“Let’s go,” Egg said, and helped the old man walk. He took tiny, shuffling steps. Egg held the door open, and Chadwick shielded his eyes from the sun. It took almost a minute for his eyes to adjust.
Egg took him along the path beside the runway so Chadwick wouldn’t have to climb the hill. The flowers were still out, bees were busy, and Egg pointed out a hummingbird. Chadwick looked as if he were seeing these wonders for the very first time. The gentle breeze played with his hair. He put up his hand, felt his hair moving around and smoothed it some.
“Was there ever a woman?” Egg asked.
“Yes,” Chadwick said. After a bit he added, “She had dark hair, nearly black. Brown eyes.”
A little farther along, Chadwick staggered. “Pretty tired,” he gasped. “Let me … sit under that tree.”
The old maple was at least twenty inches in diameter and had lost a major limb in the last big summer thunderstorm. The shattered limb lay beside the tree in the grass, still sporting its withered leaves. Gotta cut that up for firewood, Egg thought.
Chadwick eased himself to the ground and leaned back against the tree.
“Should have married her,” he muttered. “Wish I had.”
He closed his eyes. His breathing became regular, and he seemed to go to sleep.
Egg sat nearby and watched the treetops dance. The breeze must be stronger up there. Grasshoppers were singing, and before long a ruffed grouse came hesitantly from the brush to search for them. The bird ignored the men.
The similarity between his life and Chadwick’s hit Egg hard. He too had never married, had submerged himself in work. Today he was acutely conscious of all the things he had paid too little attention to, such as family, friends, spring rains, summer thunderstorms—and women.
Maybe … There was an archaeologist at the university who had wanted to see the saucer computer. They had spent a day together at the farm. After she completed her article, she had called and asked him to dinner. He had refused. Now he remembered her smile, the way she held her head when she looked at him. Maybe he should call her up and accept that invitation.
The breeze was stronger now on his face; clouds were forming overhead. As a boy he had liked to lie in the grass looking at clouds. He hadn’t done it since junior high. When I’m old, I’ll wish I’d done it all my life, he thought.
After a while Egg glanced at Chadwick. He seemed to have sagged a little. His chin was on his chest, which had stopped moving. Egg checked Chadwick’s pulse. There wasn’t one. The breeze was still caressing his white hair.
Egg stood, sighed as he took a last look at the old man, then slowly made his way along the runway toward the hangar and the telephone.
20
“WHERE THE DEVIL IS THAT SAUCER?” THE PRESIDENT asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs after another look at his watch. They were standing on the reviewing platform that had been hurriedly erected in front of the huge hangar at Andrews Air Force Base, on the outskirts of Washington. Three days ago the president had specifically told Charley Pine eleven o’clock. She and Cantrell were twenty-two minutes late.
“Hard to say, Mr. President,” the general replied. “We can’t see the thing on radar—it’s very stealthy. Every now and then the operators get a stray glint from a leading edge, but only on a sweep or two, and only occasionally.”
The president was in no mood for technical explanations. The French spaceplane had burned to cinders in an accident yesterday at the Bonneville Salt Flats—a fuel leak, according to the press release—and this morning the French ambassador had delivered a note to the state department demanding reimbursement.
“A billion and a half dollars for a used spaceplane?” the president exclaimed to the secretary of state. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“They’re very adamant,” she retorted.
“Tell ’em we’ll deduct a couple hundred mil from the bill we’re sending them for a new White House, an arch in St. Louis, the bridges in San Fran and that stadium those folks in California want.”
“You intend to bill France for a football stadium?”
“Damn right! Dirt, grass, skyboxes and everything, the whole works.”
That conversation had taken some of the shine off the president’s bonhomie. He looked at his watch again, glanced over at the press mob, which was restrained by a rope and a dozen military police, and tried to look relaxed even though he was worried. Twenty-eight minutes after the hour now.
