Saucer s-1

by Stephen Coonts

  That bright spot along the riverbank… that could be the town. She looked again through the canopy, examined the radar presentation one more time.

  'Are we high enough?' he asked Charley. She knew what he meant, which was, Can we glide that far?

  'Jesus, I hope so,' she told him and inadvertently waggled the control stick.

  'I wouldn't do that,' Rip told her nervously as he braced himself against the twitching of the saucer. 'The gas in the reservoirs for the maneuvering jets must be oxygen or hydrogen from the water. When it runs out, we'll have no way to control this thing.'

  Charley had an almost overpowering urge to urinate. She fought it back.

  The lights of the town were coming rapidly closer. The gliding saucer rapidly closed the distance at a velocity of four hundred knots true.

  They crossed over the town several miles above it. It was on the Nile, the southern end of Lake Nasser, so Rip had Charley turn to the northeast to fly along the lake. 'We'll have to land beside it regardless of obstacles.'

  Charley's head bobbed.

  'When you near the ground, level off. As our speed bleeds off, lift up on the collective, that left-hand lever. Those antigravity rings will keep us airborne, I hope. Keep flying the saucer with the control stick and the rudder. Pick a flat place near the water and bring us down gently.'

  Charley nodded again. Her head just kept bobbing up and down.

  'Can you do this, Charley?'

  More head bobbing.

  'I'd feel better if you said something to me, Charley. Anything.'

  She glanced at him. Her face was white. She was too scared to say anything. It was written all over her face.

  Rip kissed her on the lips. 'Thanks for the ride, babe.'

  'Better' — she cleared her throat explosively — 'better sit down and strap in.'

  Charley Pine stared into the darkness ahead. She could see… absolutely nothing.

  No, wait! There was a light, reflecting on water. A boat.

  Too low!

  She pulled back sharply on the control stick and up on the collective. The G's mashed her into the seat as the nose rose.

  Oh, too much, too much!

  She felt the ship shudder… the edge of a stall… rammed the stick forward… pulled the collective toward her armpit, as high as it would go. She knew she was grossly over controlling, but what choice did she have?

  The earth appeared suddenly in the landing lights; quick as thought she lifted the nose sharply, although not as precipitously as the first time.

  The saucer leveled, then the nose dipped and the landing lights revealed the ground racing to meet her. She pulled the stick as far back as it would go.

  The saucer hit something a glancing blow that threw it back into the air.

  Still slowing, the ship would have crashed were it not for the antigravity rings, which prevented contact with the earth. Once again the saucer seemed to carom off an invisible rail.

  A cliff appeared dead ahead in the landing lights.

  She had no time to think. She dropped the collective, slammed the stick and rudder to the left. The saucer hit the earth, bounced once, then stayed on the ground.

  Rip lost his grip on the pilot's seat. The deceleration slammed him forward onto the instrument panel. He went out like a light.

  When Rip Cantrell awoke, the sun was in his eyes. He was lying in sand, he discovered, and the sun was reflecting off the saucer. He squinted, tried to rise and couldn't, rolled over to see where he was. He could hear an airplane, a buzzing.

  He held up an arm to shield his eyes from the sun. The plane was a high-wing Cessna, only a couple hundred feet up, circling. The pilot must be looking the saucer over.

  'About time you woke up,' Charley Pine said. She was pouring water into the fuel tank using one of the plastic cans Rip had thrown into the saucer last night.

  He had a hell of a headache. He rolled over, levered himself up to a sitting position. He fingered his forehead. A large scab. Dried blood on his skin, in his eyebrows. He picked at it.

  Finally he checked his watch. Ten o'clock.

  The saucer was sitting on its landing gear, as neat and pretty as a pigeon on her nest. Fifty or sixty yards away, mostly downhill, was the riverbank. The river was perhaps two miles wide at this point; this must be Lake Nasser. The view was worth looking at, but his eyes ached from the sun's glare. He shut them to let them rest.

