Saucer The Conquest

CHAPTER 7

Jack Hood was a farmer in Kent, England, only a few miles from the white cliffs of Dover. It was after midnight when his wife awakened him. “There’s something out there, Jack. Listen to the cows.”
Hood blinked himself awake and listened hard. The cattle were bawling loudly. Hood glanced at the bedside clock: It was at least an hour before dawn.
“I’d better go check,” he said, and rolled out of bed.
He had a gnarled shillelagh standing in the corner, and after he dressed and stomped into his Wellingtons, he reached for it, just in case. He made his way to the front door of the house without turning on any lights and went out.

It had rained last evening, so the earth was pungent and sweet. During the night the wind had moved out the clouds and now the sky was clear, ablaze with stars, with the moon low in the west. Standing on the porch in the moonlight, Jack Hood remembered the flashlight in the kitchen and went back for it.
The moon gave enough light that he didn’t need the flashlight to find his way to the barn. Last night Hood and his wife had watched all the latest news from capitals around the world on the telly and heard the demands of the man in the moon, so as he walked he flashed Pierre the finger.
The cattle stopped bawling when they sensed his presence, yet still they milled about, looking toward the pond. Actually the pond was a small lake, almost two acres in size.
Hood let himself through the gate and walked toward the water. He flipped on the flashlight and swept it around the shore. Nothing out of the ordinary here. A few bushes, lots of mud churned up by cattle, here and there a small tree.
“Out here,” a voice called.
Elmer turned the flashlight toward the center of the pond—and saw a man standing there. In the pond. In only to his ankles. What the—?
“Hope you don’t mind treating us to a fill-up,” the man called. He had an American accent, which Jack Hood recognized from the movies. “We ran out of water and missed North America. We were skipping and hopping and hoping, and this is where we wound up.”
Hood went down right to the water’s edge. Now he could see that there was a shape, something dark, mounding up out of the water. Aha, the man was standing on something!
“Name’s Rip. Bet we woke you up, huh?”
Jack Hood didn’t know what to say. He simply stood and stared.
Now the man bent over and rapped on the thing he was standing on. It rose slowly and gently out of the water. The thing was a saucer! A bloody flying saucer!
It was big! Ohmigosh, it was big, maybe sixty or seventy feet in diameter. As it came completely out of the water, the water level in the pond dropped, perhaps as much as a foot. The saucer moved gently over the pasture with the man still standing on its back. Its legs snapped down, and it settled onto the grass.
The man jumped down and strolled over. He was in his early twenties, clean-cut and lean. He reached for the flashlight and turned it away from his face, then grasped Hood’s hand.
“Rip Cantrell. Glad to meet you.”
“Righto,” Jack managed.
“Have a good night,” Rip said, and turned back to the saucer. He went under it and disappeared into the belly.
Seconds later it lifted and the gear retracted.
It moved out over the pond, accelerating, then a small flame burst from a series of rocket nozzles on the trailing edge.
When the saucer was perhaps two miles away, traveling at several hundred knots, the exhaust became intense and all the noise on God’s green earth washed over Jack Hood. The fireball rose almost straight up and kept going and going, shrinking to a pinpoint as it drifted toward the east. Finally it disappeared among the stars.
? ? ?

