Saucer The Conquest

CHAPTER 4

“Are you ready?” Egg called. He was standing in front of the hangar aiming a video camera mounted on a tripod.
“I guess,” Rip Cantrell answered, loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the idling truck engine. He was seated in Egg’s old Dodge in the center of the grass runway. He had removed the batteries from the truck bed and installed two large generators in the engine compartment of the pickup, with sheaves and belts to power them from the fan-belt takeoff.
“Any time,” Egg shouted, and bent to his viewfinder.
Rip wiped the perspiration from his forehead, so it wouldn’t get into his eyes, and tightened the belts in his three-point harness. His stomach was tied into a knot. He goosed the engine a couple of times with the accelerator, watching the amp meter rise and fall. Oil pressure okay, radiator temp okay. He did it one more time, allowing the engine RPM to rise. The truck rose a few inches, then settled back onto the tires as he let the RPM drop.
He had a small control box he had salvaged from a model airplane radio-control unit mounted on a piece of metal, a joy stick, protruding from the dash to the right of the steering wheel. He moved the stick back and forth, left and right.
“Here goes nothing,” he muttered, and jammed the accelerator to the floor.
The truck rose into the air as the electrical power from the generators energized the antigravity rings under the pickup. The truck began to tilt backward. Rip moved the small control stick forward, lowering the truck’s nose and stopping rearward movement.
The truck rose until it was about a dozen feet in the air. The natural gravitational field of the earth and the man-made one he had induced in the truck were repelling each other. As the engine under the hood roared at full power, Rip kept the pickup level and stationary by using the stick.
Ha! Satisfied he had control, he moved the stick ever so slightly to the right. The truck tilted and began drifting in that direction.
Now he leveled the truck, then tilted the nose down a trifle for forward movement. The truck obediently began moving. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. He jockeyed the stick to control the rate.
After he had gone a hundred feet, when he was doing perhaps fifteen miles per hour, he laid the truck into a left turn. He had enough room. The nose of the truck obediently swung around, turning back toward the hangar.
He had just gotten it stabilized when a cloud of steam rose from under the hood. Water and steam sprayed on the windshield. The radiator temp gauge needle pegged right. Rip let up on the accelerator.
Not quickly enough. He heard a loud bang, then the engine noise stopped dead.
Still slightly nose down, the bottom fell out and the truck dropped toward the earth.
The shock of impact snapped his head forward and stunned him.
In the silence that followed the crash, he became aware of his uncle leaning in through the window. He had trouble focusing his eyes. Part of the reason was the dirt in the air— he seemed to be sitting in the middle of a dust cloud.
“You okay, Ripper?” his uncle shouted, only inches from his head.
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Let’s get you out of this thing. I smell gasoline. You may have fractured the fuel tank.”
Soon Rip was sitting in the grass fifty feet from the wreck with his uncle seated beside him. As his head cleared, Rip stared at the smashed Dodge. Gray smoke and white steam wisped from the engine compartment. There was no fire.
“Blew the engine, I guess,” he said to his uncle. “Seemed like the radiator blew. Before I could react the crankshaft froze.”
“Locked up tighter than the hubs of hell,” Egg said, nodding vigorously. “You were at least ten feet in the air.”
“Sorry about your truck.”
“I’ll take it out of your allowance,” Egg said, then laughed. When he laughed his belly quivered.
Rip joined in. He lay back in the grass and laughed and laughed.
“It’s good to be alive, isn’t it?” Egg said when they finally calmed down.
“Yeah, Unc. It really is.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“Gonna put that system on the Extra. The airplane engine is designed to turn at high RPM all day. Won’t blow it like I did the truck engine.”
“Need any help?”
“Well, sure. But let me lie here another five minutes. And I want to see that video.”
? ? ?

The moon was a giant orb hanging in the black sky when Charley turned the spaceplane and lined it up for the lunar orbit injection burn. When she had it perfectly aligned according to the computer display, she ran through the checklist again, studying the items, fingering switches, assuring herself for the tenth time that they were in the right position. It would have been comforting to have a second pair of knowledgeable eyes examine each switch, yet the eyes she was burdened with were Artois’. He sat beside her in the copilot’s seat, watching everything, knowing nothing.
Both wore space suits complete with helmets, just in case Charley blew the landing and crashed on the moon, cracking the pressure hull. A sudden depressurization wouldn’t kill them. Assuming they survived the crash.
Jeanne d’Arc was closing rapidly on the moon. Even though this was the dark side, it was a massive presence, only sixty-five miles from the spaceplane. For the first time since they had left earth orbit, the presence of the world off the left wing gave her the sensation of motion.
The pilot checked the navigation display again, ensuring that the low point of the trajectory would be at precisely sixty miles, exactly at the point of the burn, which would occur on the back side of the moon, the side opposite the earth. All was as it should be.
She cracked her knuckles in anticipation, a gesture that startled Artois.
Poor devil, she thought. He had signed up an American female pilot to fob off the demands of French politicians, and now Charley was all he had. She couldn’t see his face inside his helmet, but she sensed his concern. She flashed him a grin that he couldn’t see.
“Nothing to sweat,” she said. “The program is working perfectly. There is nothing for us to do but sit and watch.”
“So anyone could fly these planes?” he said acidly.
“As long as all the computers work perfectly,” she replied carelessly. “If they don’t, then you hand-fly it.” Of course, Artois knew this already. He had been intimately involved in the design and engineering of the spaceplanes that made the lunar base possible. “That’s why you spent the money for the very best sticks you could find, isn’t it?”

Artois didn’t answer that rhetorical question.
“Fifteen seconds to loss of telemetry,” Bodard said from Mission Control. At ten seconds to go he began counting, and his voice faded at two. Jeanne d’Arc was no longer in communication with anyone on planet Earth. She would be out of communication for sixteen minutes, until she swung out from behind the moon.
Charley keyed the intercom and announced, “Everyone in their seats, strap in and report, si’l vous-plait. The lunar orbit injection burn will occur in seven minutes.”
All six of the people not in the cockpit reported within the next five minutes. Claudine Courbet reported for Lalouette, who had been strapped in for hours and sedated. All were ready. They would remain in their seats until Jeanne d’Arc was on the surface of the moon.
The waiting was the hardest part, Charley Pine thought. She sat watching the display, her thoughts totally absorbed in the piloting problem.
Pierre Artois rubbernecked out the window at the moon. Since the spaceplane was hurling backward through space at the approaching burn point, the lunar surface slid by from rear to front. It was disconcerting, to say the least, to people used to viewing the earth from the window of an airplane.
The sun line appeared suddenly on the lunar surface, and reflected light filled the cockpit. Charley glanced at the lunar surface, adjusted the brightness of the displays and said nothing.
The seconds ticked down. The spaceplane dropped closer and closer to the lunar surface. Right on cue the rocket engines ignited, pressing Charley and Artois back into their seats. The Gs felt good after three days of weightlessness.
But the middle engine was not firing. Only the four smaller, outboard engines had ignited. Charley Pine instantly punched up a display that gave her a percentage of planned power. Only seventy percent. This meant that she would have to burn the engines thirty percent longer to get the required deceleration. She disconnected the autopilot, taking manual control of the ship and the burn. One of the engines was producingjust slightly less power than the other three, which was to be expected. No four engines would produce exactly the same amount of power. Without conscious thought she adjusted the controls to hold the ship in the proper attitude.
The seconds ticked down, and she stopped the burn as the clock read 0:00. She didn’t even notice the absence of G, so intent was she on checking the orbit. It would be a few moments before she knew precisely how well the burn had gone, how close to the desired lunar orbit they actually were.
The sensors were still locked on their guide stars. The distance to the moon from the radar seemed correct. She had only to wait for the computers to calculate the trajectory, which took time. The numbers were sorting themselves out, the display was moving, stabilizing… yes. They appeared to be within half a percent of the desired orbit, which was presented as a maximum and minimum distance from the planet. Now the graphic display stabilized.
She checked to ensure the orbit would take them to the desired burn point to begin the descent to the lunar base.
“We’re going to need another small burn,” she muttered, pointing at the display. “There. At that point.” She looked at her watch. “In eighteen minutes.”
“How long?” Artois asked, which was his first comment since before the orbit insertion burn.
“Two seconds.”
“That is very good. Congratulations.”
Charley didn’t have time. She keyed the intercom. “Florentin,” she said, calling the flight engineer by name, “the main engine refused to start. Please check it out.”
Artois tried to remain as calm as she was. “What if it won’t start for the descent burn?”
“We’ll just burn for a longer period.”
“And the ascent from the moon’s surface?”
Charley was stunned that he asked that question. “The moon only has a sixth of earth’s gravity,” she answered. “We need all our power to get off the earth’s surface, not the moon’s.”
He should have known that, she thought dispassionately.
? ? ?

Rip Cantrell was asleep in the old control tower near Egg’s hangar when he heard his uncle’s heavy tread upon the stairs. “You awake up there, Rip?”
“Yeah, Unc.” Rip rolled out and reached for his jeans.
The little room with windows on all sides was a nice private bedroom. It contained a narrow bed, one chair, a bookcase and a small desk. The restroom that Egg had installed years ago was on the ground level. When Egg topped the stairs he lowered himself heavily into the only chair and sighed. Rip was seated on the bed. The moon was five days old and still above the western horizon. Moonlight filled the small room when gaps occurred in the low clouds racing overhead.
“Been watching television,” Egg reported as he regained his breath. “The French pilot is sick. Charley flew the space-plane into lunar orbit.”
“Good for her.” Rip meant it.
“They’re also having trouble with the main engine. The news is on all the channels.”
Rip found himself staring at the moon. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he said. Since Charley left for France, he too had been reading everything he could find on the French space-planes. “Still, something’s wrong.”
? ? ?