  The drone of the airplane's engine brought him fully awake. 'How long has that plane been circling?' he asked.

  'Oh, fifteen minutes or so.'

  'I thought we crashed, last night.'

  'We did. Nothing damaged, though. I lifted the saucer and put the gear down. Got you out here in the sand so you would sleep better.'

  'Is the thing okay?'

  'Sure.'

  'Didn't hurt it?'

  'Honest.'

  She finished pouring and set out for the river. Rip started to get up, then thought better of it.

  The Cessna made one last circle, then flew away to the northeast.

  Rip watched it go. He was still sitting beside the saucer when she returned carrying the heavy can with both hands. Unassisted, she hoisted it to the refill receptacle and began pouring.

  'You're pretty strong.'

  'You'd better be, this day and age.'

  'How many gallons is that?'

  'Fifty. Ten trips. I'm going to sit a while and watch you add the next fifty.'

  'Isn't that just like a woman! You do your work in the cool of the day and leave the hot work for a man.'

  'Isn't that just like a man!' she shot back. 'Sleeps late, watches the woman work, then gripes.'

  Rip struggled to his feet and took the empty can from her. He picked up the second one in the other hand, then set off down the hill.

  The river was a flat sheet of brown, opaque water. In every direction, all he could see was sand, mud, rock, and water. There wasn't much breeze. Sweat dripped off his chin as he forced the first can into the water and let the water run in the opening.

  Liquid mud. This brown water wouldn't do the saucer's machinery any good, that's for sure. still, there was nothing else.

  After he filled the second can, he paused, staring morosely at the brown water, which didn't seem to be flowing. He was thirsty and hot, but if he drank that stuff he would get the runs for sure. He squatted and splashed water on his face, in his hair, then swabbed it with a rolled-up sleeve. His sleeve picked up most of the dirt.

  Maybe this afternoon they would get to a place with cool, clean water.

  A bath wouldn't hurt either. And food.

  If he could work up the courage to fly in the saucer again. He had never been so scared in his life as he was last night, in the darkness, with the earth rushing toward them… He shivered once, remembering.

  Climbing the hill with the cans, he told himself he could do it. 'It was dark last night,' he told Charley. 'Couldn't see a darn thing.'

  'Uh-huh.'

  'Flying in the daytime will be different.'

  'Yeah.'

  'You can see things.'

  She nodded her head and brushed the hair back out of her eyes.

  'You'll do better today,' he said.

  'Maybe.'

  'No, really. I'd be dead right now if you hadn't crawled into that saucer with me.'

  'You would really have flown this thing by yourself?'

  'I was going to.'

  'Seriously?'

  'I intended to.'

  'Uh-huh.'

  'I didn't know what was involved.'

  'Life's like that, isn't it?' she said and brushed a wisp of hair off her forehead.

  He trudged down the hill for another ten gallons.

  When he had poured his fifty gallons into the saucer, he flopped down on the sand beside Charley. 'Wonder how much that thing holds.'

  'Let me see your head.' She put her hands on the side of his head and examined his forehead. 'You may have a scar. That's a pretty good whack.
Blood's still oozing from it.'

  Her hands were strong. He liked that.

  'Are you married to that major?' he asked.

  'What made you ask that?'

  'You're not wearing a ring, but some women don't these days.'

  'I'm single.'

  'Live with him?'

  She made a dismissive gesture.

  A gentle breeze stirred her hair. She looked like a fine hunk of woman, Rip Cantrell thought. Pretty old, though. Heck, she must be pushing thirty.

  'So how come you got into that saucer with me?'

  'I didn't want to see you kill yourself

  'Oh, come on. Give me a straight answer. I'm not a kid.'

  She shrugged. 'I figured you might try to fly it, and I thought, why not? A girl can only die once.'

  Charley Pine started to laugh, then thought better of it and bit her lip. She got up, picked up one of the cans, set off for the river.

  Rip picked up the other can and trailed after her.

  'So are you in trouble with the Air Force?'