The disaster that had claimed the three French spaceplanes was the topic of considerable conversation between Mission Control in France and Pierre Artois on the moon. Newton Chadwick listened on the battery-operated encoded radio in the Roswell saucer and passed on what he heard to his two colleagues. All of the conversation was in French and unintelligible to Egg Cantrell. From Chadwick’s reaction, he could tell that the news was bad.
When the radio had finally fallen silent, Chadwick and his colleagues discussed what they had heard for half an hour, and finally Chadwick shared what he had learned with Egg.
“A disaster. The orbital refueling tank exploded when the second of the two ships bound for the moon was refueling. The explosion was actually seen over Japan in the hours before dawn. The tank and that ship were destroyed. The crew of the tanker, which had carried the fuel aloft, thought they saw another ship in the vicinity, but they couldn’t be sure. It was black and saucer-shaped. They immediately fired their engines for a reentry, and talked to Mission Control before they entered the atmosphere and lost radio contact. That ship crashed somewhere in the Pacific, Mission Control believes.”
He sighed. “No one knows what happened to the third ship. There were several garbled radio transmissions, which the agency is studying, trying to decipher. An oil tanker in the western Pacific reported a large object—they thought it was a meteor—penetrating the atmosphere at a steep angle and burning up a few minutes before dawn.”
“Saucer-shaped?”
“A saucer!” Chadwick made a face. “The American news media reports that the saucer housed in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington was stolen in midmorning, several hours before the disaster aloft. An extraordinary coincidence that must somehow be explained.”
“Stolen?” Egg said, his disbelief evident in his voice.
“Of course not!” Chadwick replied acidly. “The American government obviously sent that saucer aloft to attack the spaceplanes while they were still in earth orbit. What kind of weapon the saucer used is unknown.” He stared into Egg’s eyes. “Is there a weapon on this saucer?”
Egg blinked and managed to look surprised. There was the antiproton beam on the saucer from the Sahara, of course, but— Naw! Certainly not! No one knew of it except Rip and Charley. No one in the government—
“Don’t be absurd,” Egg said sharply. “Do you really think the government converted this saucer to a weapons platform? If they did, where is it?” He made a show of looking around the compartment. “This thing has been sitting in an abandoned hangar in Nevada for how many years?”
Chadwick was thinking—Egg could see that. Obviously he hadn’t learned of the antiproton beam in his exploration of this saucer’s computer or he wouldn’t even have asked the question. In fact, Egg had only discovered its existence from studying the schematics. Chadwick wasn’t an engineer; he just wanted to get rich and live forever.
“How could the American government install a space weapon on a museum artifact in a few days?” Egg asked. “Do you think they bolted it onto the belly? Or put it inside here and cut a porthole in the leading edge to shoot through?”
“I think you know something you aren’t telling me,” Chadwick said, still gazing intently at Egg’s face.
“Think what you please,” Egg grunted, and floated toward the toilet facility.
As soon as he had the door closed he put his hands on his face, trying to compose himself.
He didn’t know if this saucer had a weapon on it—he hadn’t asked the computer. He wondered if Chadwick would. All he had to do was put on the headband and ask. If he knew enough to ask. In his explorations of the computer’s memory, Egg had spent months wandering along, poking here and there, completely on his own, before one day the thought occurred to him to ask the computer for the information he wanted. Then data spewed forth like an Oklahoma gusher.
What if this saucer did have an antimatter weapon of some sort and Chadwick learned of it? So what? They were on their way to the moon.
Given a moment to think about it, Egg put two and two together. If Rip’s saucer had indeed flown again, Rip and Charley Pine were in it.
Were they still alive? Were they safe?
If anything happened to them…
When he had himself completely under control, Egg opened the door and floated out into the main compartment. Chadwick had strapped himself to the pilot’s seat and was wearing the headband.

? ? ?

The news of the loss of the spaceplanes hit Pierre hard. He had bet his quest—indeed, his life and Julie’s life— on the fact that his friends could get control of the French spaceport and continue to fly the spaceplanes to and from the earth. He was sure the French government would fold—he knew most of the ministers personally. They weren’t gamblers, they were politicians. They read the papers, were acutely attuned to the public mood and strove mightily to stay in front of the parade so they would appear to be leading. If the public could be persuaded, the politicians would go along, and Pierre knew how to sway the French public. Honor, glory, for the good of all mankind, which would be united under a French banner. The appeal would be irresistible.
And, mon Dieu! It worked.
Except for that Charley Pine. Stealing the spaceplane from the moon, stranding them.
He wondered if she had flown the saucer that attacked the three spaceplanes in orbit. His gut told him yes. She would do that.
It would take at least two years to build another spaceplane and test it, even on an expedited schedule. Then another fuel tank would have to be placed in earth orbit and filled with fuel before a spaceplane could make a trip to the moon filled with supplies.
The lunar base was not self-sustaining, as he well knew. Oh, there was indeed water, but the hydroponic gardens would not sustain the forty-two people who were here. Make that forty-six, for four more were coming on Chadwick’s saucer. Nor were the complex carbon-based compounds being created in the lab yet edible.
Somehow, some way, Chadwick’s saucer had to be used to carry critical supplies back and forth across the chasm.
He was musing thus when Julie came into the com center. He told her of the disaster to the spaceplanes. She took the bad news well, he thought, although obviously it was a blow. They discussed how Chadwick’s saucer would have to be used.
“Even with the saucer, it will be difficult to sustain forty-six people,” she remarked distractedly.
Pierre nodded. “We will send as many as possible back to earth on the saucer.”
“Yes. We must lower the number somehow.”
The radio crackled to life. It was Mission Control reporting that the French space facilities were under attack. “Hangars are exploding, the fuel dump just detonated—” He was cut off in midsentence.
“The Americans,” Pierre said heatedly.
“Or the British,”Julie said. “We’ll give them a taste of their own medicine. They want war, and they shall have it! And I’m going to enjoy pulling the trigger!”
? ? ?

