When he got his pants up, Rip eased the door open and slipped away into the darkness.
He made his way to the Jeep. The glove compartment contained a roll of duct tape, which Rip pocketed.
Two five-gallon plastic cans full of water were attached to the rear of the Jeep. Out here in this desert, water was life. Rip checked these cans every day, and both Dutch and Bill did too.
He unfastened them both, lifted them down into the sand. They weighed about forty pounds apiece.
After a last check around, he hefted both cans, one in each hand, and set off in the direction of the saucer, which was still illuminated by two spotlights. The other spotlights, at least six, had been turned off.
Rip could hear Sharkey's two experts talking inside the saucer. He made sure the water cans were out of sight, then stuck his head up into the thing. The two Aussie technicians had a battery-operated lantern going and were disassembling one of the computer displays. Maybe the whole computer.
'Hey,' Rip said.
'Yeah,' one of the men said, not looking around.
'Sharkey said to tell you guys to go get some dinner.'
'He did?' Now the man looked around.
'Yep.'
One of the men straightened up. 'I could use something to eat. Come on, Harry.'
'I'm not hungry,' Harry said. 'You go. Bring me back a bite.'
'Okay, mate.'
As the first man climbed down off the ledge, Rip crawled up into the ship. Harry didn't turn around.
'What are you working on?'
'A computer. Really extraordinary. Never saw anything like it.'
'Did you guys take anything else apart?'
'Not yet.' Harry sat back on his heels. 'We really should disassemble that electrolysis unit.' He pointed with a thumb. 'I think that thing separates water into hydrogen and oxygen. Ol man Hedrick could make a mint with a thing like that, believe me, mate. Put every oil company on earth out of business. The possibilities are mind-blowing. still, he said to examine the computers first.'
Hedrick could only be Australian billionaire Roger Hedrick, the second richest man on earth. 'Hedrick's rich enough, don't you think?' Rip asked lightly. 'He's worth what? Fifty billion?'
'More like eighty,' Harry replied. 'He owns half of Australia now. But a man can never be too rich. At least Hedrick doesn't think so.'
Rip tapped Harry on the shoulder. As he turned his head, Rip delivered a haymaker on the point of his chin. Harry went down hard.
Rip got busy with the duct tape. By the time he had Harry's mouth, hands, and ankles taped, the man was moaning. At least he wasn't dead.
'Sorry, buddy,' Rip told the half-conscious man and grabbed his ankles. He pulled the man over to the hatch and dropped him through it. There was a satellite phone on the floor near where Harry had been working, and Rip pitched that through the hatch too, along with Harry's tool kit.
He didn't have much time. He pulled the man as far from the ship as he could, hoisted him, and set him up on the ledge. That would have to do.
Working fast, he opened the fueling hatch between the exhaust nozzles and got the lid off the first water can. He lifted it into position and poured.
He was halfway through the first can when a voice behind him said, 'You didn't kill that man, did you?'
It was Charley Pine.
'What are you doing here?'
'I wondered where you went when you didn't come back.'
'Anyone see you leave?'
'I don't think so. Now tell me, how bad did you hurt that man?'
'Just slugged him with my fist, taped his mouth shut. He'll be okay.'
'What is that you're putting in there?'
'Water.'
'After one hundred and forty thousand years? Rip, don't be silly.'
'We'll find out in about three minutes.'
'Are you kidding me?'
The words were just out of her mouth when two helicopters sporting floodlights flew over. Low.
'Now what?' Rip demanded.
He could see two more choppers settling onto the sand near Sharkey's two machines.
'Pine, are these more Air Force?'
'I don't think so.'
Someone in the door of the chopper just landing started shooting. Muzzle flashes.
One of the choppers overhead came into a hover and someone spoke over a loud-hailer. In Arabic.
'Uh-oh,' Rip said through clenched teeth. He finished the first can of water and reached for the second.