“I think it’s the heaters,” Florentin said to Charley.
They were in the crawl space forward of the engines, between the engines and the fuel tanks. “Looks to me as if the heater circuit got a short and the temp is too low in the engines for the igniters to fire.”
“Terrific.”
“If that is the problem, sitting on the surface of the moon should thaw the engines. The surface temperature during the day is about 107 degrees Centigrade.”
“How about the other engines?”
“The heaters seem to be working.”
“Okay,” Charley said, and flippered backward out of the tunnel.
She regretted ever agreeing to a hurry-up training schedule. Eighteen hours a day for forty-two days, and it didn’t seem nearly enough. Sure, if Lalouette were not sedated, she would merely be backing him up. Now she was the pilot in command and she had no backup at all, no one to tell her to slow down or rethink a problem. The pressure to get it right the first time was building inexorably, and it was beginning to take its toll. For the first time since that overwhelming first day in the simulator, she wished she hadn’t agreed to do this.
True, she had been working for this day all her life. If she screwed up and the error cost her life, so be it. She had come to terms with that risk the very first time she went up alone in an airplane. Pilots have to believe in their own abilities and come to grips with their own mortality. That goes with the territory. Yet there were seven other lives at risk here. If I get there, they will too, but if I don’t, I will have killed them.
On the flight deck she committed the spaceplane to another orbit while she read the mission-planning manual again and talked the situation over with Bodard in Mission Control. In her mind’s eye she could see his intense eyes, revealing the fire and intelligence he brought to his job.
“We think the problem is the heater,” Bodard said finally. “You can reprogram the flight computers to compensate for your seventy percent power capability. Once that is done, we will check your data.”
“Roger.”
Charley began programming the computers. In five minutes she had finished. The solid-state computers readily took the new parameters, but the spaceplane was now out of radio contact behind the moon. Both the parameters and the navigation solutions would be automatically relayed to Mission Control when radio contract was regained.

She had been awake for twenty hours and was tired, so she rechecked her entries twice, keystroke by keystroke. If she screwed up the approach to landing she would have to abort. There was only fuel for one shot. Landing too far away from the lunar base was not an option, not if she expected to have the fuel remaining to get back to the fuel tank in earth orbit. Crashing on the surface was not an option, either.
Artois offered her an insulated bottle of coffee. She accepted it gratefully, stuck the straw through the port in her face mask and sucked gingerly. Ahh. Then she sat looking through the windshield at the lunar surface sixty miles below. She could see the lava flows and craters quite plainly, stark places that didn’t resemble any terrain on earth because there had never been any erosion. Without the eternal erosion of wind and water, the land was jagged, the mountains taller and steeper than any on earth, their relief exaggerated by the stark brilliance of the unfiltered sunlight.
Artois maneuvered himself into the copilot’s seat and said nothing. Charley ignored him. Her thoughts were occupied with the task before her, and with thoughts of Rip.
“We have telemetry again.” Bodard’s voice sounded in her headset, ending her reverie.
Five minutes later he told her, “Looks good. You are go for landing.”
“Roger that.” Her voice sounded flat, she thought. She was very tired.
After Charley manually aligned the spaceplane for the approach burn, the autopilot refused to engage. She punched the button futilely. The ship was again behind the moon in the radio dead zone, so there was no one to complain to except Artois, sitting in the copilot’s seat, and he would be no help.
“It’s enough to piss off the pope,” she muttered in English. She reached behind her on the overhead and found the circuit breaker, recycled it, then tried again to engage the recalcitrant device. Nope. Well, she would just hand-fly this garbage scow.
At least all three flight computers were in perfect agreement. Thank God for modern computers! How the Apollo astronauts did it with the primitive junk they had was a mystery.
The clock ticked down. “Here we go,” she said over the intercom, and punched the button on the yoke to start the engines. The four small engines fired off, pushing her into her seat. Yeaaah! She concentrated on keeping the crosshairs centered on the display in front of her. Flying backward takes some getting used to.
On the completion of the burn, she waited impatiently for the new trajectory data to become reliable.
“Tres bien,” Bodard said when the spaceplane came out from behind the moon. He was looking at the telemetry data on the trajectory.
Satisfied that she wouldn’t need another burn, she waited. Waiting is the hard part, she thought.
The ship was descending at about a thousand feet per second. She had fifty more miles of altitude to lose. She checked the three-dimensional display on the trajectory computer and ensured that the remote cameras were on—she would need them in the final phase of the landing—and that the radar and laser backups were functioning properly.
The base site was still over the lunar horizon, nearly six hundred miles away.
The nose was well up now, the ship flying backward down the glide slope. Through the windshield she could see only stars. The earth was behind her, over her head. Now any burst of engine power would slow the descent. What she needed was the ability to finesse the power, so she selected a lower level of engine power, just thirty percent, so that the timing on the burns would be less critical.
The ship plunged on toward its rendezvous with the moon. The engines had to fire now when she asked for power or the ship would crash into the surface at this rate of descent.
Another burn was coming up. Fifteen seconds… ten… five…
She waited. And lit the engines. They fired. A two-second burst. Too much would shallow the descent and carry the ship far beyond the target landing area; too little would require more power later on and screw up the trajectory. She adjusted the ship’s attitude to keep it perfectly aligned.
So far, so good.
Two minutes later she gave the engines another burst. The trajectory was almost perfect, just a little shallow.
The rate of descent was still a thousand feet a second, only twelve miles up now. She checked the altitude on the radar, cross-checked with the lasers. Due to the irregularities of the surface, the readings were merely averages.
Coming down, coming down… bringing the nose up as the speed over the surface dropped, using power to slow the descent rate, coming down…
Now the landing area came into view on the radar. It didn’t look as she expected. The land was all sunlight and long, deep shadows; the mission had been timed to arrive just after the lunar dawn.
Cross-checking everything, she was shocked to realize that the computer had somehow mislocated the target landing area. Or had it?
She had an instant decision to make. Was the trajectory right or wrong?
Still flying the bird, she punched up the landing zone’s coordinates. They looked right. The trajectory looked right. She looked again at the radar picture and keyed in the camera that was slaved to the radar’s point of sight. Yes, the landing area looked as she had seen it in the simulations.
She was overthinking this, she decided. Rely on your instruments! Don’t panic!
Later she couldn’t remember the exact sequence of the final phase of the landing. She used the engine, monitored the displays, kept the ship’s nose rising toward the vertical while she monitored her ground speed. The objective was to zero out speed, drift and sink rate at touchdown—and land at the proper place. And use as little fuel as possible doing it.
With a final burst of power she slowed the descent to fifteen feet per second. Now she was glued to the television cameras. There was the mobile gantry for unloading cargo, the radio tower and the bank of solar panels for charging the base’s batteries—don’t hit them! Still moving forward at twenty feet per second, no drift, three hundred feet high… two hundred, engines on low, just ten percent power… dust began to rise… one hundred feet, fifty… zero groundspeed.
At fifteen feet Charley killed the engines and let lunar gravity pull the ship down. It contacted the surface sinking at one foot per second. The shock absorbers in the landing gear had no trouble handling this descent rate.
As the dust slowly settled on the television monitors, she keyed the intercom and the radio. She had to clear her throat to speak. “Jeanne d’Arc has landed.”
Beside her Pierre Artois exhaled explosively. “Tres bien,” he muttered, then decided that phrase didn’t describe his emotions. “Magnifique!”
? ? ?

Rip and Egg were glued to the television in Missouri, even though the time was a few minutes after three in the morning.
They heard Charley Pine’s words two and a half seconds after she said them, which was the period of time it took a radio signal to reach earth.
Rip’s shoulders sagged. He looked at Egg and saw that he had tears streaming down his cheeks.
He patted his uncle on the shoulder and wandered out into the night. The clouds had cleared somewhat. The moon was well below the horizon now. He blew Charley a kiss at the sky anyway, then walked down the hill toward the control tower and bed.
? ? ?

The passengers and crew had to walk from the spaceplane to the base air lock. The fact that Jeanne d’Arc was sitting on her tail complicated matters somewhat. Base personnel maneuvered the cargo gantry alongside so that the people could be lowered to the surface on the cargo elevator.