It was still dark in Washington when Charley Pine drifted the stolen saucer to a stop ten feet in the air outside a large hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. One of the huge doors began opening, revealing a brilliantly lit interior and dozens of people. The saucer slipped through the open door. Inside, the gear snapped down; then the ship settled to the shiny, reflective white concrete beside Air Force One, a huge Boeing 747 that dwarfed saucer and people. Behind the spaceship, the door was already closing.
Rip and Charley dropped through the open hatch. The first person they saw was the president of the United States. He walked over with a hand out.
He pronounced their names as he shook their hands, but didn’t say his own. After all, Rip thought, any American who didn’t know the name of the president was in danger of being involuntarily committed.
Charley said, “Hi,” to the president, then asked, “Where’s the ladies?”
Surprised, the president looked around for a sign. One of his aides pointed, and Charley headed that way, leaving Rip and the president standing in front of the saucer.
“She’s had a rough night,” Rip explained. “She knew the spaceplane crews, trained with them in France.”
“Sure,” said the president.
“Sorry about smashing up the window over at the Air and Space. I’ll pay for the damage. We didn’t have time to get permission,” he finished lamely.
The president’s eyebrows rose. “The director told one of my staff that he figured it would cost ten million to repair the side of that building.”
“We’ve been doing okay licensing the propulsion technology. When I get back to Missouri, I’ll write the museum a check.”
“I’ve never been inside your saucer,” the president said. “How about a tour?”
Once inside, the president climbed into the pilot’s seat and looked at the blank computer presentations. Rip pulled out the power knob to the first detent, and the presentations came vividly to life. After Rip’s cursory explanation, the president said, “Tell me about the spaceplanes.”
So Rip told it, about going into orbit, calling Space Command, doing a huge loop and dropping down onto them, blowing up the refueling tank with the spaceplane attached…
When Rip ran dry, the president said, “One spaceplane blew up with the fuel tank, one burned up in the atmosphere, the third came down in the Pacific. The survivors were picked up by a freighter. One crewman dead, four injured. The fourth ship, which Ms. Pine flew, is parked on the Bonneville Salt Flats under armed guard.”
“Guess that’s the inventory.”
“Then there is the saucer that we kept in Area Fifty-one. Top secret and all that. It was stolen and is on its way to the moon, presumably under the command of Artois’ colleagues.”
“With my uncle Egg flying it.”
“Space Command said that you believe this saucer can make that trip.”
“Yessir. If we put bladder tanks here in the cabin, plumb them into the water system, we can increase our fuel capacity by two hundred percent. Charley and I figure that will be enough to get us there and back.”
The president wiggled the controls. “And this saucer has a weapon?”
“Yessir. An antiproton beam.”
“What’s an antiproton?”
“Antimatter. When an antiproton hits a regular proton, it destroys it, releasing a lot of energy. A whole lot. E = mc2.”
“Your uncle will be at the lunar base. That will complicate things.”
“We’re going to need a couple of assault rifles and some grenades. They’ll work the same there as they do here.”
“Want to take a couple of marines with you?”
“It’s sorta cramped in here now. When we add the water tanks, there won’t be room.”
“Okay.” The president stirred the stick, kicked the rudders and took in the displays one more time. “Before you go, can I get a ride in this thing?”
? ? ?

To get to the restroom Charley walked through a large office and along a hallway. When she came out, she paused to examine the framed photos of World War I aviators hanging on the hallway wall. There was Georges Guynemer, with lean cheeks and haunted eyes, wearing a coat with a fur collar; Charles Nungesser standing in front of his plane in a leather coat, his hands in his pockets; Albert Ball in profile, only nineteen, in the cockpit of his Nieuport; the wild man, Frank Luke, with his arms folded across his chest, leaning against the lower wing of a Spad; Mick Mannock bending down to pat a dog… ahh, and Billy Bishop seated in a Nieuport, with his head turned, looking at the camera.
She wiped at her tears, trying to see clearly. Bishop’s eyes bored into hers. Bishop, the consummate aerial warrior, was the only one of the group to die of old age. Seventy-two confirmed kills, Billy, and you lived with every one of them the rest of your days.
So was she feeling sorry for the men she killed, or for herself?

