“Unless you’re a shrink.”
“I’m a pilot. Flying is my gig.”
“What if he fires the beam at this ship?” Joe Bob asked softly.
“He’d have to know precisely where we are. We’re not flying a straight line; we’re flying a parabola. I don’t think he has a radar that can pinpoint us. Space is a big place.”
“Even bigger than Texas,” Joe Bob admitted.
PIERRE ARTOIS SAT IN THE BASE COMMUNICATIONS room collecting his thoughts as the radioman on duty played dumb with Mission Control. They had heard the exchange between Artois and Charley as she took off and were demanding an explanation.
He stared at the radio. All his plans, all his dreams, the very future of the human race, jeopardized by that woman! She wasn’t talking on the radio to Mission Control, but she could come on at any time.
She had gone crazy. That was it. The stress of training and the flight—she was unsuitable, had become extremely paranoid, accused them of horrible things, then, when they tried to sedate her, escaped and stole the spaceplane.
He tapped the operator on the shoulder. The man moved from his chair. Pierre sat down, arranged the microphone in front of him and called Mission Control.
RIP CANTRELL WAS INSTALLING ANTIGRAVITY RINGS ON the bottom of the Extra when his uncle Egg came down the hill and called, “Hey, Rip. Better come look at the television. Something has gone wrong on the moon.”
Rip dropped his tools and trotted past the hangar. “What?”
“Come watch.”
Soon they were in front of the television watching one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. A reporter was interviewing one of the spokespersons for the French space ministry.
“According to these guys,” Egg said, summarizing, “one of the pilots has taken Jeanne d’Arc and left the moon, presumably headed back for earth. The flight wasn’t authorized.”
“You mean somebody stole the spaceplane?”
“An unauthorized flight, they called it.”
“Same thing.”
“So who is the pilot?”
“They haven’t said. This happened six hours ago, according to the spokesman.”
“So is Charley stranded on the moon or flying the plane?”
“Rip, I don’t know.”
The story unfolded slowly. Jeanne d’Arc had been the only spaceplane on the moon, so the passengers and scientific experiments that were to return aboard her were still there. Another spaceplane would be ready to launch in two weeks. Food and supplies at the lunar base were sufficient to support the people who were there for months, perhaps as many as six. The people—they implied there were more than one—aboard Jeanne d’Arc were maintaining radio silence. She had insufficient fuel to orbit the moon, return to the lunar base, then return to earth, so the experts believed she was heading for earth now.
The press conference raised more questions than it answered, yet the spokesperson refused to give additional information.
“They’ve gotten the when, what and where,” Rip grumped, “and left out the who and why.”
“Yeah.”
“So what do you think, Unc?”
“Something weird happened on the moon.”
As the sun set and night crept over the earth, they sat watching television, hoping for more information. None came.
PIERRE ARTOIS CONSIDERED HIS OPTIONS. HE HAD, OF course, told Mission Control and the French space minister that Charley Pine had gone insane and stolen Jeanne d’Arc. As he sat watching Claudine Courbet run tests on the reactor and slowly power it up, he examined the moves on the board.
Pine had said nothing on the radio to anyone so far, and perhaps she would not. With women, one never knew. On the other hand, what could she say that would hurt him? Well, she could stir up such a mess on earth that the people here at the lunar base might refuse to obey orders. Or try to refuse. Once he gave the governments of the earth his ultimatum, what she had to say wouldn’t matter. Oh, she would undoubtedly wind up on television and tell what she had seen, but so what? That turn of events would be at worst only a minor irritant, Pierre concluded.
What he really needed was a way to get back to earth if the unexpected happened, as the unexpected was wont to do.
It didn’t take much noodling to arrive at a method that might work. Pierre returned to the communications center and tuned the radio to a private frequency. Then he removed a notebook from his pocket and consulted it. When he found the code he wanted, he dialed it into the voice encoder. After the encoder timed in, he keyed the mike and began speaking.
CHARLEY TOSSED AND TURNED AND DOZED A LITTLE IN her hammock, but she couldn’t get to sleep. She couldn’t relax knowing that no one was in the cockpit. Finally she gave up, took a shower and put on the clothes she had just taken off. She went to the galley to make coffee. Without gravity, the process was a chore. After the coffee grounds and water were heated together, you pushed a plunger that forced the hot liquid into a squeeze bottle while trapping the grounds. At least it was hot.
She went to the cockpit and strapped herself into the pilot’s seat. She spent fifteen minutes checking ship’s systems and the flight computers while pulling gently on the coffee. Satisfied that all was well, she sat staring at the earth, a black-and-white marble against a sky shot with stars. She could perceive deep blue hues amid the swirls of clouds. The planet appeared slightly larger than it had been when she went to bed. When they reached it, of course, it would fill half the sky.
She toyed with the controls of the radio panel. Did the French government know about Pierre’s antigravity beam generator? Were the people at Mission Control on Artois’ team, or was he a French traitor, an adventurer with an agenda? What were his plans?
She didn’t know any of the answers. She put little faith in anything Claudine Courbet had told her. The woman defined “flake.” On the other hand, the reactor and beam generator had been the real McCoys, despite the fact that lunar project managers had repeatedly assured a nervous public through the years that no nuclear material would be carried aloft from French soil.
She got out of the pilot’s chair and went aft to the main communications room, where the video cameras and lights were stored. Artois had filmed a cell phone commercial from orbit. Did he leave the phone here?
After a one-minute search she found it. It had a sliding cover. She opened it and turned it on. No service, but the battery charge was good. She turned it off and pocketed it.
She was working on her second bottle of coffee when Joe Bob Hooker joined her. He hung his coffee squeeze bottle in midair, strapped himself into the copilot’s seat so he would stay put, then rescued the bottle.
“Sleep okay?” he asked.
“No. You?”
“No. So what do you think we should do?”
“Can’t decide.”
“Me either.”
They sat looking at the earth.
“I never met anyone like you,” Joe Bob said.
Charley eyed him suspiciously. “Oh?”
“Yeah. You’re a smart, take-charge, capable lady who isn’t afraid to do what you think right. Aren’t many of those around. Not where I’ve been hanging out, anyway.”
“Don’t get any big ideas.”
“Heck, I’m a married man. You realize, though, that down in Texas there’s folks who would say that we’re shacked up.”
Charley Pine couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “Hoo boy.”
“Honestly,” he said. “Man and woman, all alone for three days. Long enough to fall in love or raise the dead.”
“There went my reputation.”
“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 coupl
e 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 swig 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.
7
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 a
m 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.
Saucer: The Conquest Page 10