo landed the saucer on the rock-strewn beach beside the Viking ship. When he turned off the landing light the darkness was total. The four people in the cockpit looked at each other in the glow of the instrument lights, but no one spoke.

  “I brought a flashlight,” Egg said finally.

  “Let’s get out,” Rip suggested, “see if we can find some wood to use for a fire.”

  “We can always burn the ship,” Charley noted.

  “If we spend the winter here, we’ll have to.”

  They opened the hatch and Rip dropped through. Then Charley, Adam Solo and Uncle Egg.

  Indeed, there was ancient dry wood in a crevice near the ship. Slivers cut with Rip’s pocketknife provided the kindling. In minutes a small fire was burning, and its light illuminated the ship’s hull. Charley came to the fire straightening her clothes. “Are we going to get asphyxiated in here?” she asked.

  “I feel air moving,” Rip said. “I think we’re okay.”

  “You guys need to put toilets in those flying plates,” she told Solo.

  After answering nature’s call, Solo inspected the sides of the Viking ship, then clambered aboard.

  Charley joined him. The flashlight beam illuminated seats, some shields, spears … short swords. Helmets. Bones in one corner. “Caribou,” Solo said.

  A large slab of stone that had apparently fallen from the roof lay on a portion of the stern, which was wrecked when it fell.

  “After all these years…” Charley mused.

  “The wood is deteriorated but not dust. The cold air preserved it, I guess. The thing wouldn’t even float now, even if that rock hadn’t fallen on it. But back then she was a good ship. Rode the back of the seas, didn’t leak much, sailed well downwind … a good ship.”

  He climbed over the side and boosted Egg up.

  They heard a shout from Rip. “Hey, over here. There is a breeze coming in from the outside.”

  After scrambling over the rock, he found the opening, a crack that led to the outside. Rip took the flashlight and, turning sideways, slipped through. In a moment he was back. “Goes all the way outside. Cold out there.”

  “Must have opened in the landslide that dropped the roof,” Solo said.

  “Let’s get the rest of our stuff on the beach and build a bigger fire. We’ll need it tonight.”

  Rip went back to the saucer and climbed inside. He grabbed bundles and pushed them through the hatch. Solo and Charley took them and headed toward the fire, where Egg unpacked and arranged things. When all the duffel was out the hatch, Rip climbed down. He picked up two sleeping bags and the sack of food and trailed along toward the fire.

  “What do you think of the Viking ship?” Rip asked softly, so only Egg could hear.

  “It’s real, all right.” Egg sighed. “Every museum on the planet would love to have it. The wood has deteriorated, but still … Rip, it’s as if they pulled it up on the beach, climbed down and walked away, intending to come back, but they never did. Or when they returned a slab had fallen from the rock roof, or perhaps the whole mountain had shifted and they couldn’t get their ship out of what had become a cave.”

  Egg warmed his hands at the fire and finally began inspecting the interior of the cave, what he could see. The only illumination was from the fire, so it was difficult. The ceiling appeared to be about eighty feet high.

  “Smoke is rising nicely,” Rip observed. “There might be a hole or crack in the roof.”

  Using the flashlight, Egg inspected the rear wall of the cave. He found a Celtic rune hacked into the stone. He cast the beam around to see what else might be there, then studied the rune by flashlight.

  Solo joined him. “I buried a man here,” he said. “Scurvy, starvation, and a respiratory infection. He didn’t last long.”

  “To die here in this wilderness…” Egg looked around again with the flashlight’s beam.

  “We all have to die someplace, sometime,” Solo said curtly. “He died among friends, and this is as good a place as any.”

  “How would you know? You’re the man who doesn’t die.”

  “Oh no, Egg Cantrell. You have that wrong. I am just a man who is living a little longer. But my time will come. Rest assured of that.”

  The night could have been worse, Charley Pine reflected. The fire burned well, fed by dry wood that burned quickly, the cave was reasonably warm, and the sleeping bags were comfy. Before she drifted off, she checked her companions, who were all snuggled up in their bags. Uncle Egg snored softly.

  On the far wall of the cave, in the dim reflected firelight, beyond the dark, ovoid shape of the saucer sitting on its land
ing gear, she could just see the outline of the Viking ship.