“Are you the saucer pilot?”
Charley Pine looked up. The questioner was a girl, perhaps ten years old, with yellow hair pulled back in pigtails. “Yes,” Charley said. “I’m the pilot.”
“Why are you crying?”
Charley was sitting in a chair with her legs drawn up in the office off the main hangar floor, amid a dozen desks, each holding a computer and printer. The walls were lined with filing cabinets. She swabbed at her eyes. “People do, you know. Cry sometimes.”
“Sometimes it helps,” the girl said, very grown up.
Charley used the sleeves of her flight suit to dry her eyes, then tried to smile. It was a miserable effort, she thought.
The girl took a chair nearby. “I’m Amanda. I’m eight.”
“Charley.”
“That’s a funny name for a girl.”
“It’s actually Charlotte. My dad started calling me Charley because I was a tomboy, and it stuck.”
“I like being a girl,” Amanda said.
“I do too.”
“Boys are so icky.”
“Sometimes,” Charley agreed, and hugged her legs.
“What’s it like to fly the saucer?”
“Sometimes it’s pretty cool. Other times…”
“I mean, what’s it really like?” Amanda leaned forward, her eyes shining. “When you go zooming up and fly off into space and see the world from way out there, with a billion stars shining and the moon so bright and the sun hanging there on fire.”
“Way cool,” Charley admitted, remembering.
“Tell me.”
Charley searched for words, which had never been her long suit. She could fly it and live it and savor it, but she had never tried to tell anyone about it, except for one female reporter, who turned out to be more interested in Charley’s sex life than her flying experiences.
Looking at Amanda, she started talking. She told about the G forces, the rush of acceleration with empty heaven ahead, the way the sky turned dark as the saucer climbed above the atmosphere, how the clouds looked from twenty, fifty, a hundred miles high looking down. She explained about the oceans, the million shades of blue, the mountains with snow, windstorms over the deserts, cities twinkling at night… told it to Amanda with the shining eyes.
Rip bent down and kissed Charley’s cheek. “Hey there, lady. How you doing?”
“Visiting with Amanda.”
“I see you met my granddaughter,” a man said from behind Charley. She turned to see who it was. The president.
“She’s going to be a pilot,” Charley Pine replied, winking at Amanda.
“They’re going to install the water tank, get us some new clothes and underwear and provide some MREs.” MREs were Meals, Ready to Eat. “Can you think of anything else?”
“A couple cases of water to drink, and I want two flight suits with an American flag on the shoulder. I’m tired of wearing this French flight suit.”
“Done,” the president said.
“Uhh,” Rip said, leaning close and whispering. “While they’re getting bladder tanks ready to install, the president wondered if you could give him and Amanda a ride in the saucer. You know, sort of an out and in to see the sights and stuff. Will you?”
Charley Pine winked at Amanda. “Want to try it?”
“Sure,” the youngster replied. “If you’re going to fly it. I only ride with women pilots.”
“She’s a true believer,” said the president, grinning broadly, and rumpled the girl’s hair.
“Let’s put some water in it and light the fires,” Charley said. She led the way out into the hangar bay. The hangar door was already open. Through it she could see the dawn.
Suspecting that Andrews Air Force Base had its share of neighbors who complained about noise and wanting to go easy on her passengers, Charley Pine used the rocket engines sparingly after takeoff. Amanda sat on her lap, the president stood on her left, and Rip stood in his customary place on her right. Rip had briefed the president about hanging on; each man had a death grip on the underside of the instrument panel and the back of Charley’s seat.
Once over the Chesapeake, Charley pulled the nose up to thirty degrees above the horizon and tweaked on more juice.
She was flying with just the headband, using both arms to hold Amanda.
The saucer soared through forty thousand feet, now fifty. The morning sky darkened; the rim of the earth became a vivid, unbroken line. She gently banked the saucer, let the nose fall to the horizon and reduced the rockets’ thrust until they became a murmur behind her.
Here the spaceship was safely above the airliners, and above the high cirrus layer that was coming in from the west. In that direction the cloud formed a bright, gauzy sheet between earth and sky, almost luminescent in the morning sun. Charley Pine thought the sky very beautiful. Gorgeous in all its moods, she reminded herself.
Charley glanced at Rip. He was grinning widely. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
Rip, Rip, Rip, you are the one.
The president was also smiling. “Thank you,” he told her. “And you, Rip.”
She looked for the moon, then remembered that it was below the horizon at this time of day.
Enough. Pierre was waiting, with his plans for world conquest.
She silenced the rocket engines and let the nose drop toward the earth below.
As the ship came down the Potomac, Amanda was full of giggles and comments. She entertained the adults royally with her observations and her mood. “I’m going to be a saucer pilot when I grow up,” she announced.
“You go, girl,” Charley said, and the men seconded her.
Charley flew the saucer straight into the open hangar and set it on the concrete. As Rip opened the hatch, someone handed up a message for the president. He read it, then handed it to Charley.
Golden Gate and Bay Bridge in San Francisco destroyed. Artois demands your answer. On the next pass he will reduce Washington to rubble, he says, unless the United States surrenders.
“Time to go back to work,” the president said sadly, and read the message aloud. He looked at Charley, then Rip, searching their faces. “If you can destroy the other saucer or render it inoperative, Pierre Artois and his friends will be marooned up there. I think they’ll listen to reason then. This saucer will be their only ride home, and we’ve got it.”
“We’re going to the moon to get Egg,” Rip said.
The president opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it and slapped them both on the shoulder. He turned to his granddaughter.
“Say good-bye, Amanda. I’ve got to go to work. These folks need to get some food and sleep while the mechanics work on the saucer.”
He shook hands with both of them and pushed Amanda toward the hatch. When they were all standing in front of the saucer, Amanda told Charley where she lived and her telephone number and asked for another ride for herself and her girlfriends. Finally she bounded away, her grandfather urging her on, her pigtails flying.
? ? ?

“The Europeans are coming around,” Henri Salmon reported to Pierre Artois. “All but the British and Dutch, who are being obstinate.”
“As usual,” Julie remarked.
She and Pierre had just seated themselves in the lunar base com center to listen to the president of the United States, who had asked for network time to make a speech to the nation. That speech was, of course, being broadcast worldwide. Salmon and his department heads were also there, standing because there were not enough seats.
When he appeared, the president started with a brief exposition of Pierre’s demands, which amounted to a world government that Pierre would rule by fiat. The president even repeated some of Pierre’s stated goals for that government, such as solving the world hunger problem, and so forth.