The floodlight hit the tarp over the saucer.
'Get down quick,' he shouted at Charley. 'Get in the saucer.'
She leaped off the ledge, crawled under the saucer toward the hatch.
'Raise your hands. Drop your weapons. Surrender and you will not be harmed.' The voice over the loud-hailer was using English now.
'In the name of the Islamic Republic of Libya, surrender or be shot down.'
'Boy, it's in the fan now,' Rip muttered to himself as the water gurgled out of the second can. The can was still draining. It seemed to take forever.
'Come on, come on… '
Then the can went dry. He made sure the saucer's refueling cap was firmly in place. Ingenious how they did that.
He tossed both cans into the ship, then crawled in himself and pulled the hatch shut behind him.
Charley Pine was standing beside the pilot's seat on a step that jutted out from the pedestal, trying to see out the canopy.
'One of us is going to have to fly this thing,' Rip said. 'I flew my Uncle's Aeronca Champ three or four times. I'll give it a go if you want to wait to read the manual.'
She got into the pilot's seat, reached for the seat belt and fastened it.
'That was the easy part,' she said. 'Got any bright ideas on how to get this thing started?'
'As a matter of fact… ' Rip muttered and reached across for the power knob. He pulled it all the way out. The instrument lights illuminated, the dials and gauges came alive, the computer screens came on, and from the equipment bay behind them they heard a welcome hum.
'My God!' The exclamation just popped out of Charley Pine. 'I thought you were kidding.'
'This is the third time I've fired it off. The other night I had it running for over an hour while the other guys were asleep.'
She merely stared, her mouth agape.
'The neat thing is the computers,' Rip told her with a grin. 'Everything's done symbolically. I'm not sure I understand all the symbols yet, but I think I can figure them out in flight.'
She turned to examine his face. 'Who are you, anyway?'
'Name's Rip Cantrell, lady. Now, can you fly this thing or can't you?'
She looked at the panel and controls, trying to take it all in. 'This lever here,' Rip reached and touched, 'has got to be the control stick. I think this will fly like a helicopter. You see the pedals? They function like a rudder, I think, activating the maneuvering jets.'
'You've flown a helicopter?'
'I rode in one. Watched the pilots fly it.' He grinned at her to allay her fears. He was feeling none too confident himself, but he didn't want her to know that.
'That thing in your left hand is the collective, which controls the antigravity field, I think. If you'll lift it the tiniest bit… '
As she did, the saucer lifted itself from the earth. It rocked slightly from side to side, touching on the skids that were still down. Charley overcontrolled with the stick in her right hand, then had the sense to let go of it. The pedals at her feet she barely touched… and felt the ship slew.
''Awesome!'' breathed Rip Cantrell, holding on tight to the pilot's seat.
The tarp was still covering the saucer, so Charley couldn't go up very far or that thing would drape itself over the canopy. She eased the right-hand stick forward just a touch.
The saucer moved ever so gently out from under the tarp. Some sand flew around, about as much as a hello would raise.
Dutch Haagen was standing with his hands raised when he hear
d Bill Taggart cry out. He looked back at the saucer.
The spaceship was a silent silver shape, coming out of the glare of the floodlights toward them.
It was moving slowly, like a helicopter. Only there was no sound. Without even a whisper of sound, the thing was uncanny, like something from a silent movie.
'Sweet Jesus!' Bill said.
'If that kid crashes that thing… ' Professor Soldi swore. He knew to a certainty that Rip Cantrell was in the pilot seat.
The Libyan officer in charge couldn't believe his eyes.
He screamed something in Arabic, pointed his pistol at the saucer, and pulled the trigger.
His troops let fly with bursts of automatic fire. Sparks appeared along the body of the ship where the bullets were bouncing off.
Charley raised the collective and pulled back on the stick.
The saucer tilted up. She and Rip could hear the whump of bullets striking the ship.