While Charley Pine and Florentin went through the post-flight checklists, the other members of the crew maneuvered the sedated Lalouette toward the ship’s air lock. Two people from the lunar base came into the ship to assist.
The pilot was near the ragged edge of exhaustion. It took intense concentration to work through the checklists with Florentin. The checks took over an hour to complete, and by that time Lalouette and the others were gone. Florentin exited through the air lock, leaving Charley alone in the spaceplane.
The lunar base would have to wait, she decided. She was about to sign off with Mission Control when Bodard passed her a message for Pierre Artois from the French premier. Congratulations, the glory of France, and all that. She copied it down, promised to give it to him and signed off.
“Another day, another dollar,” she muttered as she maneuvered herself out of her seat.
The descent of the main passageway was not difficult in the weak gravity of the moon. After shedding her space suit, she made a pit stop to answer nature’s call, then proceeded to the bunkroom she had shared with Courbet. She crawled into her hammock. In seconds she was fast asleep.
She awoke to the sound of hatches opening, metal scraping against metal. She knew what the noise was—base personnel were unloading the cargo bay. Who had done the checklists, to ensure the bay was properly depressurized and that the rest of the ship was maintaining pressure?
Galvanized, she struggled from her hammock and made her way to the flight deck. Florentin was in the pilot’s seat, which he had tilted forty-five degrees so that he wasn’t lying on his back.
“Bonjour, Sharlee,” the flight engineer said.
Charley muttered a bonjour. For the first time since waking, she looked at her watch. She had been asleep for five hours. Not enough, but she felt better. And hungry and thirsty.
They spent a few minutes talking about the main engine and what Florentin and the engineers from the base were going to do to check out the malfunction; then Charley lowered herself down the passageway.
In the weak gravity of the moon, getting into her space suit was easier than it had been on Earth. Actually the suit consisted of two pieces, an inflatable full-body pressure suit and a tough, nearly bulletproof outer shell that protected the pressure suit and helped insulate the wearer from the extremes of temperature present in a zero-atmosphere environment. Air for breathing and to pressurize the suit was provided by a small unit worn on a belt around the waist.
The unit hung at the small of the wearer’s back and was connected to the suit by hoses.
Donning the suit alone was strenuous. Only when Charley had triple-checked everything did she enter the air lock. With the pressure suit inflated, she felt like a sausage.
When the exterior door opened the light blinded her. She remembered her sun visor and lowered it with her eyes closed. After her eyes adjusted she got her first real view of the lunar surface. She had seen the photos many times, yet the reality was awe-inspiring. The land baking in the brilliant rising sun under an obsidian sky—she had never seen a place more stark, or more beautiful. And the day was going to be two weeks long!
The cargo gantry was alongside, so she used that for a ladder. Standing on the surface, she bent and examined the impressions her boots made in the dirt. Then she turned and looked for Earth.
There it was, behind the spaceplane. She bounded several paces away and looked again. Should have brought a camera, she thought. Mesmerized, listening to the sound of her own breathing, she turned slowly around, taking in everything. She saw the air-lock entrance to the lunar base, an illuminated bubble that looked like a large skylight, a radio tower, the gantry and the jagged horizon. In the absence of an atmosphere, the visibility was perfect.
“Yeah, baby!”
Charley Pine pumped her fist and headed for the air lock, which was in the side of a cliff. She promptly fell. It was a slow-motion fall, at one-sixth the speed that she would have toppled on earth. Instantly she was all business. Impact with a sharp stone might tear the outer shell and damage the interior pressure suit. If the interior suit lost pressure, her blood would transform itself into a gas; death would follow in seconds.
She had come too far to die in a freak accident between the spaceplane and the base air lock. Adrenaline pumping, she caught herself with her gloved hands, then pushed herself back erect.
Concentrating fiercely, taking care not to overcontrol, Charley walked—or leaped—toward the air lock and entered it. She had to wait for a forklift to bring a container from Jeanne d’Arc into the lock; then the door closed and the operator on the other side of the thick glass began pumping in air.
The air lock led into an underground cavern that had been carved from solid rock. Supplies in containers were stacked along one side of the capacious corridor. Charley stopped to remove her helmet and looked the containers over as she walked toward the locker room. The containers were stacked with their numbers facing out. She was looking for a specific four-digit final number, and didn’t see it. The reactor was still on the plane.
After wriggling out of her space suit—one of the base personnel helped her and chatted freely while she did it—Charley got directions to the mess hall.
Just moving along the corridors took a great deal of getting used to. Too vigorous a step would send her to the ceiling; a misstep would send her crashing into a wall. Clearly the lunar gravity was going to take some getting used to. The people she met seemed to have adjusted well, so perhaps the learning curve would be steep.
In the mess hall, which doubled as a lounge, she filled a tray made of superlight, composite material with a judicious quantity of food—better keep an eye on the figure. The food was French, and yet it wasn’t what she had eaten in France. One of the cooks, or chefs, was replenishing a warmer, so she asked, “How do you cook in this gravity?”
“It is difficult,” he replied with a grin. “The food is not pressing down. We use a pressure cooker for most things, except the sauces. The sauces are difficult.”
“I suppose so.”
She stood looking around. There were several televisions; they seemed to be running programs from French television, likely sent to an earth satellite and rebroadcast. In one corner of the room was a camera, mounted so that the background was the entire room, which was probably the largest on the lunar base.
She saw Claudine Courbet at a table with two other women and joined them, carefully. Tossing the contents of her tray on the diners would be a poor start to her visit.
One of the women was a geologist, the other an electrical engineer. Both welcomed her and smiled when they heard her accent. Before long all four women were chatting merrily about their voyages to the moon and life at the lunar base.
“I know you have been drilling for water,” Charley said to the geologist. “Have you found any?”
“Yes and no. There are ice crystals well below the surface. Not huge chunks, but crystals. We have extracted some and recovered perhaps a hundred liters. To become self-sustaining and build up a surplus we must mine the material in quantity and bake it to extract the water.”
“It must be really old stuff,” Charley said. “Is it any good?”
The geologist grinned and removed a small bottle from a pocket. She handed it to Charley. “Try it.”
Charley hefted the bottle, swallowed hard, then unscrewed the cap and took a tentative sip. The water was cool and delicious. A look of relief crossed her face, and the other women laughed.
“That first sip is always an act of faith,” the geologist said as Charley handed back the bottle.

“How did the water come to be there?”
“That is another question,” the geologist admitted. She was deep into the various possibilities when a runner came looking for Charley.
Pierre Artois wanted her for a televised news conference in the communications room, which, in addition to sophisticated computers and transmitters, contained a small television studio with a moonscape mural on the rock wall as a backdrop.
Madame Artois was there, off camera. She was at least ten years younger than Pierre, a beautiful woman with a figure that her jumpsuit didn’t hide. She shook Charley’s hand and murmured something Charley didn’t catch; then the cameras came on and the pilot was ushered to a seat.
Reporters in Paris asked her numerous questions, about the flight, the lunar base, and her initial impressions of the moon. She answered as best she could, regaled them with an account of her klutzy fall and bowed out of further questions. Artois smoothly interceded. As soon as she was off camera, Charley found herself standing beside Julie Artois, who listened intently to every question and answer.
Every now and then Pierre glanced at his wife, and Charley realized with a start that Julie was giving Pierre sub-de clues on how to frame his answers through the use of body language. When she thought an answer had gone on long enough, she made a tiny circle with one finger, once against her cheek, once with her hand by her leg.
Pierre was still answering questions when Charley wandered away to explore. As she left the room Henri Salmon, the base commander, followed her out. “Welcome to the moon, Mademoiselle Pine. I trust you have found our accommodations agreeable?”
“Like the Ritz.”
Salmon didn’t grin. He was a wiry, fit man with close-cropped blond hair, togged out in the blue jumpsuit that all the lunar base personnel wore. His was not as tight fitting as the others’, Charley noted.
“If you will permit, I will give you a tour of our facilities,” Salmon said.
“Lead on,” Charley replied.
Salmon went into a monologue about the base and its systems, explaining with the pride of ownership. Charley reflected that Salmon had arrived on the very first space-plane to the moon and never left. He had been here over six months and had personally supervised every phase of construction. In truth, he practically owned the base.
“The lunar base is lit during the clock day with metal halide lights, which as you see generate entirely white light, artificial sunlight, if you will, which provides us with vitamin D. During the twelve-hour clock night, we illuminate the base with red light to keep people on a proper night and day cycle.”
The underground base reminded Charley of a hard-rock mine she toured once on a geology lab field trip. The rock from which it had been quarried was hard lava that lacked cracks or faults. Still, air did leak in minute amounts, Salmon said, so there were some imperfections in the stone. Fire and general emergency alarms were located side-by-side every fifty feet along the corridor walls, alongside emergency oxygen bottles.
She watched the well drilling, looked in the generator room, watched sewage being recycled to extract the water, spent a few minutes in the atmosphere room where the air was scrubbed and enhanced with oxygen and hydrogen as required, and visited the gymnasium.
“A sixth of earth’s gravity is insufficient to maintain the muscle tone required to keep the human body healthy over long periods,” Salmon explained. “Everyone at the base is required to spend an hour a day exercising in this room, regardless of other duties.” He demonstrated the gym equipment for Charley. “Transporting weights to the moon would have been outrageously expensive, so we brought these machines that rely on spring tension to supply the resistance. The amount of effort involved is unrelated to gravity.” Salmon moved the heaviest weight without much apparent effort, Charley thought, which proved that he did spend his hour a day here.
There was also a set of barbells in the room, but the weights on the ends of the bars were huge rocks. Salmon saw her inspecting one and urged, “Pick it up. Carefully.”
Charley set herself and jerked the bar. It seemed to weigh about a hundred pounds, she estimated, so on earth it would weigh six times that much. When she set it down she laughed. “I wish I had a photo of me lifting that. I would look like Superwoman.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” Salmon said, deadpan. Charley wondered if he ever smiled.
Salmon led her to the science lab and explained some of the experiments as the technicians worked.
“We have found water on the moon,” Salmon said, “and we will find more. But the primary purpose of the lunar base, its real justification, is this laboratory, where our scientists are working on creating complex organic compounds.”
Charley stood looking at the computers, ovens, test tubes, retorts and other lab gear. “Trying to make food, I suppose.”
“Precisely,” Salmon said. “Has someone told you about our research?”
“No. But one of the main problems with interstellar space flight, and to a lesser extent bases on the moon or other planets, is going to be food. The astronauts are going to have to make food from waste products, including human wastes, or they’ll eventually starve.”
“Precisely,” Salmon admitted grudgingly. “Our laboratory is already manufacturing more complex organic molecules than can be made in earth’s gravitational field. We progress.”
“Think of the possibilities,” Charley enthused. “Throw some old newspapers and ratty jeans in the microwave, and half an hour later out pops a souffle covered with a delicate sauce.”
Salmon eyed her suspiciously and led her from the lab.
They visited the medical bay. Lalouette was out of surgery and recovering, although he was still asleep. They casually inspected the sleeping quarters. All the women were in one dormitory room. Oh, well, she was only going to be here about ten days, then she was going back to earth with Lalouette, assuming he had recovered enough to stand the G forces.
On one corridor they found a large dust curtain. Entering, Charley and Salmon saw a crew busy quarrying rock, enlarging the base. Powerful air scrubbers captured the dust. Two men in hard hats ran the machines that ate at the rock. Joe Bob Hooker was standing beside one of the roaring air scrubbers smoking a green Churchill cigar. “This is the only place they’ll let me smoke,” he explained loudly to Charley as Salmon conferred with the workers. “They say the smoke will set off the fire alarms.”
Charley met people everywhere and heard more names than she could ever remember.
She and Salmon were traversing a corridor that penetrated deeply into the cliff when they passed a door marked NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. The door had a keypad that allowed access. Power cables penetrated the metal bulkhead in which the door was set along one wall, as well as ducts to pipe air in and bring it out. “What’s in there?” she asked her guide.
“More experiments. We must keep the room scrupulously clean.”
Charley didn’t argue. And she didn’t believe him.
So what was behind the door? Was that the destination of the reactor? Why in the world did Pierre Artois need a nuclear reactor on the moon? Electrical power was the only possible answer, but why so much?
“Why are you here?” she asked Salmon.
“I make it all work,” he replied casually.
“That is what you do. But why are you here?”
He stopped, turned and scrutinized her face. “You are the first person who ever asked.”