Then he went into a summary of the history of democratic government as it had evolved through the centuries, taking it from the Magna Carta to elected parliaments to the American Revolution to universal suffrage.
“Representative democracy is not perfect,” the president said, “but I am absolutely convinced that it is the best method yet devised for making the public decisions that affect our lives, liberty and property. Similarly, the rule of law is the best method mankind has yet come up with for arbitrating personal and business disputes and resolving legal issues. The rule of law is also not perfect. Still, both institutions have grown and taken root in Western civilization and are, I believe, our legacy to the generations of mankind yet to come. Both institutions are being slowly adopted, and adapted to local conditions, in fits and starts by developing nations all over the globe. I stand before you today as an elected official of our constitutional democracy; like every president before me, I have sworn an oath to uphold and defend that Constitution.”
The president continued on for a few minutes more, but Pierre pushed a button to silence the audio. He had gotten the message.
“We’ve been too gentle,” Julie said. “We’ve been attacking things, trying to minimize the loss of life.” She managed to imply that choice had been an act of humanitarian kindness. A cynic might have disagreed, but there were no cynics in the com center, only true believers. “It’s time to take off the gloves,” she added flatly.
? ? ?

“Some reporter has gotten wind of your saucer ride,” P.J. O’Reilly told the president after his speech. “He called my office minutes ago to see if we wanted to comment.”
The president pondered a bit before he answered. “No comment,” he said finally.
O’Reilly was horrified. “But, sir, the press will think we have something to hide. The congressional opposition will demand an investigation.”
“Let ’em investigate. We’ve got other things to worry about.”
Sensing that he was not getting through, O’Reilly attacked from another direction. “The press will imply that you’ve launched the saucer on a military mission to the moon.”
The president brightened. “I did.”
“They’ll want to know specifics.”
The president thought about it. Rip Cantrell and Charley Pine—they were sure nice young people. He took a deep breath. A rescue mission, Rip said. Well, he and Charley were bright enough and courageous enough to do the right thing.
“No comment,” the president said, “about the saucer or anything connected to it. Pierre can sweat a little.”
? ? ?

The trip to the moon in a flying saucer was, Egg Cantrell thought, the high point of his life. During his waking hours he sat in the pilot’s seat wearing the headset that allowed him to talk to the saucer’s computers. Looking through the canopy into deep space, watching the moon move against the stars, glancing over his shoulder at the spinning earth while exploring the wisdom of the ancients—it made him feel as if he were sitting at a window that allowed him to look at the eternal. He was beginning to get a glimmer of the how and why; it felt as if he could see the springs and gears that made the universe turn.
When he took off the headset and sat silently looking, he found himself thinking of the people and events in his own life from a different perspective. His parents and his childhood friends and experiences seemed to become part of the warp and woof of life. His personal and professional triumphs and failures—he had had his share of both—seemed somehow less significant. Now he saw life as a grand, glorious adventure, and in some mysterious, almost mystical way, he was a part of all of it and it was a part of him.
Egg didn’t get to spent all his time lost in thought. Chadwick used his satellite radio to check in with the men in the moon on a regular basis, and to chat with the people at Mission Control in France. That was how he learned of the president’s upcoming speech, which he, Egg and the two Frenchmen, whom Egg referred to as Fry One and Fry Two, listened to as it was broadcast.
“Politicians are ambitious, venal and selfish,” Chadwick said as the president talked about representative democracy.
Egg couldn’t resist. “And dictators aren’t, which is probably why people all over the planet are ridding themselves of them as quickly as they can.”
“Pierre Artois isn’t,” Chadwick asserted. “He’s a friend of all mankind.”
Egg let it drop. He consoled himself with the thought that reasoning with fanatics was a fool’s errand. And Chadwick was a fanatic, he well knew, a dangerous one.
After the speech, they listened to news commentary from “experts” and a report that a saucer had been seen flying around Washington, D.C., earlier in the day and was now thought to be outfitting for a flight to the moon.
Chadwick discussed that tidbit with Artois on the moon using the encrypted radio. Both men spoke in French, but Egg didn’t need to understand their words to know they were worried men. He could see the strain on Chadwick’s face and on the countenances of Fry One and Two, who whispered back and forth.
Egg sighed and tried to keep a poker face. It was difficult. Rip and Charley must be planning to come to the moon, no doubt in an attempt to rescue him. It would be exceedingly dangerous, he thought. In addition to the length of the journey in a craft not designed for it, a battle on the moon held little appeal.
Someone was going to die. He prayed it wouldn’t be Rip or Charley.
Egg went back into the computers, which were very similar to the one at his house that he had been studying for a year. As near as Egg could determine, each computer had four programs devoted to analyzing data and attempting to collaborate with their human creators by generating and testing new ideas, new hypotheses. When a computer was given information, it would assimilate it, generate a theory, test it against known physical laws and then look for connections between this new theory and others.
To perform these feats the computer used four programs running simultaneously. Egg had named them. Franklin had a short attention span and jumped off in a new direction with each piece of data, brainstorming into areas that at first appeared implausible. Jefferson was pickier and only toyed with novel or interesting ideas. The Professor was more pedantic, exploring ideas only when they conformed to its preconceived concepts and rules. Einstein, more thorough, explored different shades and implications of ideas from any source, including his three colleagues, and occasionally arrived at a profound insight.
Egg lived for Einstein’s insights, when he understood them. He communicated with a computer by watching it work and trying to understand the reality that it was exploring. The medium wasn’t language; it was thoughts. He saw the thoughts, felt them and watched his four horsemen continuously mold and shape them, trying them out.
Egg found that he wasn’t in the mood for computers. Nor did the games they contained interest him. Normally he had to ration himself on the games, which were interactive intellectual exercises presumably designed to stimulate the minds of interstellar voyagers. He couldn’t stop thinking of Rip and Charley.
A few hours later Chadwick had another long conversation with Pierre. When that was over he said to Egg, “In about four hours, when the moon is over Washington, Pierre will teach the Americans a lesson they’ll never forget.”
“He’s a friend of all mankind,” Egg murmured.