  She was studying its shadow on the cave wall when she drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  Petty Officer Hennessey wasn’t the only person on the planet to connect two orbiting saucers with the possible arrival of a mother ship. People tweeted about the possibility; then it went viral on Facebook and the other social networking sites. Within minutes, the possibility became a certainty and everyone everywhere knew everything about it and was absolutely sure. After all, we’re wired up now.

  The world’s population was a bit nervous. As the minutes ticked by, they became more nervous. Visions of alien space fighters zapping everything, ten-foot-tall green predators with spiderlike mandibles catching and gobbling folks, starvation, anarchy, chaos and civilization in ashes flashed through the collective mind. The possibilities went from the triple-digit cable channels to the network news shows and the world’s front pages as fast as fingers could type, which was almost at the speed of light.

  The networks’ babes and commentators talked about these sci-fi fantasy possibilities with straight faces. The reaction of the viewing public was predictable: Teenagers the world over began screwing like rabbits, unhappy spouses abandoned their families, people maxed out their credit cards in restaurants and jewelry stores, and survivalists took to the hills to fort up.

  A tidal wave of people headed for Las Vegas, which for the first time in the history of the world had to declare itself full—closed to new visitors. Police turned away all traffic into town, and the FAA would allow only empty airplanes to land at McCarran. The casinos were packed wall to wall; strippers wriggled and writhed around the clock; hookers doubled, then tripled, and finally quadrupled their prices. Every woman in town with fake tits ordered a new car; Corvettes and Porsches seemed to be the most popular.

  In cities and towns across America some people even went to church. Collection plates filled to overflowing as thousands of preachers dusted off their best sermon on “Where Will You Spend Eternity?,” mounted their pulpits and spurred the choirs.

  Inevitably the politicians wanted their constituents to see them molding and shaping events. Hordes of them descended on the White House, where the president was forced to admit them in waves of fifty each.

  From Congress and statehouses and city halls all over America, the politicos demanded action. They wanted the government to protect everyone, to negotiate with the alien space monsters and remind them of the glories of diversity, and if that failed, to send them all straight to hell. Or to somewhere politically correct, if by chance the monsters didn’t believe in hell. A few pacifists and left-wing dingbats counseled nonviolence and turning the other cheek, but they were howled down or ignored.

  “Find that saucer!” the president told P. J. O’Reilly every time he saw him. “Space Command said it came down in Canada, which is a very large place.”

  “It might not even be in Canada,” O’Reilly protested. “Just because it came down headed for Canada doesn’t mean—”

  “Find it.”

  “Mr. President, that saucer could be anywhere. It might even be on the bottom of Lake Mead. Solo and the Cantrells might be partying in Vegas.”

  “Find it!”

  Being human, the president wondered how it would go down if aliens arrived to fight or parley. He had sweated all that during the first saucer crisis just over a year ago. The memory of those days gave him the shivers. He recalled that his political adviser then had told him to look presidential and not to give away the country or pee his pants. Sound advice that, he reflected.

  Pulling off those three feats was going to be a real trick, however.

  He glanced at his watch. He had five minutes before the next herd of politicians was due to storm the East Room. He asked the honor guard aide to send for Petty Officer Hennessey. They met in the hall outside the East Room. Through the closed door, the president could hear the herd shuffling in.

  “These aliens,” the president began. “If they show up … Got any thoughts on that?”

  “They’ll want something,” Hennessey said. “Wouldn’t have bothered to come all the way from wherever to here if they didn’t.”

  The president nodded. Sure. He saw that.

  “They’ll want to talk to the head dude. That’ll be you. You just gotta take charge, get what you want in return for what they want.”

  “So what do I want?” the president asked aloud, staring at the wall.

  “I dunno, sir,” the petty officer said. “Maybe them Fountain of Youth pills, which don’t sound too smart to me, or a cure for cancer. Give something, get something.”

  “Yes. Yes.” The president straightened his shoulders and adjusted his tie. He could handle negotiations.

  Hennessey thought so too. “You’re our guy, sir,” he said and saluted.

  The Secret Service agent opened the door to the East Room, and the president strode in.

  * * *

  The president was taking a makeup and potty break between delegations when O’Reilly came rushing in with a message. He handed the sheet of paper to the president while he told him what it said. “The NRO has tracked the saucer. It’s in Manitoba.”

  The president shooed out the makeup artist, a cute twenty-something female with a theater degree from a little college in New England. She was doing this gig powdering the presidential nose until something on or off Broadway opened up. The president watched her hips as she walked out.