“Oh.”
Salmon took a deep breath as he thought about the question. “Most people have little dreams, with small goals. They lead small, unimportant lives. Pierre’s dream is huge, and he has devoted himself to it body and soul. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
Salmon was intense. “Even if he ultimately fails, he has tried mightily. And the attempt has made him great.”
“Like Don Quixote, perhaps.”
Salmon didn’t think much of that analogy. He merely grunted and resumed walking.
“And your dream?” Charley asked.
“Pierre’s dream has made him great. And if we believe, he will make us great, too.”
The messiah on the moon, Charley thought, although she didn’t say that to Henri Salmon. He had his dream and she had hers, which was to fly. My dream is big enough for me, she told herself.
In the mess hall Salmon bid her a curt good-bye and walked away. “Interesting,” she muttered aloud. His jumpsuit bulged under his armpit. Henri Salmon was wearing a pistol. Whatever for, she wondered.
Her lack of sleep was catching up with her. She made her way to the women’s dorm and leaped into her bed, which didn’t collapse.
? ? ?

Charley Pine was sitting in the dining area after her long nap when Florentin found her. He sat down beside her with his tray. “It was the heater in the main engine,” he reported. “It froze up. I’ve reset the circuit breaker. Seems fine now.”
“Why did it freeze?” Charley asked between bites.
“That I don’t know. I’ve inspected everything I can inspect, and I can’t find anything wrong.”
“Could not duplicate the gripe,” Charley muttered in English, then smiled at Florentin. He was the expert on the spaceplane. If he couldn’t find the glitch, no one else at the lunar base would either. Some problems a pilot simply has to live with. Fortunately they wouldn’t need the main engine to get back to earth. The main burns would be longer, but the computer could arrive at the proper trajectory to account for that.
“How are they coming on getting the cargo unloaded?” she asked.
“Another twenty-four hours or so. Then, Salmon says, they will begin loading the science experiments for the trip back.”
“Terrific.”
“So how do you like the moon?”
“Reminds me of a cave.”
“Yes,” he said with a grin. “We call it Cave Base. Do not say that to the press, though. Monsieur Artois is selling the glamour.”
“Speaking of glamour,” Charley said as Joe Bob Hooker came over carrying a tray and sat down with them. “Hello, Mr. Hooker.”
“Call me Joe Bob. Well, whaddaya think?”
Florentin mumbled an excuse and took his tray to another table, where he sat with a collection of technicians.
“What this place needs is a golf course,” Charley said to Joe Bob, just to make conversation.
“My sentiments, exactly. I’ve brought a driver and a box of balls. Been outside hitting a few, figuring out just how far they go. Can’t get a real good swing in a space suit, and Artois will have to keep that in mind. He had a designer lay out a course and asked for my opinion. He knows I have a ten handicap.”
Charley Pine’s opinion of Pierre Artois’ public relations skills soared. If he could keep the Joe Bobs of the world happy, there were no limits on what he could accomplish. Too bad the worker bees around here assiduously avoided the Texan.
As Hooker chattered about his golf experiences at deluxe courses around the world, Charley finished her meal. The lunar base personnel who entered the dining area avoided their table.
Money can buy the adventure, she thought, but it can’t buy camaraderie. Joe Bob would always be a tourist. And he knew it. He eyed the technicians in their one-piece jumpsuits and concentrated on his food.
She made her excuses and left.
Life at the lunar base was regulated by the clock, almost as if the people were in a submerged submarine. Charley worked out in the gym, then spent the rest of the clock day sitting on an inflatable couch that didn’t weigh five pounds in front of a television playing French and Italian movies. She watched people come and go from the cafeteria section of the room while scanning European newspapers that Jeanne d’Arc had delivered. Around her, off-duty base personnel chattered among themselves. They had engaged her in conversation, then turned to subjects that interested them—problems with the base, professional challenges, gossip and games. Several computers sat on a table against a wall and were set up to play games. Chess sets were nearby and were always in use.
People were the same everywhere, Charley thought ruefully. Even on the moon. People needed intellectual stimulation as well as physical exercise to stay healthy.
The adrenaline rush of the flight had worn off, leaving her depressed and lethargic. With no duties to engage her, she was bored. And blue. She wasn’t yet ready to throw herself into computer games. Yeah, this was an adventure of a lifetime, but when it was over, then what?
Yawning and tired, she tossed away the newspapers and sat musing about Rip. Finally she gave up and headed for the women’s bunkroom.
? ? ?

In the months that he had had the computer from Rip’s saucer, Egg Cantrell had devoted much time and thought to try to learn how it worked. Yet he could not ignore the contents of the database. He had converted his office into a computer center so that he could transfer the contents of the saucer’s computer to his own, where he could manipulate the data, attempting to organize it and make sense of it. At times he felt like a man sampling books in the Library of Congress, knowing that reading them all would be impossible. At first he had tried to be systematic. The problem was that all knowledge is interrelated, so no matter where he began, threads to other interesting things led away in all directions. Finally he realized that systematic exploration of the storehouse of information contained in the computer would take thousands of years, and he only had a fraction of one lifetime left. So he abandoned system and, when he wasn’t working on the programs that made the computer think, he followed any interesting thread anywhere it led. If he crossed another pathway that looked more interesting, he followed that.
The real problem was that he couldn’t read the language. Much of the information was in the form of text, which he spent several months trying to decipher. Finally he realized the task was beyond him. With the help of several academics he knew, he located a young linguistics scholar and gave her a huge sample of the text and the graphics that were embedded around it. That was several months ago. She was still searching for a key, a Rosetta stone, that would give her an opening.
In their last conversation she said, “I am assuming that this language was the parent of all the earth’s languages. That is a huge assumption and may prove to be wrong. There has been much theoretical work done on the so-called first language, and it’s just that, theory. All that said, I guarantee you that I can crack it with a computer.”
“When?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What if it isn’t a language but computer code?”
“It’s not computer code. Computer languages are cake. I had to eliminate that possibility first.”
Today he was examining the design of an interstellar spaceship. It contained a cargo hold for transporting two saucers. The ship reminded him of a giant Ferris wheel, with an outer ring that housed the passengers spinning slowly around an interior axis that held the ship’s nuclear engines and fuel. The exterior ring was large enough to hold several hundred people. It also held hydroponic gardens, which were used to grow plants for the humans to consume, and a lab for manufacturing food from recycled organic compounds.

He was tracing the power and life support systems when Rip came into his study.
“Look at this,” Egg said. “It might be the ship that brought the saucer people to earth.”
Rip stared over his shoulder at the computer screen. “They assembled it in space.”
“They certainly didn’t bring it into the atmosphere,” Egg agreed. “See the hold for the saucers, which must have shuttled people and cargo up and down to a planet.”
After a bit Rip said, “If all the people came down to earth, where is the starship?”
“Perhaps some of the crew flew it on to another star. Or if everyone stayed on earth, perhaps they left it in orbit.”
“It’s not up there now.”
“No, it wouldn’t be. If it were left in low earth orbit, sooner or later it would have fallen into the atmosphere and been destroyed.”
Rip sighed and turned away. He sagged into the only easy chair in the room and stared at his toes.
“You must be patient,” Egg said. “Life always works out. Give Charley a chance.”
“Umm.”
“Give life a chance, Rip. If you are the man for her, she’ll figure that out.”
“I am the one,” Egg’s nephew replied. “How could she not see that? How could she doubt it? She’s not blind.”
“She’ll have to discover that truth for herself.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
? ? ?