“Eggs must be broken—”
“Ah, for the lunar omelet.”
“They will thank him someday. Few revolutions are bloodless.”
“Nor conquests, as I recall.”
“The people of the earth must learn to obey, for their own good. Fear will teach them that lesson.”
“Let’s hear it for fear,” Egg muttered, but Chadwick apparently decided that he had argued enough and ignored the remark. As he floated away he unconsciously adjusted the fanny pack.
Two hours later Egg was the only one in the saucer awake. The sleeping men were suspended in makeshift hammocks, which merely kept them from floating into something—or each other—while they slept.
As Egg sat staring at Newton Chadwick, he realized that Chadwick had forgotten to snap his fanny pack in place on his last visit to the head. He could clearly see the snap, and it was unlatched. A portion of the pack hung through a gap in the hammock netting that held the sleeping man.
It appeared one could merely pull the pack another few inches though that hole and open it.
If the deed were done quietly enough, Egg mused, perhaps Chadwick wouldn’t awaken.
? ? ?

Rip and Charley missed the president’s speech. They were too busy supervising the installation of the water bladders and checking for leaks. A leak on the ground would be a gusher under four Gs of acceleration. Going to the moon waist deep in water didn’t seem like a good idea.
When they had the new bladder tanks full and all their gear stowed, Charley and Rip shook hands with the air force personnel and climbed aboard. Outside the hangar, the moon had risen just as night fell. This was the night of the full moon.
Charley and Rip both found themselves taking long looks at the moon as the saucer sat bathed in moonlight outside the hangar while Charley programmed the flight computer.
Six minutes after Rip closed the hatch, the saucer rose from the earth on a cone of white-hot fire. The fireball appeared like a rising sun to many on the south side of the metropolitan area.
The president was packing papers in the Oval Office— which was probably going to go up in a cloud of splinters in just a few hours—when the saucer’s deep roar rattled the windows and chandeliers of the executive mansion. He stood frozen, listening intently, until the noise of the saucer had faded completely. Then he smiled.
? ? ?

When they had completed the lunar orbit insertion burn and were coasting on course for the moon, Rip checked the plumbing for leaks. It was difficult moving in and out of the tight spaces when weightless. He felt like a worm crawling around the pipes and pumps. Finally he wiggled clear and reported to Charley, who was still sitting in the pilot’s seat working with the flight computer.
“Everything is dry,” he said.
When he reached her and got a look at her face, the grimness he saw surprised him. “Charley…”
“Pierre is going to trash Washington,” she said bitterly.
“He was going to do that sooner or later. You know that.”
She finished with the computer and sat staring at the moon, which was well off to her left.
“How far do you think these antiprotons will travel in a vacuum?” she asked Rip.
He glanced at her. She was staring at the moon. “I don’t know,” he said. “Want to try an experiment?”
“Why not,” she muttered, and turned the saucer so that the moon was directly in front of them.
“We don’t even know how fast the antiprotons go,” Rip said. “So we don’t know whether it will take seconds or minutes or hours for them to get there. The chance of a hit is mighty small.”
“Infinitesimal,” Charley agreed.
The crosshairs of the optical sight had appeared on the canopy as she spoke. She looked to see where the lines intersected, then directed the computer to fine-tune the saucer’s position, which moved the crosshairs slightly. Of course, they were so thick that at this distance the junction covered miles of the moon’s surface.
The lunar base was… there, on the edge of that sea, to the south of that mountain range, which could only be seen at this great distance as a fine shadow line.
Fire!
The small light appeared on the sight. The antimatter weapon was discharging.
She tweaked the crosshairs in the direction the moon was traveling in space as the weapon continued to fire a stream of antiprotons into the vacuum.
After thirty seconds, when the crosshairs were on the edge of the lunar orb, she stopped the discharge.
“Well,” Rip said, his disappointment audible, “that was a nonevent. It’s not like I expected the moon to blow up, but still…”
“Sort of like tossing a pebble into the Atlantic,” Charley said, and sighed. She was still thinking of those spaceplanes. She rubbed her face.
“I’m so tired,” she murmured, and unfastened her seat belt. Rip reached for her, and she floated into his arms.
? ? ?