The air force said two objects had reentered the atmosphere over California, one yesterday and one the day before. When he received the report on the first one he knew it wasn’t Pine—she couldn’t have made the trip from the moon that quickly. It must have been the Roswell saucer, the one Pine had fought on the moon, the one stolen from Area 51. He had tried to call Pine on the radio and give her a warning, but she never acknowledged. Probably had the radio off.
After it came into the atmosphere, the Roswell saucer had been spotted over Missouri by people on the ground, over Illinois by an airliner going into O’Hare, and by several pilots flying over Canada. The Canadian military had been searching for it ever since without success.
The president wondered if he should have canceled this event. He had decided not to because it had already been announced and publicized.
As he kept checking his watch, he fretted.
If he had only known that Pine and Cantrell were late because they had overslept, he would have been infuriated.
A passing ship, a freighter out of Baltimore, woke them from their deep sleep. They heard the screw noises; then the saucer rocked slightly as the disturbed water reached the bottom. Charley Pine looked around, blinked, then looked at her watch. Omigawd! Half past eleven.
“Rip! Rip! Wake up. We’re late.”
She stumbled over to the pilot’s seat, wiping the sleep from her eyes. She donned the headset, pulled the power knob all the way out and lifted the antigravity control on the left side of the seat. The saucer didn’t want to come out of the mud. She lifted the control a good bit, and finally the mud released its grip.
The heavy saucer rose slowly, lifting a column of water above it. Impatient, Charley shoved the stick forward while lifting the antigravity control. Instantly the spaceship began moving through the water, faster and faster as the saucer-shape began developing lift. She lifted the nose a tad and the ship planed upward toward the surface. The flying saucer accelerated nicely and shot out of the water in a ten-degree climb.
A fisherman in a nearby boat was nearly swamped in the mini-tsunami. He stared openmouthed as Charley lit the rocket engines and the saucer accelerated away in a long, sweeping turn to the north.
Aboard the freighter, a severely hungover sailor who witnessed the saucer’s departure swore off booze. Never again, he vowed, as he squeezed his eyes shut against the glare of the rocket exhaust and belatedly clapped his hands over his ears.
JEAN-PAUL LALOUETTE WAS IN PAIN. THE STUMP OF his left arm was turning gangrenous, he suspected. He and Chadwick had bandaged it as well as they could, and then gradually loosened the emergency tourniquet to restore blood flow, but the bleeding had been so bad they had had to tighten it again or he would have bled to death.
During the three-day journey to earth he had fought the pain and shock, and watched in horror as Newton Chadwick aged before his eyes. The whole flight from the moon had been a living nightmare. He was already suffering the tortures of hell and he wasn’t even dead. Yet.
Chadwick had wanted to go to Missouri so he could kill Egg Cantrell when he arrived, as he would sooner or later. Lalouette thought that request sounded reasonable. He wanted the sweet taste of revenge himself. He dropped Chadwick at Cantrell’s farm, refilled his water tanks and left. If the other saucer didn’t show up for a week or two, he suspected he’d be dead when it arrived. His time was running out. He needed to intercept the saucer as soon as it came back to earth.
Charley Pine. He was going to kill her before he died.
Then he would be ready to go.
Not until then, though.
Listening to the radio, Lalouette learned of the welcome-home event planned at Andrews. Then! That would be the time and place.
He flew northeast into Canada, found a lake in the woods and refilled the saucer’s tanks. And he lucked out. There was an empty fishing cabin on the shore of the lake, already battened down for winter. He parked the saucer under a canopy of trees near the cabin. He broke into the cabin, found a sheet that he tore up for a new bandage, prepared a meal from canned goods the owners left behind and spent a miserable thirty-six hours huddled by a fire, consumed with rage.
Jean-Paul Lalouette wasn’t an evil man. Yet he had been beaten by a woman, and he was in severe pain and suffering from blood poisoning. He was no longer a rational human being.
Now he was gliding down toward Andrews from the northwest. The entire city of Washington lay under him. He ignored it, watching the sky for fighters. The Americans might try to intercept him, shoot him down.
He had timed his arrival for an hour after the event started. He would hover in front of the grandstand and kill everyone on it with the antimatter particles. Kill them all—Charley Pine, Rip Cantrell, the president, all of the bastards.