Charley Pine awoke from a deep sleep knowing someone was in the room. She lay perfectly still for several seconds, trying to remember precisely where she was. Someone was shaking a person in the next bed. Ah yes, that person was Claudine Courbet, who had gone to bed an hour or so after Charley.
It was a man—Henri Salmon. Now he whispered something in French. He left the room, and Claudine Courbet bestirred herself. Charley pretended to be asleep.
Courbet dressed in the darkness; then Charley heard the door open and close. She opened her eyes and sat up in bed. There were two other women in the room, both apparently asleep.
Charley sat up, pulled on her flight suit and her boots, then pulled her hair back and put a band on it.
The corridor was lit with red light during the base night hours in an effort to help the humans regulate their internal clocks. And it was empty. She walked carefully along, past the doors to several workshops, toward the steel door that had been locked yesterday. I’m getting accustomed to the moon’s gravity, she thought wryly. A few more days and I’ll look like a native.
She approached the last bend in the corridor with care. Two men were wrestling a dolly loaded with something heavy. The reactor! They punched in the code; then one man held the door while the other maneuvered the dolly through the entrance.
As they disappeared into the space, Charley bounded toward the door—and caught it just before it closed.
She waited several seconds, then pulled it open and followed them through.
A few feet past the locked door she passed through an air lock, both doors of which stood open. Beyond the air lock the corridor opened into a commodious cavern. The two men with the dolly were off-loading the reactor. Claudine Courbet was hovering nearby, apparently supervising. None of the three noticed her.
A control console sat facing a large window. Beyond the window, which appeared to be thick, bulletproof glass or plastic, three large objects were visible.
One of them looked like an optical telescope, a huge one, at least ten feet tall. The largest machine, if it was that, stood at least twelve feet tall and was covered with opaque plastic. Against the wall was another object, a giant cube about six feet high. Power cables three inches thick ran from it to the machine under the plastic.
Charley recognized the cube—it was a giant capacitor. The solar panels on the surface over their heads would never fully charge it, but the nuclear reactor, if used to generate electricity, certainly could.
Above the machines beyond the glass was a large metal roof, one that apparently consisted of panels that could be moved by a complicated arrangement of hydraulic rams. This roof must be the object she had seen from outside and thought was a skylight.
On this side of the window the control console dominated the room. There were four raised chairs, the usual emergency equipment and, against one wall, hangers that held at least a half dozen space suits and helmets.
The place looked like an observatory. Yet the orientation was wrong. When the roof was opened, the telescope wouldn’t be pointed at deep space; it would be pointed toward earth.
Now Claudine saw Charley. She looked startled, then approached her.
“What are you doing here?”
“I heard you leave the dorm and wanted to see you set up the reactor.”
Claudine blinked once. “Henri gave you the door code?”
“Of course.”
Claudine seemed to accept that. She turned and gestured grandly. “What do you think?”
“Wow,” Charley Pine said, and meant it.
Charley walked to the control console and examined the presentations. Computer screens, track balls for maneuvering cursors, LED readouts, a few analog gauges for voltages…
What is the purpose of this room? What is that large piece of equipment under the plastic cover? Claudine knows, and she expects me to know. An optical telescope, a reactor to generate large amounts of electricity, a giant capacitor, and…? Is this an observatory? Or a weapons platform in high earth orbit?
“How long will it take to get the system operational?” Charley asked Claudine, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as possible.
“A week or so, I imagine. If we don’t have any unforeseen problems.”
“Aren’t there always unforeseen problems?” Charley turned so that she could see Courbet’s face.
“Let’s hope not. We tested the entire system extensively in the laboratory, worked out the bugs, then brought the components here one by one. The testing phase took three months.” Claudine smiled confidently. “It’ll function properly.”
Looking through the glass, Charley carefully examined the metal plates and hydraulic rams that formed the ceiling above the machinery. Then she glanced again at the space suits arranged on hangers against one wall. When the roof opened, this window would be the pressure barrier—hence the space suits. If the glass cracked or air leaked past it, the people in this compartment would need space suits to survive. The air lock in the passageway was designed to prevent a sudden depressurization of the entire lunar base.
Claudine bit her lip, then went over to supervise the technicians unpacking the reactor, which was easy to manhandle in the weak lunar gravity.
A laser? Could it be?
Charley tried desperately to remember everything she knew about lasers. The light beams were most effective at short distances. They were degraded by moisture in the atmosphere. Firing a beam through a cloud was impractical. The earth, at which this device seemed to be aimed, was swaddled in a heavy atmosphere laden with moisture; clouds obscured huge portions of the earth on a regular basis.
Claudine was glancing at her from time to time. Charley studied the control console, looking for any clue. And failed to find any.
The pressure door to the equipment bay was standing open, so she went through it, out under the dome.
The telescope was mounted on a conventional stand. The larger device was mounted on a massive support structure that sat atop a round titanium base at least twelve feet in diameter, which looked as if it could support a tremendous weight. But why? Even if the device were made of pure steel, it couldn’t weigh over a few hundred pounds here on the moon.

Obviously the engineer who designed it thought it would thrust downward against the lunar rock, and the base was designed to transfer the load, much like a bridge support.
A gun? To shoot a projectile at targets on earth?
She glanced around, looking for anything that might be ammo for such a gun—and saw Courbet walking toward her. The technicians who had unloaded the reactor were leaving. They disappeared through the air lock, taking the dolly with them.
“Is this base really strong enough?” Charley asked.
Faced with a technical question, Claudine found her confidence. “Oh, yes. Actually it is twice as strong as it needs to be. And the base is twice as large—the underlying rock may have a hidden fault.”
“Of course,” Charley said carelessly. Then it hit her. For every reaction there is an equal but opposite reaction. This thing was going to push hard against the rock that supported it. If it wasn’t a gun, it was something that affected the lunar gravitational field.
She reached for the plastic cover, which was merely draped over the device, and jerked it off. A system of gears sat above the base, apparently to aim the device. Above the gears were metal rings arranged around a cone, the largest at the base and the smallest at the tip. Heavy cables led to them.
It was an antigravity beam generator!
Egg Cantrell had publicized the antigravity technology from the saucer just two months ago, with misgivings. The weapons potential of the technology was obvious. Egg knew that every advance in human knowledge could be misused, yet he believed the possible benefits outweighed the risk. Risk-benefit decisions are part of life; they have been routinely made by man ever since cavemen weighed the benefits of eating cooked meat against the risk of getting burned.
Were French scientists this far ahead of everyone else?
“Where did this technology come from?” Charley barked at the French engineer. “Where did you people get it?”
A look of surprise froze Claudine’s face. ‘You… you…” she stammered, “you didn’t know! You’re not authorized to be in here.”
“Has the French government gone off its nut?”
Fear registered on Claudine’s face.
“So you’re going to plug in the reactor, charge the capacitor, roll back the roof and zap the evil bastards for the greater glory of France.”
“Nations are obsolete,” Claudine explained with all the fervor of a true believer. “Pierre is going to combine the nations of the world into one kingdom. He is going to end war, starvation, epidemics, hatred and fear. He is going to feed the hungry, heal the sick, lead the peoples of the world into a glorious future.”
“By threatening to kill them with that?” Charley gestured toward the beam generator.
“Few revolutions are bloodless. The greater good will require some sacrifices.”
Charley Pine whistled silently, then said, “If he could manage to raise a few people from the dead, he could get himself elected messiah.”
“I’m going to get Monsieur Artois,” Claudine cried, then whirled and started for the door. She didn’t get far. Charley grabbed her arm and jerked. As Claudine spun back around, Charley flattened her with a right to the chin.
And felt ashamed of herself. Violence is so tacky.
Claudine did a slow, languid backflip and slid to a stop in a crumpled heap. Her pulse was steady, and all her head bones seemed intact. Charley decided Claudine was just out cold.
Pierre was going to be peeved when Claudine recovered enough to give him the bad news. Any way you cut it, Charley had worn out her welcome on the moon.
She took a last long look at the beam generator and waiting power cables. “Been nice knowing you, lady,” Charley said to the comatose Claudine. “See you around.”
Then she strode out, trying not to bounce off the ceiling in her haste, went through the open air lock to the personnel door and opened it a crack. No one was in the hallway. She made sure the door latched behind her.
She found Joe Bob Hooker sitting by himself in the cafeteria nursing a cup of coffee. Florentin and two technicians were eating breakfast three tables away. Florentin saw Charley and nodded. She smiled at him, then dropped into a seat beside Hooker.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Huh-uh. You?”
“Nope.”
“How’s the Java?”
“Strong enough to stick a fork in. The frogs can’t make decent coffee. Here or in Paris.”
“How about showing me how to hit a golf ball?”
“Outside?”
“Yep.”
He was surprised. “Now?”
“Why not? You got something better to do?”
“In this hole in the ground? You gotta be kiddin’!”
“Well, let’s go.” She stood.
He eyed her. “Okay. I’ll swing by my room and get my sticks. Got about a dozen balls left.” He dumped the coffee in the food bin to be recycled, left the cup in the dirty dishes rack and followed her out into the corridor.
In a few minutes he joined her in the locker room. As they suited up, he said, “You ever play golf?”
“Never had time.”
“Worst game known to man. Gotta do it in Dallas with the bankers and dealership managers, you know. Need to know who’s who; which ones are screwing me and which ones want to. I watch ’em play for three hours and I get a pretty good idea what’s in their heads.”
“That the way you run your business? Figure out who’s honest and who isn’t?”
“That’s the only way.”
When they were completely suited up, they checked each other’s suit, made sure the oxygen systems were charged and functioning properly, then headed for the air lock. Joe Bob carried the clubs. In the air lock both of them dropped their sun visors.
The instant the air lock opened, Charley checked the spaceplane. Jeanne d’Arc was standing on her tail with the sun gleaming on her. The gantry was still in place.
Joe Bob showed her how to hit a ball. Although their helmets contained radios, they talked back and forth by touching their helmets, freeing up their hands. Natural movement was impossible in a space suit. Still, with practice, one could approach some degree of dexterity.
Hooker was critiquing Charley’s swing ten minutes later when the gantry elevator came down with a container on it. One man rode it down. The other operated the lift from the ground.
Once the elevator was down, the man on the ground crossed the surface to a modified forklift. Together he and the other man drove it toward the air lock.
The instant the door closed, Charley put her helmet against Hooker’s and said, “Come with me. Into the space-plane.”
She didn’t wait for his response. He might have thought she wanted to fool around—she didn’t care.
They rode the gantry elevator up to the open cargo bay. It was empty. That container the men had just off-loaded was the last one, Charley thought. She lowered the elevator to the personnel air lock. The door stood open.
She banged her helmet against Hooker’s. “Get in,” she said. “Go up to the cockpit and strap yourself into the copilot’s seat. Don’t use the radios.”
“Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“You and I are outta here.”
He looked around, then looked into her visor, trying to see her face. She saw his shoulders rise in a shrug. He gave her a thumbs-up and walked into the lock.
Down she went on the elevator as the air lock door closed.
The gantry was battery operated, of course. There were feet to stabilize it, and they were extended. She retracted them, put the transmission in reverse and released the parking brake. Nothing happened.