'I can't see,' she shouted as the illuminated camp disappeared under the nose.
'Fly the instruments!' Rip cried.
Sure enough, there was an artificial horizon on the computer screen in front of her. Charley lowered the nose to get the ship level.
'We're not going very fast,' Rip pointed out.
'I haven't lit the burners yet. I need to feel this thing out, fly it around a while.'
'Lady, I don't think this is the time or place. We gotta boogie.'
Charley Pine felt completely out of her depth. Panic swept over her as she scanned the instrument panel. She pushed a button. Nothing happened. Flipped a lever. Symbols appeared above the lever. Three arrows pointing up. Then little green lights.
'Gear up.'
Maybe the rockets were controlled by the buttons on the grip of the collective.
She took her eyes off the artificial horizon to examine the grip. When she pushed a button on the very end of the stick, she heard a rumble.
'Watch where you're going,' Rip urged, his voice an octave higher than normal.
Charley got her eyes back on the artificial horizon and leveled the ship with the stick in her right hand. Then she twisted the grip on the left-hand control. She heard the rocket engines ignite, a throaty rumble, and acceleration pressed her back hard into the seat. Rip Cantrell lost his fight against the acceleration G and fell toward the rear of the compartment.
Somehow Charley managed to pull the stick back; the nose of the ship came up. Straight ahead, through the canopy, was a sky full of stars.
The fire from the rocket engines lit the desert for miles in every direction. The light was blinding, like a small sun.
And the noise was deafening, the loudest noise Dutch Haagen had ever heard. It vibrated his skull and teeth, massaged the flesh of his face. Dutch clapped his hands over his ears and fell to his knees. He kept his eyes shut against the searing light, which was so bright he could see it through his eyelids.
When the sound and light had faded somewhat, he opened his eyes to slits. The saucer was fifteen degrees above the horizon, accelerating away, the exhaust a sheet of white fire.
Chapter Six
The severe acceleration forces held Charley Pine imprisoned against her seat. Rip was on the floor, trapped against the bottom of a forward-facing seat.
Rip pushed off with his legs until he could reach the pedestal that supported the pilot's seat. He pulled himself to it, then clawed his way erect. That he was able to accomplish this task under at least four G's of acceleration was a tribute to his physical condition.
'Get off the juice, Charley, for God's sake!'
She twisted the grip on the left-hand stick back somewhat and the G eased considerably.
'How much water did you put in this thing?'
'Ten gallons,' he replied.
'That isn't going to get us far.'
'Maybe we can make the Nile. Lake Nasser. We're heading east, I think.'
'How can you tell?'
'Look at this computer display. You tell me.' In front of them was a globe with a small arrow in the middle, which now pointed to the right.
In the crystal-clear desert air the earth below was an empty, dark wasteland under an infinite sea of stars. The sliver of moon that had been just above the horizon when they took off was now well up in the night sky and rapidly climbing higher as the saucer gained altitude.
'Oh, God!' Pine exclaimed. 'What in the world have we done? How are we going to get down?'
Rip tried to swallow and couldn't. 'We'll make it,' he said, his voice an octave too high.
'We can't even see to land!'
Rip searched the control panel. 'There has to be a light switch on here someplace,' he said. 'There are two big landing lights on the bottom of this thing.'
Charley let the saucer tilt slightly. 'Watch your attitude,' Rip said sharply, causing her to pick up the left wing, if there had been a left wing.
'How high are we?' she asked plaintively. She tried to keep the fear out of her voice, but she knew it showed a little.
'God knows,' Rip Cantrell answered, his voice tight.
He played with buttons and switches on the instrument panel until he found the lighting panel. Confident that he was turning on lights, Rip turned on every switch on that panel. Landing lights made the leading edge of the saucer glow, although the air was too clear to see the beams.
'Look at the displays,' Charley demanded. 'Figure it out!'
'I'm trying! I'm trying!'