He saw airliners, but no fighters.
Despite the pain in his arm, he smiled grimly.
THE PEOPLE ON THE REVIEWING STAND HEARD THE low moan of the saucer’s rocket engines before they saw it. People stood to get a better view; everyone scanned the sky. The president’s granddaughter, Amanda, spotted the saucer first just above the horizon, coming swiftly from the southeast. She should have been in school today but demanded vociferously to see Charley Pine again, so her parents agreed that she could play hookey.
“There it is!” Amanda shouted, and pointed.
A wave of relief washed over the president, who collapsed back into his chair and mopped his brow.
The lenticular shape rushed toward them, its engines murmuring gently. Then the sound of the engines died away as Charley Pine put the saucer into a glide.
CHARLEY CONCENTRATED ON THE PARKING MAT IN front of the huge hangar, trying to judge the closure rate. She could see the hordes of people, tens of thousands of them, the reviewing stand and the empty place in front where undoubtedly they intended her to land. Off to her right, on the northern edge of the mat, was the Goodyear blimp, which an enterprising television network had hired to obtain aerial shots of the saucer’s landing.
Standing beside Charley’s seat in the saucer, Rip Cantrell scanned the sky forward, right, left and as far aft as he could see on either side. So he saw the other saucer first, ninety degrees off the port beam, tilted at a seventy-degree angle, turning hard to come in behind.
“Nine o’clock high!” he shouted, pointing, then instinctively grabbed something to hold on to.
Charley Pine looked where he pointed and acquired the other saucer instantly. A surge of adrenaline shot through her. She twisted the throttle grip on the lever that controlled the antigravity rings wide open. The engines lit instantly. She shoved the stick left and began tweaking the nose up. The saucer laid over into a turn, its nose rising as it quickly accelerated.
THE ROAR FROM CHARLEY’S ENGINES HIT THE CROWD below like the fist of God. Everyone had been watching the approaching saucer so intently that no one had seen the second one, circling high and maneuvering to drop onto the tail of the first.
The FAA administrator, who was on the reviewing platform, instantly assumed that Charley Pine intended to buzz the crowd, and roared, “I’ll have her license for this.” The noise was so loud that no one heard this promise.
When the second saucer lit its engines and passed overhead immediately behind the first, its sudden appearance shocked the administrator, the hundred thousand spectators and the audience around the globe watching on television.
Although he knew all too much about the second saucer, the president’s reaction was typical. “Oh, my God!” he said, and the words were lost in the deep bass thunder that massaged flesh and made the earth tremble.
JEAN-PAUL LALOUETTE THOUGHT HE HAD CHARLEY Pine as he turned hard, descending, to come in behind her. He had the antimatter reticle projected on the canopy in front of him, and he was ready to kill.
Then she lit her engines and turned hard into him. He knew that with his speed and descent angle, there was no way he could turn inside her, so he shallowed his turn and leveled the saucer, intending to accelerate and extend out, then turn hard and come back in for another pass. This course took him right over the assembled multitude below. Unfortunately, he was looking over his shoulder at Pine, hoping she would keep her turn in, so he didn’t notice that he was still descending. The roof of the hangar flashing under him caught his attention, however.
He automatically fed in back stick and glanced forward, ensured his nose was above the horizon, then looked left to reacquire Charley visually.
Still accelerating, his saucer headed straight for the Goodyear blimp.
THE CAMERAMAN IN THE GONDOLA OF THE BLIMP couldn’t believe his good fortune. He had a flying saucer coming at him head-on. He engaged the autofocus on his camera and got a shot that mesmerized his television audience: the saucer boring in, the black lenticular shape framed by the halo of white-hot exhaust flames that shot from its engines.
His elation quickly turned to horror as he realized the saucer was coming precisely at the camera. At the blimp. At him! He closed his eyes and braced himself.
LALOUETTE SAW CHARLEY PINE REVERSE HER TURN, whipping the saucer over from an eighty-degree bank to the left to a ninety-degree bank to the right. She was pulling hard too—he could see the swirl of a cloud forming on top of the turning disk and being swallowed by the exhaust flame.