She looked around for another control. There was a pedal on the floor. She pushed on it with a foot. The gantry began creeping away from Jeanne d’Arc.
She had to get it far enough away that it could not fall against the tail fins when hit by rocket exhaust. She jammed the pedal in as far as it would go, and the speed did not increase. This was all there was.
She had no idea how long Claudine Courbet was going to stay unconscious. She was sure, however, she didn’t want to be on the moon when Pierre Artois and his disciple, Henri Salmon, found out that she knew about the reactor and anti-gravity beam generator. She was very certain of that.
Finally the gantry seemed far enough away from the ship. The thing stopped when she stepped off the pedal.
Charley bounded toward the ship, stopped under it and looked up at the open cargo bay. She was going to have to leap up to it. If she blew this and tore her space suit, she was dead.
She coiled herself and leaped. She soared up at least ten feet but was a foot or more short of grasping the lower lip with her hands—then fell slowly back to the lunar surface. She cushioned her fall with her legs, and bounced.
Okay, she needed a running start.
Thank God she had played basketball in high school and at the academy.
As she went away from the ship, she saw the base air lock door opening. Two men came running out. They must have seen her on the television monitors moving the gantry.
One, two, three mighty leaps toward the gleaming white ship, then she launched herself upward. This time she grasped the edge of the bay.
Dangling there with her weight on her hands took little effort. She summoned her strength, then pulled hard. Up she went into the bay.
The lights in the cargo bay were lit. The ship’s batteries were still supplying power to essential systems.
Once inside she went immediately to the door controls. Silently, majestically, the doors moved. The electro-hydraulic servos could move them in earth’s gravity, so they had no trouble here. The doors snapped shut with authority. She inspected them to ensure the latches had engaged. Yes. She pushed the toggle to pressurize the cargo bay and waited. The gauge on the wall began to register air pressure.
She watched it until it equalized with the normal pressure inside the ship, then turned and climbed to the pressure door. It was difficult to open. She pried with all her strength on the bar. It refused to yield.
Godzilla must have cranked this puppy shut.
Urgency washed over her. The adrenaline magnified her strength. With one mighty heave the door opened and swung inward with a bang.
Too much pressure in the bay. That was the trouble.
She closed the door behind her and, using the bulkhead handholds, hurriedly climbed up the corridor to the cockpit.
Hooker was strapped into the copilot’s seat, just as she had requested. She glanced outside as she unfastened the latches on her helmet and removed it. The two men who had rushed outside were standing there looking up.
She could hear their voices coming over the radio, which was set to the base circuit. They were talking to Artois.
Hooker already had his helmet off.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m leaving. Might be quite a while before another ship shows up. Didn’t want to leave you stranded.”
“That’s mighty sweet of you. Only had a dozen balls left, and I can’t stand French television. Want to tell me why the rush?”
“Later.”
“You’ve seen one lunar base, you’ve seen them all,” he said philosophically.
“Maybe you can get a partial refund on your money.”
Charley dropped into the pilot’s seat and brought up more power. She began running through the lunar launch checklist on the small computer as Artois squawked on the radio. Systems looked okay—no time to run the built-in tests—
Charley flipped the switch to turn on the intercom and donned the headset.
“If anyone is aboard this ship, better sing out.”
There was no reply.
She began selecting options on the main flight computer. Fortunately it knew the exact Greenwich time, where the spaceship was on the moon, the location of the earth— directly overhead—and the location of the guide stars. It took three minutes for the star finders to lock on and the flight computer to recommend a trajectory that would take them toward earth.
Joe Bob watched in silence.
“Pierre’s getting pissed,” he said, jerking his thumb at the lunar base.
“Everyone has those days.”
She began working through the start checklist. Electrical power on, power levels set, fuel, temps at the fuel controllers, pressures in the fuel tanks—everything was within normal limits.
She reached behind her and pulled out the circuit breaker for the radio telemetry data. Screw Mission Control.
“Mademoiselle Pine,” Artois pleaded on the radio. “What are you doing? Please talk to me.”
She motioned for Joe Bob to put on the copilot headset.
“We’re leaving, Pierre,” she said in English. “You better tell these two dudes standing out here to take cover or they’re going to get fried.”
Thirty seconds of silence passed while she checked systems; then the two men outside turned and began clumsily running toward the air lock.
“If you fly that ship without authorization, it will be theft,” Artois said. “You will jeopardize the lives of everyone at this base. I will have no choice but to report this mutiny.”
“Do what you gotta do.”
“Will you tell me why?” Artois was persistent, you had to admit.
She was ready to start engines. She checked that the power level was set at the recommended value, fifty percent. That should be sufficient. All that remained was pushing the ignition button.
“I had a little chat with Claudine Courbet,” she said.
Silence.
“She showed me your antigravity beam generator, Pierre. Either you have been lying to the French government, or they have been lying to everyone.”
“Mademoiselle—”
“Ruler of the universe. Should I call you Your Majesty? Or perhaps Your Supreme Gloriousness? Better get that figured out. Pick something that sounds really cool in French. Claudine is a couple of cards short of a full deck, but you’re one crazy son of a bitch, Pierre.”
Hooker touched her arm to get her attention. He pointed toward the door lock. The door was almost fully open. The forklift came buzzing out, accelerating, heading straight toward the spaceplane. The two empty spears were at the top of their rails. She could see the helmeted figure hunched over the controls.
“That fool may try to ram us, damage the ship.” Charley didn’t wait. She reclined her seat and punched the ignition button.
Hooker hurriedly reclined his as the rockets ignited. From the corner of her eye Charley saw a blast of dust. The Gs hit her in the back.
Charley Pine made one last radio transmission. “Adios—” Over the intercom, she asked Hooker, “What’s Spanish for ‘a*shole’?”
Hooker barely got his words out against the accelerating G. “Gringo, I think.”
? ? ?

Pierre Artois and Henri Salmon found Claudine Courbet stretched out on the floor beside the beam generator. A half-full bottle of water sat on top of the control console. Artois squirted some in Claudine’s face. Her eyes opened.
Salmon lifted Claudine to a sitting position. Artois squatted and examined the engineer’s face. Her jaw was severely swollen. He was still looking her over when his wife, Julie Artois, came in.
She knelt beside Pierre, who tersely filled her in on the situation.
“What did you tell Pine?” she snarled at Claudine.

Courbet’s eyes swam. Julie Artois slapped her. That focused her eyes.
“What did you tell Pine?” she repeated.
Claudine took a few seconds to collect herself before she spoke. “She knew about the reactor. Came in here to see what it was going to be used for.”
“How did she get in?”
“Followed the men who wheeled the reactor in on a dolly, I suppose. I thought she knew. I thought she was one of us.”
“You were told that she wasn’t.”
“But she was here, and she knew so much.” Claudine really believed this.
“You know my rules.”
“She jerked the covering off the beam generator,” Claudine explained. “Recognized it for what it was.”
Pierre rose and walked around aimlessly.
“Hiring her was really stupid,” Claudine continued. She struggled to her feet. Once erect, she glared at Julie. “She flew in a saucer, knows what’s in the computers. And she can add two and two. Of all the pilots on the planet you people could have hired—”
“Enough!” Julie commanded with a chopping gesture. “What’s done is done. How long before you can get the generator operational?”
“We’ll have to hook up the reactor and test the system. Can’t run it to full power without serious testing, not unless you want this cave to glow in the dark for the next ten thousand years.”
“How long?”
“A week. Perhaps a day or two less.”
“You have three days,” Julie said, staring at Claudine. “And if you don’t make it work, I have people who can. We’ll put you in the air lock without a space suit and watch you die. Do you understand?”
Claudine Courbet appealed to Pierre, who turned his face away. She turned back to Julie. “You are really sick, madame.”
“The future of mankind is at stake,” Julie Artois said. “I’m not going to let you or anyone else stand in our way.”
Julie looked at Salmon. “Have someone with her every moment. Don’t leave her alone,” she said coldly.
Then she walked out. Pierre followed.
They went to their private suite and made sure the door was locked behind them before they spoke.
“Years of work, a decade of planning, billions of euros invested, the future of mankind at stake, and one foolish woman allows another to sabotage everything!” Pierre stormed.
His wife took a deep breath, closed her eyes momentarily, then opened them again.
Pierre rubbed his eyes, tried to steady his breathing.
Illogical, stupid, venal, selfish people he understood. He had certainly met enough of them through the years. Those people he could handle. On the other hand, the Charlotte Pines of the world were a different breed.
He had counted on the spaceplane, which was a guaranteed ride back to earth when the time came. Without it, he and everyone else on this rock were marooned until another spaceplane made the trip.
“Can we force the French to send a spaceplane?” he asked Julie.
“Nothing important has changed,” his wife said curtly. “Key people in the government are with us, as they have always been. Under our leadership France will assume its rightful place in the world. Our friends want us to succeed—they will bring Europe with them. France, Europe and the world. The glory of France will shine as it never has before.”
The pitch and timbre of her voice rose as she spoke, mesmerizing Pierre. She had always had the ability to show him the grandeur that lay just beyond the shadows. He believed, and he knew others would too.
Still… “What of the British, the Americans?” he asked now.
“Their day is done. The world will speak French. If they refuse to see reason, we will bring them to their knees.” She made a fist. “And destroy them.”
? ? ?