Traveling at half the speed of light, the antimatter particles shot through the vacuum of space, across the empty two-hundred-thousand-mile gulf that separated the coasting saucer and the moon. As they did they dispersed slightly, so by the time the particles reached the moon they fell like rain across a ten-mile swath of the lunar surface.
Still moving at half of the speed of light, each particle shot through the dust and rock of the lunar surface until it encountered a proton speeding in its orbit around an atom’s nucleus. When they collided, the two particles spontaneously obliterated each other, releasing a colossal burst of energy. Sometimes the detonation took place within inches of the surface; sometimes, depending on the density of the material, it happened much deeper, at a depth of several feet.
Although each explosion was quite large in relation to the size of the particles involved, the particles were indeed very small, so the explosions resembled large firecracker detonations.
The vast majority of the particles fell across the empty wasteland, and no living thing was there to witness their self-destruction. The wave marched across the lunar surface, and by sheer chance, one edge of it crossed the French lunar base. Most of the antimatter particles detonated harmlessly, although one did pass through a solar power cell. It met its opposite particle six inches deep in the rock underneath, and the shards of rock blasted upward by the explosion destroyed the power cell. Since there were hundreds of power cells, the loss of one was undetected by the voltage-monitoring equipment.
Those two dozen antimatter particles that impacted the soil over the lunar base met their positrons in the rock, before they reached the caverns underneath, and the explosions rocked the base. Dust fell from the overhead; people felt the triphammer concussions, which triggered the seismic and air-pressure-loss alarms. As alarms clanged throughout the base, people dove frantically for their space suits, just in case.
Two of the particles penetrated the cover above the anti-gravity beam generator and telescope. One detonated a foot deep in the rock floor, showering the room with dust and bits of rock, while creating a nasty small crater. The other went off simultaneously six inches under the surface; the resulting explosion severed a data cable between the telescope and the main computer.
Julie and Pierre Artois and Claudine Courbet were at the console, inputting the coordinates for the major buildings they planned to pulverize in Washington, D.C., during the next hour. They looked around wildly, trying to understand what was happening, as the gong and wail of the alarms sounded even while the debris slowly settled from the explosions.
“What was that?” Pierre demanded.

No one answered. When it became clear that the base wasn’t losing air, and the alarms had been reset and were once again silent, he and Julie and Claudine took stock. That was when they discovered that the telescope was inoperative. Seconds later Claudine found the severed cable.
“A meteor shower,” Pierre said dismissively. All his life he had minimized difficulties and then plowed his way through.
Julie, however, was made of different, more paranoid, stuff. With no evidence at all, she leaped to a completely different conclusion. “It’s a weapon of some kind! That Pine woman! She must have used it on the spaceplanes.”
Pierre snorted. After all, he was the emperor of France. “It was in Washington just hours ago. Even if it is headed for the moon, it is three days away. A weapon with a range of 238,000 miles? Preposterous!”
Yet the fact remained that something had struck the lunar base. Just what it was, no one could say.
As the United States spun under the lunar base, the emperor’s technicians worked to rig a new cable.
? ? ?

In Washington the president and an expectant nation waited… and nothing happened. The absence of the promised disaster stunned the experts, who debated the nonevent on television, explaining their different visions of what it might mean and arguing bitterly among themselves.
“Pierre Artois,” the secretary of state said hopefully in an interview, “must have come to his senses.” She listed the possible reasons why, dwelling heavily on the sanctity of human life and Pierre’s progressive goals, but the network cut away midway through her exposition to air a Viagra commercial, depriving the public of the benefit of her views.
Coasting toward the moon, oblivious to the media frenzy on the mother planet, Rip and Charley slept in each other’s arms.
? ? ?

The Roswell saucer, with Egg Cantrell in the pilot’s seat, looped around the back side of the moon. Egg positioned the saucer so that it was flying backward, and, while still behind the moon, fired the rockets to begin a descent to the lunar base on the side facing earth. When the burn was completed, he turned the saucer 180 degrees so that it was again aligned with its trajectory, which he could alter slightly, as necessary, with the saucer’s maneuvering jets.
He had weighed the possibility of using the antimatter weapon on the lunar base when it hove into view, but he was unsure how to fire it or how much damage the weapon would do. As the saucer descended toward the lunar surface, crossing from the darkness into the light, soaring over stupendous mountain ranges and dark lunar lava flows, Newton Chadwick was hovering on his right side and Fry Two on the left. At the most, he thought, a two- or three-second burst was about all he could hope for before Chadwick and the Fries throttled him.
Egg also considered crashing the saucer, power-diving the moon to make a new crater. That would quickly and painlessly kill him and his three passengers and permanently maroon Pierre Artois and his disciples. Egg thought about it for about two seconds and decided he didn’t have it in him. He wasn’t suicidal. Nor, he decided, was he warrior enough to pull the trigger on Chadwick, the Fries and the French astronauts, even if there were a way he could live through the experience. Maybe he should have had the courage, if that was what it was, but he didn’t and he knew it. As that great American philosopher Dirty Harry Callahan once said, a man has to know his limitations.
Eventually, as the saucer descended and slowed, the lunar base appeared, right where it should be. The solar power panels were an unmistakable landmark. Egg snapped down the landing gear and sat watching as the flight computer used the maneuvering jets and the antigravity system to bring the saucer gently into a hover outside the entrance to the base. Now he saw the lunar dune buggy and the forklift, parked near the main air lock.
Talking silently to the flight computer, he allowed the saucer to settle toward the lunar surface. It touched down almost imperceptibly on its three legs, and all motion stopped.
Egg found that he had been holding his breath. He exhaled convulsively and pushed in the power knob to the first detent, which retained electrical power on the saucer but killed the reactor and propulsion system. Then he used a shirttail to swab the perspiration from his face.
Only then did he look at Newton Chadwick. Chadwick’s face was devoid of color. The man had been hanging on with both hands, a death grip he was unable to release, even now.
“We’re here, Chadwick,” Egg said, pointing out the obvious. He was surprised how cool and calm his own voice sounded. Yeah, man, I’m Egg Cantrell, saucer pilot. I do this every day. As he mopped his brow again he noticed that his hands were trembling.
? ? ?