He glanced ahead—and saw the blimp. He was going right at it. He was too close to avoid it. Even as the sight registered, the saucer hit the inflated blimp dead in the middle. Nearly supersonic now, the saucer cleaved through it in an eyeblink, like a bullet through paper, and shot out the other side.
FORTUNATELY THE BLIMP WAS FILLED WITH HELIUM, A nonflammable gas, so it didn’t explode. It folded like a ripped dishrag and fell straight down—into the base sewage-settling pond that just happened to be immediately below.
Five minutes later the pilot, copilot and cameraman staggered from the shallow pond, coughing, spluttering and uninjured. Lying on the bank covered in slime, the cameraman remembered the shot he had before his eyes slammed shut and began thinking about a Pulitzer.
JEAN-PAUL LALOUETTE EASED BACK ON THE GO JUICE and laid the saucer into a climbing, high-G turn. He wanted to get a shot at Charley Pine head-on or nearly so, and if the antimatter particles didn’t do the trick, he was going to ram her. He didn’t consciously think about it, but he knew that was the way it would go.
He lost sight for a second in the turn, and when he reacquired the other saucer visually, it had turned somewhat, making a head-on pass possible. He racked his ship around hard to bring the reticle to bear and opened fire.
He hadn’t thought about what would happen when his weapon began squirting antimatter particles through a gaseous medium, so he was surprised at the tracer bullet effect as random particles annihilated themselves on positrons in the air molecules.
Charley Pine saw the streak of fire and smoke, and jogged to avoid it.
Lalouette suddenly realized that he could not bring the particle stream onto her ship as they closed, so he concentrated on ramming. He was pulling hard when his ship barely missed Charley’s, passing immediately behind it, right through the rocket exhaust plume.
He immediately killed the rockets and began pulling back toward Charley, intent on getting behind her. The G killed his speed quickly, and indeed, Pine’s saucer began to move forward on his canopy.
Yes! He was going to get her! Elation flooded him and he pulled even harder on the stick, forcing his speed to bleed off even quicker.
WHEN CHARLEY LOOKED OVER HER RIGHT SHOULDER and saw the enemy saucer banking toward her without its
plume of rocket exhaust, she knew precisely what Lalouette intended—to get behind her for a killing shot.
She almost instinctively cut her engines, which would have set up a low-speed scissors, but she rejected that option. Her opponent was already slower than she was, so had the advantage. Instead she opened her throttle all the way, twisting the grip to the stop. The Gs shoved her backward into her seat.
REGARDLESS OF WHAT ELSE HE WAS, LALOUETTE WAS a good fighter pilot. He knew he had been outmaneuvered when he saw the exhaust plume on Pine’s saucer grow into a mighty torch, almost as bright as the sun. Too late, he ordered the computer to give him full power. Still, the enemy saucer began opening the range dramatically. He did manage to get Pine in his sights and fired. A river of sparks and smoke shot forward, but he sensed the range was already too great. None of the antimatter particles would survive to reach the target. Closer. He had to get closer.
AS IT HAPPENED, PINE WAS HEADING NORTHEAST when she stroked the rockets, so that was the way she continued. With Lalouette well behind, the two saucers shot away in that direction and soon disappeared from sight.
The thunder of their engines continued to reverberate around the hangar and parking mats of Andrews Air Force Base for almost a minute, however, before it faded below the threshold of hearing.
As the roar diminished, people began removing their fingers from their ears. Amanda exclaimed, “I’m going to be a saucer pilot someday, just like Charley Pine!”
The president was a thoughtful man. If Lalouette succeeded in shooting down Pine, there was nothing to stop him from refueling and returning to the moon to rescue Pierre Artois, nor from carrying technicians and parts aloft to repair the antigravity beam generator. As the excited voices around him became a hubbub, he turned to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and whispered, “Scramble every fighter on the East Coast. Shoot down that big saucer.”
Saucer: The Conquest Page 27