After rocket engine shutdown, when the three flight computers all agreed that the spaceplane was established on course to an earth orbit rendezvous with the refueling tank, Charley checked the ship’s habitability systems one more time, leaned back and sighed.
Without the background chatter from Mission Control and people in the ship talking on the intercom, the cockpit was unusually quiet. The only sounds that could be heard were ship’s noises, the hum of air circulation fans and an occasional thumping from a pump that kicked in for a few seconds.
She yawned. “What say we see if there’s anything aboard this garbage scow to eat, then grab a few winks.”
“Maybe you had better tell me why we did an unscheduled boogie without people or cargo,” Joe Bob Hooker said. “Sorta curious, I guess.”
“Over food. I haven’t eaten”—she looked at her watch— “in fifteen hours.”
She unstrapped and headed for the locker where the space suits were kept. After she had properly stored hers, she went to the kitchen, where she found Joe Bob floating around.
“There isn’t much,” he said. “Gonna lose a few pounds on this flying fat farm.”
He extracted some tubes of pureed goo from a refrigerator and tried to read the French labels aloud. “What’s cheval?”
“Horse, I think.”
“I forgot that we’re dealing with gourmets. Here’s something green.”
“I’ll take it. Nuke it to warm it up.”
“This red stuff looks good to me. I’m a real sucker for red goo; can’t get enough of it.”
There was wine. With a squeeze bottle of vino each and their goo, they headed back for the flight deck.
The earth was visible through the windscreen, off to the right. They were on course for the point in space where the planet would be in three days. Behind the left wing, a sliver of the sunlit surface of the moon was visible. On the right, the surface of the moon was still in shadow, a dark presence.
As they squeezed and squirted, Charley told Joe Bob about finding the reactor on the outbound voyage, her inspection of the observatory and her conversation with Claudine Courbet.
When she ran down, Joe Bob said, “Pierre Artois, ruler of the universe. Not very catchy.”
“Yeah. He’s not a corporal with a cool name, like Hitler.”
“I see your point. So what do you want to do?”
“I’m inclined to do nothing for a while. We have about seventy hours before we rendezvous with the fuel tank.”
“Is the French government behind Artois?”
“Beats me. The politicians put up a huge chunk of the cost of the lunar project. Either he’s betraying them or he’s acting on their behalf. But that’s neither here nor there. I get on the radio with this tale and no one will believe me. You can bet Pierre is telling as big a lie as he thinks he can get away with right now.”
“We could listen in. Don’t the radios pick up the base frequencies?”
“We could listen,” she acknowledged. “But I don’t want to. He’ll think I’m listening and threaten me. I don’t need the aggravation. I want to sleep and think.”
“So what happens when he starts firing this antigravity beam at the earth?”
“Assuming the reactor generates sufficient power, the polarity of the earth’s gravitational field will be reversed in the area of the beam, so objects on the surface will be repelled by the planet.”
“You mean…?”
“Stuff will fly off into space,” Charley Pine said, and squirted the last of her wine into her mouth. “Buildings, ships, people, cities, everything.”
“You can bet someone will launch a rocket with a nuclear warhead at the moon. Squash the lunar base.”

“Not if Pierre zaps the rocket before it’s ready to fly.”
Joe Bob thought that over before he said, “Do you really think he’d kill people?”
“I think Pierre Artois is a Looney Tune. If Henri Salmon and Claudine Courbet are fair samples, he has surrounded himself with people just as crazy as he is. There is no way to predict what crazy people will do.”
“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 was 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 couple 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 swing 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.
? ? ?

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 am 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.
He kept the plane moving forward.
The car with Egg in it peeled out, leaving muddy streaks in the grass in front of the hangar.
Should he fly over the car, see if the antigravity system in the plane could lift it from the ground? If he did, Egg might be injured. Or killed.
Reluctantly he veered off at the last second and went after the other car, whose driver was attempting to follow the first. Glancing back, Rip saw the gunman fall to the ground. He lay motionless with his stainless steel pistol on the ground beside him.
Rip flew in a circle, his eyes on the two cars, which had circled the hangar and headed for the road that led to Egg’s gate. Coming out of the turn he shoved the stick as far forward as it would go and began closing on the second car.
As it disappeared under the nose he pulled back on the stick, stopping the plane over the car. After a few seconds, he eased the stick sideways. The first car, with Egg in it, was speeding toward the gate.
Well off to one side, he looked back. The second vehicle was lying on its side with its rear wheels spinning.
Perhaps he should follow the fleeing car. One glance at his cylinder temp gauge nixed that idea—without the flow of hundred-plus mile-per-hour air over the cooling fins of the engine cylinders, the engine was overheating. Oil temp near the red line, too. He set the Extra on the ground a hundred feet from the hangar, let the engine idle for thirty seconds to cool it, then turned it off.
The gunman crumpled near the hangar never moved.
Blood oozed from his mouth, nose and eyes, which stared fixedly at nothing. From the way he lay, it was obvious that his neck was broken.
Rip left the body and walked to the car lying on its side. The engine was still roaring, the rear wheels spinning. The man at the wheel had not fastened his seat belt, so he had been thrown partially out of the car. His head was under the driver’s door. The windshield was shattered, glass fragments strewn everywhere.
Rip reached inside and turned the ignition off. He pulled the key far enough out of the switch to silence the beeping and left it there.
He thought of Egg’s good pickup, sitting near the house. Egg always left the key in it. He could jump in it and follow the car that held Egg.
Yet he didn’t move.
If he caught it, what then?
The kidnappers were armed. If they knew they were being followed, they might kill Egg.
The dead gunman had a wallet in his hip pocket. Rip flipped through the contents. A French driver’s license—Maurice Neri, an address in Nice. French credit cards. He put the wallet back in the man’s trousers, felt his other pockets and found something stiff… a passport. French. He returned that to the pocket where he found it.
The Extra was leaking fuel. He inspected the belly of the plane. Fuel was dripping from two bullet holes in the bottom of the right wing.
Then he remembered the guard at the gate, a retired local farmer named Ike Pingley. Rip began to run. It was five hundred yards through scrub forest to the gate; he saw Pingley sitting beside the guard shack while he was fifty yards away. As he got closer he could see that Pingley was bound with gray duct tape. He even had a strip across his mouth.
Rip jerked it off.
Pingley groaned. “Are my lips still on?”
“You okay, Ike?”
“Sorry, Rip. They pulled pistols and got the drop on me. There was nothing I could do. Taped me up. Didn’t say doodley.”
“They kidnapped Egg.”
“I saw them go by. Get this tape off me, will ya?”
As Rip jerked tape, Pingley said, “I heard gunshots. And the plane. What was that all about?”
“Guy opened up on me with a pistol. Shot a couple holes in the plane. He and one of his pals are dead.”
“You want me to call the law?”
“Yeah.”
Rip walked back toward the house as Pingley made the call from the guard shack. They must want the saucer’s computer, he thought. Or money. At least there were two of them who would never see another dime.
He was halfway to the house when the cell phone in his pocket vibrated.
“Hello.”
“Rip, it’s Charley.”
Rip was stunned. “The French said you went off your nut. It’s been on every television news show on earth. Where are you?”
“I’m a hundred miles above you in orbit. Won’t be able to talk long.”
“Four French dudes with guns kidnapped Egg. Two of them are dead, but the other two snatched him and drove away about five minutes ago. They probably wanted me too, but I was flying the Extra.”

Charley said a cuss word. “I need your help, Rip. Let me tell you what’s going down.” And she did. After three minutes of nonstop talking, she said, “I’m going to lose you any second. Call you back on the next orbit, in about eighty minutes.”
The phone went dead.
He stumbled along, trying to think. Thirty minutes ago he was strapping into the airplane, with Egg watching. Now there were two dead men lying near the hangar, and Egg was gone.
Pierre Artois!
? ? ?

Charley Pine had forty minutes to stew in the cock-pit of Jeanne d’Arc before the moon came over earth’s horizon. Joe Bob Hooker was sitting in the right seat, where he had listened as she used Pierre’s cell phone.
“Want to tell me about it?” he asked finally.
“Pierre sent some thugs to kidnap my boyfriend’s uncle. Probably my boyfriend too. Two of the thugs are dead, but they managed to grab Uncle Egg. Pierre is sending me a message. Don’t make waves, or else.”
“How do you know it was Pierre?”
“The gunmen were French. They came to Egg’s farm in Missouri. They snatched him. You figure it out.”
“Oooh boy!”
“Yeah.”
“So where you gonna land this thing?”
“I dunno.”
“DFW would be nice. I’ll take a cab home.” DFW was Dallas-Fort Worth International.
“Hold that thought.” The moon was coming over the curvature of the Earth, so she reached for the radio, flipped it on and dialed in the primary lunar base frequency. This was also the freq that Mission Control used to talk to the base.
“Hey, Pierre, this is Charley.”
She waited.
“Jeanne d’Arc, Mission Control.” It was a male voice, one she didn’t recognize. He paused for a moment to give her time to respond. When she didn’t, he began spouting questions in French anyway.
When Mission Control paused for air, Charley repeated her transmission in English. “Pierre, this is Charley, over.”
This time she heard his voice. “I’m listening, Charley.”
“Some French thugs just kidnapped my boyfriend’s uncle in Missouri. You want to tell me about it?”
“You stole a spaceplane, and you ask me about a crime in Missouri?”
“So what’s the deal here, Pierre? I assume you want to threaten me. Mission Control and probably half the news networks on the planet are listening, so go ahead.”
“Mademoiselle Pine. I know nothing about Missouri. I do know that you stole our spaceplane. I suggest you land it at the spaceport in France as soon as possible.”
“Or?”
“We’ll get you the medical help you need. That I can promise.”
Charley took a deep breath, then said, “I already have medical insurance, although I appreciate the offer. Since you are so kind, I’ll tell you how it went up there before I boogied. Courbet showed me the beam generator and told me your plans.”
A long silence ensued while Artois decided how to respond. Obviously he wasn’t yet ready to turn on his beam generator and make demands.
She keyed her mike. “How much longer are you going to wait, Pierre, before you give them the bad news?”
“Mademoiselle, I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Soon, I think,” she said, and flipped the radio off before Pierre or Mission Control could reply.
“Was that wise?” Joe Bob Hooker asked, his voice deadly calm.
“So you think I’m crazy too.”
“Charley, I don’t know what to think. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that the man running a huge French expedition to the moon—the biggest space program in history—is off his rocker. All I have is your word for it.”
She riveted her eyes on him. “Can you fly this thing?”
“Uh, no.”
“Then I suggest you fix us some goo for dinner and stay out of my way. If I’m crazy, there’s no telling what I might do.”
Joe Bob opened and closed his mouth several times but decided that he didn’t want to say anything. He removed his headset and unfastened his seat belt. He floated up and out of his chair and used the back of the copilot’s seat as a launching pad.
? ? ?