  “Manitoba, like in Canada?”

  “Yes, sir,” said P. J. O’Reilly. “Near Hudson’s Bay. Or in Hudson’s Bay.”

  “You know I don’t know all those damn initial agencies.”

  “The National Reconnaissance Office. The spy satellite people.”

  The president folded the paper into a little square and handed it back to O’Reilly. “Well, who are you going to send after them?”

  “There’s this little problem, Mr. President, and State is working it. Canada is a foreign country, so we can’t just send a squad of U.S. Marshals or Marines up there to arrest them without the Canadian government’s permission.”

  “Get it. Bet the people in the saucer didn’t go through customs or immigration.”

  “Yes, sir, but there is a complication.” O’Reilly enjoyed telling the president about complications, so he perked up now. “Canadian sovereignty is at stake, according to their ambassador, and they are being sticky. State is drafting a formal request.”

  The president stared at his shoes, then into the mirror at his powdered nose and forehead, which didn’t shine anymore, and at his balding pate. Finally he said, “O’Reilly, you are a good chief of staff because you are a first-class son of a bitch.”

  He speared O’Reilly with his eyes and continued, “Still, there are a lot of sons of bitches out there, and if you want to keep this job you had better prove to me that you are the meanest and toughest of the bunch. Light a fire under that ambassador. Light a fire under ours. I don’t care if you burn their balls off. I want that saucer. I want Adam Solo and Egg Cantrell. I want that youth serum or pill or suppository. And, by God, I want them now!”

  * * *

  The new day came slowly at the cave on the bay. An ice fog obscured the ocean and surrounding land and filtered the daylight. It also penetrated the cave, despite the fire that kept the temperature just above freezing. The four travelers sat huddled around the fire eating from the bag of grub Rip had packed and washing the food down with bottled water.

  “It’s going to be difficult to stretch our supplies for a week,” Egg said, frowning at his ham sandwich. “When your ride arrives, where will they meet you?”

  Solo shrugged. “Anywhere I ask them to. In orbit would probably be best.”

  “Another week,” Rip mused. “I suppose we could stay here that long, unless someone finds us. The bay is full of fish.”

  Solo laughed. “I once spent a winter here. There were caribou in the forest and fish in the bay. With your rif
le, we are well equipped to hunt caribou, and we can chip holes in the ice to fish.”

  “Heck. This little penknife is the only blade we have,” Rip said sourly, holding up his. “Won’t cut much firewood or skin many caribou with this.”

  “We’re also a little short of coffee and soap and a way to wash clothes,” Charley added.

  Solo looked amused. “I would bet there are at least a half-dozen knives within ten feet of where you are sitting.”

  “Show me one.”

  Adam Solo began scraping at the loose dirt near his feet with one boot. When it seemed soft enough, he began digging with his hands. In a moment he pulled up a shard of a flint blade. He laid it aside and kept digging. Pieces of flint, a broken arrowhead and an intact arrowhead were revealed as the hole got wider and deeper.

  After another minute he said, “Aha,” and pulled a flint blade from the dirt. It was perhaps three inches long, and both sides were edged. There was no handle.

  “A knife.”

  Rip inspected the blade, turned it over repeatedly in his hands and held it so the fire illuminated it. Solo rose and walked to the Viking ship. In a moment he was back with a sword. It was short, broad and covered with rust. “I can scrape this rust off, and we can sharpen this on a stone. It’ll cut wood and butcher game and, if need be, cut people.”

  Adam Solo slashed the air with it. The weapon seemed to fit his hand, Charley noted with a start.

  Solo gave the sword to Rip, butt first. “Now, if you will loan me your rifle?”

  Rip passed it to him. “It’s loaded.”

  Solo inspected it as carefully as Rip had the flint blade. “Twenty-five thirty-five. Obsolete caliber.” He flashed Rip a grin. “But adequate.” He stood and adjusted his coat. “I’ll go see what I can find.”

  Adam Solo walked around the fire and headed for the opening in the rocks.

  Charley Pine said, “A week in a freezing cave hideout! Robbers Roost. And they say civilization is moving right along.”

  “Didn’t you ever go to Scout camp?” Rip teased.

  Charley didn’t look amused. She said to Egg, “How long before the U.S. government finds us?”