  'I will be, sooner or later. When they find out this thing will fly, they'll want me to fly it to Nevada.'

  'Where in Nevada?'

  'Area Fifty-one.'

  'That's the top-secret base?'

  'Yes.'

  'So are you going to?'

  'Can't take you there, can I? You don't have a clearance.'

  'They'll fire you, maybe. Talk Lockheed Martin out of hiring you.'

  Charley grunted.

  On the next trip back up the hill with full cans, Rip relieved Charley of her can. 'What do you think we ought to do?' he asked as he poured water into the saucer.

  'We should fly this thing to the States, give it to the Air Force.'

  Rip tilted the can, listened to the gurgling water. When the can was empty, he tossed it in the sand and picked up the other one.

  'No,' he told her.

  'Well, where do you want to go?'

  'I don't know,' he confessed.

  'This ship is designed to shuttle back and forth between an orbiting mother ship and the surface of a planet. I doubt if it carries enough fuel to operate continuously in the atmosphere.'

  'What are you saying?'

  'This craft is designed to shuttle up and down from the surface, not fly cross-country like an airplane.'

  'Can we safely go into space without knowing how to run the computers?'

  'Don't kid yourself. There's nothing we can safely do with this ship except let it sit right where it is.'

  'I don't want to leave it here and I don't want to give it to the Air Force.'

  She didn't say anything to that.

  'I don't want to let those Aussies have it,' Rip added. 'Qaddafi either.'

  'Uh-huh.'

  'I just don't know,' Rip Cantrell said.

  'Well, we're going to have to do something. Sitting here on this riverbank is going to attract a crowd before long. And I could use something to eat and something tall and frosty to drink.'

  Finally they got the saucer's tank full. They could tell by the sound that the tank was filling up. Rip poured water in until it overflowed, then tossed both cans inside the ship. The tank had taken about one hundred and sixty gallons.

  They were sitting in the shade of the saucer, neither of them saying anything, when a small steamer drifted to a stop about fifty yards from the riverbank. It must have been in sight for at least fifteen minutes but they hadn't noticed it. The small ship was perhaps seventy feet long, with two decks above the waterline, and crammed with people and animals. All the people were looking this way. So many had crowded to this side of the boat that it was listing.

  'Uh-oh!'

  Everyone on the boat seemed to be talking at once and pointing this way. The gabble of voices carried across the water.

  'Do you speak Arabic?' Charley asked Rip.

  'Nowhere near enough to talk to those guys.' Rip stood and dusted off his trousers.

  'Maybe we better get aboard and bop on out of here.'

  'Boy, look at 'em,' Rip said. 'You'd think they'd never seen a flying saucer.'

  'Ha, ha, and ha.'

  Rip waved at the mob on the boat. Several waved back, but most just stared. They seemed to be silent now.

  With his hands on his hips, Rip looked around as if he were trying to memorize the setting. 'This place is gonna be famous,' he said with a grin. 'The Roswell, New Mexico, of the Nile Valley. People will come from miles around just to see the place where the saucer sat.' He waved at the boat crowd again. 'Who knows, there are probably some folks aboard that boat who will eat out for the next twenty years on their story of what they saw today. "And then, just before he went aboard his spaceship and blasted off, one of the aliens waved. Damnedest thing I ever did see."'

  'That's enough, E.T. Into the ship.'

  After one last wave to the people on the boat, the imaginary fans on the landward side, and an unseen television audience all over the globe, Rip Cantrell ducked down and waddled his way under the saucer to the open hatch.

  'We must do something about the method of ingress. It's just plain undignified.'

  He fired off the reactor, waited a bit for some water to percolate through the system, then helped Charley Pine into the pilot's seat. She wiggled the stick and rudder. Little puffs of dirt and dust rose from each of the maneuvering jets. She kept wiggling the stick until the puffs stopped.

  Rip stood beside her on the step where he had stood last night.

  'You want to get strapped in or something?'

  'Just take it easy, lady. Don't do anything exciting.'