In Mission Control, the French space minister listened to a replay of Charley’s conversation with Pierre Artois. He didn’t understand what they were discussing, and it was obvious they did not intend that he should. It was a private conversation with the whole world listening.
“How much longer are you going to wait, Pierre, before you give them the bad news?” What did that mean? What bad news? Certainly not the fact that Pine took the spaceplane—she knew that everyone knew about that. And what the devil was a beam generator?
The minister picked up the secure telephone and called the premier.
And was two minutes too late. The premier had heard the entire conversation on CNN.
“What is a beam generator?” the premier asked the minister.
“I do not know, sir.”
“You are the man who is supposed to know. Find out and call me back.”
? ? ?

The president of the United States was having a quiet afternoon in front of his television, sipping Diet Coke and munching barbecue potato chips. The White House pooch was asleep on the floor. The president had asked his staff to jiggle the schedule around so he could concentrate on the French crisis—he had told the press secretary to use precisely that phrase when talking to the working press: “the French crisis.” You must admit, the phrase had a wonderful ring.
The president had his shoes and tie off when the television network began playing its tape of Charley and Artois’ conversation.
When it was over he sat staring at the idiot box. He picked up the telephone. One of the secretaries answered it. “Get O’Reilly, the secretary of state, the director of the CIA, and the national security adviser. As soon as possible in my office.”
“Yes, sir.”
P.J. O’Reilly, the chief of staff, was the first man through the door. The dog growled, then went over to a corner to rearrange itself well out of O’Reilly’s way. Brilliant, arrogant, utterly devoid of humor—and humanity, some said—O’Reilly was the most intensely political creature the president had ever had the misfortune to meet. No one liked him, not even the current Mrs. O’Reilly. One of his many enemies had said he had the soul of a lizard. With a resume like that, the president thought, he was perfect for the job of chief of staff.
“I had the television on as background noise,” O’Reilly told the president. “I heard it.”
“Be nice if our spies knew what was going on in France.”
“They don’t,” O’Reilly said bluntly. “And I don’t think the French government has a clue either.”
“Boy, I certainly would enjoy being a spy in France. It would beat the heck out of this job. Nice climate, great food, wonderful wine, beautiful women…” The president sighed wistfully. “Oh, well. What is a beam generator, anyway?”
“A searchlight would be my guess.”
“Mine too. Or maybe a laser.”
The president wriggled his toes and popped a potato chip into his mouth. After he swallowed it, he said, “Glad I’m not the premier of France.” And he chuckled.
? ? ?

When the telephone in his pocket rang again, Rip was on the porch with one of the state police lieutenants. “Excuse me a moment,” he said. “I must take this call.” He walked to the end of the porch and opened the cover of the phone.

“Hello.”
“It’s me.”
“The police are here. We’re certain the two dead kidnappers are French. One of them even had a French passport in his pocket.”
“Pierre Artois sent them.”
“How in hell did you get mixed up with that bastard?”
“I made a mistake. All right? Rip, I need your help.”
“So does Egg.”
“Have the police check bizjet flights to France. I can’t see two Frenchmen holed up with Egg in a hideout in the Ozarks.”
“Okay,” he said briskly.
“Are you willing to help me?”
“This isn’t Rent-a-Hero.”
“I need you, Rip.”
“Okay.”
“And I need to hear you say it about me.”
Rip Cantrell took a ragged breath. Well, there it was. Yes or no. Do we go forward or rehash the past? “I don’t need someone who wanders off every time she gets bored or someone makes a better offer.”
“I deserve that, I suppose.”
“On the other hand, if I’d worked harder at being someone you wanted to be with, maybe you wouldn’t have been bored.”
“Yes.”
“What say we get Egg back? When we get out of jail, we’ll go on from there.”
“Deal! But let’s try to stay out of jail, for a little while, anyway. This is what I want to do.” And she told him.
? ? ?

The warm glow of triumph suffused Julie Artois as she stood watching her husband and Claudine Courbet completing the final preparations for the testing of the antigravity beam. Henri Salmon stood beside her. There were three other men in the chamber, all engineers. The men had the dust covers off the telescope and beam generator; the reactor was producing power, and the computers calculating aimpoints and angles. Signals from the computer were gently moving the telescope and beam generator, aiming them. All the personnel were wearing space suits, although they had yet to don their helmets and pressurize the suits, and would not do so until they were ready to depressurize the chamber and roll back the roof cover.
Years of dreaming, scheming and planning were coming to fruition in the next few moments. The antigravity beam had been the final piece in the puzzle. A beam generator on the moon that could strike any spot on planet Earth was the ultimate weapon, against which the nations of the earth had no defense.
Finally, after eons of war, strife, starvation and disease, the rule of might makes right was going to be used for good. Henceforth she and Pierre were going to right the wrongs, cure the sick, feed the starving… lift mankind from the eternal struggle for every morsel to the enlightened benefits of a new civilization, one built on compassion for the needs of all.
Of course it would not be easy. Many would resist. Yet in human affairs the truth was indisputable: The ends do indeed occasionally justify the means. On the bright side, this would be the last great struggle. She and Pierre would lead mankind into a new and brighter tomorrow. Lead them kicking and screaming, but they were going—or they would die.
She was up to the task. This was her destiny.
Pierre, of course, thought it was his. Suffused with testosterone, the males of the species needed to believe in something, and being simple-minded fools, they usually believed in themselves. Every woman with a lick of sense understood that reality and worked with it. Pierre did as Julie wished him to do and believed it was his own idea. Watching Pierre now, Julie Artois smiled.
Her gaze switched to Courbet, and the smile faded. These engineers were true believers, but they lacked judgment. They would obey orders; they would have to, the stakes were too large. If they didn’t— She became acutely aware of Salmon standing beside her. The man had an animal presence.
If they didn’t obey, she would tell Salmon. He would fix things.
Julie Artois did not believe in heaven or hell or life after death. This existence is all you get, she mused. This one short life is all you get to make your mark, to make life better for those who will come after.
She was about to create an inferno that would forever change the nations of the world. Once the people of the earth saw the benefits of the new world order, it would become the new paradigm. National pride, war and the all-consuming, eternal quest for the all-mighty dollar would become ancient history. World peace would be her monument, and it would outlast the pyramids.
Her reverie came to an end when Pierre announced, “We are ready.”
Claudine Courbet nodded her concurrence. She had helped design this entire installation. She seemed absorbed in the technical minutia and had personally supervised the connection of every cable and the testing of every component in the system. The success of the beam generator would be her triumph, Julie believed, against all those people who believed women were good for only one thing.
The people in the chamber donned their helmets, then pressurized their space suits and checked each other’s suits. Pierre checked Julie’s and he checked hers. Julie saw that he was smiling inside his helmet. He touched his helmet to hers and whispered, “This is the moment.”
Men are truly amazing, she thought. He saw himself as Napoleon and her as his Josephine, when in reality she was Joan of Arc.
When everyone was ready, the depressurization of the cavern began. It took about five minutes to pump all the air out. When the pumps had extracted all the air they could, the overhead door was cracked open, allowing the last of the air to escape. Then the doors began their mechanical journey to the fully opened position. As they rolled back, sunlight at a low angle flooded one corner of the cavern. It was so bright that those who had forgotten to lower the sun visors on their helmets were dazzled by the brilliance.
Julie took two long steps to the beam generator and looked up. The earth hung in the black sky above like a round blue jewel, although one side was shaded in darkness.
With the door fully open, Pierre announced, “Let us begin.”
One of the engineers manned the console that controlled the telescope. He brought up the picture on the monitor as Julie and Pierre watched. They found they were looking almost straight down at a brown landscape, a desert. The engineer used the computer to zoom in on the center of the picture. A square object was there, slightly off center. Even using star locators, the orientation of the telescope was not perfect, which was due to the inevitable manufacturing tolerances present in the gears and drives that aimed the device. Now the engineer aimed the telescope by hand, centering the square object, a building, in the crosshairs.
“Full charge on the capacitor,” Courbet announced from her position at the main control console. Her voice was carried over an intercom system to each helmet by a wire. The transmissions from even a low-voltage radio system could have been picked up on earth, so the intercom system was hardwired.
Courbet slaved the beam generator to the signals from the telescope’s servo drive, verified that it was aligned, then ordered everyone in the chamber to take a safety position. All involved moved behind the antimagnetic shield that had been erected between the beam generator and the main control console.
Pierre personally inspected the readouts, then gave the order. “Fire.”
Courbet jabbed the red button on the console, discharging the capacitor to the beam generator.
Every person in the cavern felt the electrical charge, which tingled their skin and made the room glow with a blue light for several seconds. Then as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.
Claudine Courbet and Pierre Artois dashed to the telescope monitor and stared at the picture. The building in the crosshairs, a quarter million miles away, was not there anymore.