She still had a little nose-up attitude on the artificial horizon, so she assumed she was climbing. She had no idea what her speed might be.
Almost as if he could read her thoughts, Rip Cantrell remarked, 'We must be supersonic. This saucer shape is optimal for hypersonic flight.'
Charley twisted the grip to add a little more power.
Off to her left, at about her ten o'clock position, she glimpsed the twinkling of city lights embedded in the vast blackness. Aswan? Luxor? It couldn't be Cairo, could it?
Her heartbeat and respiration rate were almost back to normal when she said to Rip, 'This is pretty cool, huh?'
The saucer responded to every twitch of her hands and feet. Never had she felt this wonderful, felt such a feeling of command.
'Too cool for school. But how are you going to land this thing?'
'Uh… '
Before she could say another word, the sound of the rocket engines died; they felt a decelerating force push them forward.
'We're outta water,' Rip said bitterly. 'Keep flying, keep flying!' he quickly added. 'This thing is going like a bullet. Lower your nose just a tad to level flight and hold it there while we decelerate.'
'I know how to fly, Junior.'
'Just trying to do my bit.'
'The saucer is glowing,' she reported. By craning her neck, Charley could just see a bit of the fuselage.
'I think that glow is from the landing lights.'
Charley Pine's mind was racing. She studied the displays on the computer screen. The graphics were alive. One of them must display angle of attack or relative airspeed, margin above stalling speed, something like that. Which one?
Perhaps… She reached up and touched the button like protrusions that surrounded the main screen. Yes. Each button produced a different graphic on a small segment of the screen.
She quickly found what appeared to be an analog display of angle of attack. Suddenly sure, she told Rip, 'I'll fly this,' and explained how the needle on the screen would give her the best gliding angle. 'When that needle gets to about this position,' she pointed with her fingertip, 'I'll hold it there by adjusting the nose attitude. Or try to, anyway.'
'And if you can't?'
Charley swallowed hard. The magnitude of the task before her hit her like a hammer. She had been a damned fool to try to fly this thing. Now she was going to kill herself and this idiot kid. She had trouble swallowing.
'Relax,' Rip said, squeezing her hand. 'You got us this far.'
'You're crazy!'
Rip laughe
d. At a time like this, he laughed!
'This thing will glide like a brick,' he told her. 'It's a lifting body, but the sink rate is going to be spectacular.' He checked the position of the lever to the left of the pilot's seat. 'Better lower that.' He pointed. 'It works the antigravity rings, and we're going to need all the help they can give us to cushion our descent at the bottom.'
Tears trickled down Charley's cheeks. She swabbed at them with her left hand while she kept her eyes moving between the artificial horizon and the angle of attack presentation.
'We're way high up,' she said when she finally trusted herself to talk. 'It's going to take us a long time to coast down.'
'Not as long as you think. Believe me.'
I'll bet this thing has radar,' she suggested.
Rip began playing with the other computer displays. One computer hung half out of the panel, partially disassembled. There were three others. Luck being what it is, Rip was sure the radar display was probably presented on the computer that Harry and his mate had operated on.
He felt the nose dip. Heard the hiss of gas being ejected from the maneuvering jets as Charley moved the control stick. Now he understood the system: gaseous oxygen and hydrogen had been automatically stored so the pilot could control the machine with the rocket engines off, as she would have to do to rendezvous with a mother ship in orbit.
There, a radar presentation! Amid the sea of return was a black ribbon angling left and up. That would be the Nile.
'I've got it, but I don't know the scale.'
'We're coming down pretty fast,' Charley said in a worried voice.
He checked. Almost ten degrees nose down on the artificial horizon.
'Look for lights along the river. The river's out there, all right. We're aiming straight for the southern end of Lake Nasser.'
'Lights
'Little towns along the river. Villages.'
'There,' Charley Pine said, relief evident in her voice, I'll steer for that.' She consulted the radar presentation.
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