  She slowly lifted the collective, concentrated on making only tiny movements with the stick. The saucer became light on the skids, then rose off the ground in a little cloud of dust. She lifted it into a hover about six feet above the ground, then used her left hand to reach for the gear switch. A humming noise was audible from the machinery spaces until the gear legs were in.

  Charley took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Please, Lord, don't let me screw this up.

  She turned the ship with the rudder, pointed it ahead of the boat, which was still dead in the water fifty yards or so from the shore.

  She let the saucer move that way. The ship was at least a hundred feet in the air and climbing when it crossed the riverbank. The test pilot kept lifting the collective, lifting the saucer higher and higher. She ran out of collective when the ship was about two hundred feet high; it would go no higher without rocket power.

  Taking her time, Charley slowly circled the drifting boat. As she crossed behind the stern, the boat listed the other way as everyone on board shifted sides for a better view.

  'If that boat capsizes, a lot of those people will drown,' Rip pointed out.

  'Okay.'

  Charley turned west and leveled out, nudged the control stick forward to coax more speed out of the saucer. They crossed the lake leisurely, accelerating slowly. On the far shore they passed over a railroad track and a highway. Only then did Charley Pine light the rocket engines.

  The acceleration pushed her deeper into the seat. Rip Cantrell held on tightly.

  Yes!

  A smile lit up her face.

  The saucer was accelerating nicely, but it was only a couple thousand feet above the sand and rock wilderness when Rip spotted the first jet fighter and pointed it out to her. The plane was a silver speck in the deep blue sky, glinting in the sun. There was another behind the first, offset to one side.

  The fighters were coming in from the right, pointed almost directly at the saucer.

  'We stayed too long at the party,' Charley told him.

  Even as she spoke, a series of flashes lit up the nose of the first fighter.

  'He's shooting] Let's go!'

  She cranked the rocket engines wide open. The G struck her like a fist.

  Rip Cantrell shouted something, lost his grip on the pilot's seat and instrument panel, and tumbled toward the back of the compartment.

  Des
pite the push of the rockets at full cry, the fighter was closing. Instinctively she banked the saucer toward the fighter, forcing the other pilot into an overshoot. The saucer ripped by the silver delta-winged fighter at a scant hundred yards, accelerating through Mach 2.

  At Mach 3, Charley pulled back on the control stick and pointed the saucer almost straight up. She stayed on the juice.

  The saucer roared skyward on a cone of fire.

  Aboard the boat, the passengers stared with open mouths as the rising fireball began slowly tilting toward the northeast. They could still hear the distant thunder of the engines echoing back and forth between the steep shores of the lake when the bright fire from the rockets merged with the great golden orb of the sun.

  Chapter Seven

  The computer displays consisted of graphics and short rows of symbols that both Rip and Charley thought were probably words and numbers. Since they couldn't read any of it, Rip held on tightly to the pilot's seat with his left hand and flipped through the displays with his right, looking for…

  'I've never seen graphics like these,' he shouted. 'They're so real, like you should be able to touch them. They almost look like holographs.'

  'They are holographs,' Charley said. 'That's it, right there! That display is the one we want.'

  Rip held tight with both hands and stared. A curving pathway led upward and eastward. A series of analog needles arranged vertically along the left side of the display might indicate altitude, airspeed, direction… but which was which?

  Ah, yes. The second one down from the top must be altitude, and the one under it airspeed. He said as much to Charley, who told him, 'I think you're right.'

  She had the juice full on now. At least four G's were pushing them toward the rocket engines in the rear of the ship. Rip was holding on as best he could, but he was tiring.

  Finally he could hold on no longer and let himself go. He crashed into the aft bulkhead.

  Charley Pine was shouting, a primordial yell of pure triumph as she concentrated on the computer graphics before her. She felt so good. All those years of flight training, all those years of school, the sweat, the tears, the sacrifices, and now she was flying this thing into space! Her fellow Air Force test pilots would turn green with envy when they found out. And they would find out, of that she had no doubt.