“So, you are the brilliant Cantrell,” Pierre Artois said in lightly accented English. He said that as if Egg’s reputation were somehow disreputable. They were standing inside the com center.
Egg had managed to wriggle into a space suit without ripping it, but it was a close call. He needed to lose at least twenty pounds to lessen the strain on the zipper. Maybe thirty. He was out of the space suit now, trying to take in everything, see how the lunar base was laid out.
He concentrated on Pierre. Of medium height, erect, charismatic, with what some might term good looks, Pierre radiated control. “That’s right,” Egg said slowly, shaking his head. “The brilliant Cantrell.”
“We have experienced a new phenomenon I wish to ask you about, Cantrell. The effects are unknown to science. Suddenly, all in the same moment, a series of minor explosions rocked the base. Two were in our observatory. I wonder if you might be able to shed some light on this unique experience.”
“Sorry. This is my first trip to the moon.” Egg thought that a rather witty answer.
“I thought perhaps this phenomenon might be the end product of some kind of weapon. On the other saucer, perhaps, the one your nephew stole from the Air and Space Museum in Washington just a few days ago, the one he used to shoot down three French spaceplanes and murder the crews.”
“I know nothing about the other saucer. I have been an unwilling guest of Mr. Chadwick. Perhaps you can enlighten me—in this new Utopia that you will lead, will kidnapping be illegal?”
“I haven’t the time to split the hairs, as you Americans say.” He nodded at Henri Salmon and turned back to the radio mike. Salmon placed his hand on Egg’s arm.
“If you will come with me, sir. We’ll show you to your quarters.”
“I need food and a bath,” Egg shot back. He made eye contact with Julie Artois, who was standing against one wall frowning slightly, as they led him out.
When Egg was out of sight, Pierre turned on the charm for Chadwick and embraced him. “Your arrival in that saucer has saved us, saved our great quest. Our debt to you is large.”
Chadwick beamed. The terrors of the flight were over, and he was on the winning team—it doesn’t get any better than that.
“Would you like to see the saucer?” he asked Pierre, who readily agreed.
As they were donning space suits for the walk to the parked saucer, Chadwick said, “Cantrell lied to you. There is a weapon aboard the saucer, a generator that fires antiprotons in a continuous stream.”
“Antiprotons?”
“Antimatter. When an antiproton strikes a regular proton, they annihilate each other. I don’t know if the Sahara saucer has this weapon, but the Roswell one does. And it sounds from your description as if you were showered with antiprotons.”

“Charley Pine,” Pierre said grimly. “She and young Cantrell are presumably headed this way. The press reported the saucer going into orbit from Washington about six hours ago. Four hours ago we experienced the attack.” He was silent as he zipped himself into the suit, then said, “Now that Egg Cantrell is here, I doubt if they will again shower us with antimatter. But Pine and young Cantrell are coming, so we must arrange a suitable reception.”
He pushed the intercom button on the wall and spoke to the duty officer in the com room. “Ask Jean-Paul Lalouette and Henri Salmon to come to the suit room. They will enjoy seeing the saucer.”
? ? ?

When the four men were inside the saucer, Chadwick closed the hatch and repressurized the interior. He had watched Egg depressurize it, so he reversed the process. When the pressure had stabilized, he removed his helmet and gestured for Pierre, Salmon and Lalouette to do likewise.
“This is it,” he told them. “Roswell, New Mexico, 1947. What do you think?”
Pierre looked at everything, stared at the holographic displays on the instrument panel, touched this and that, before he finally spoke. “I confess, Chadwick, when you first approached me with your antigravity device, I did not believe you. If you had not had a working model that proved that the antigravity theory could be put to practical use, I would have thrown you out of the office.”
“As everyone else did,” Newton Chadwick said with a gleam in his eye. “No one else believed. Not one.”
“And so, this is where your journey led. To the moon, eh?” Artois was jovial. He slapped Chadwick on the back. After all, he was the emperor of France. “Show us how this saucer works.”
Newton Chadwick gave them the tour, explained the propulsion system, the antigravity rings, gave summaries about the various computers and let each sit in the pilot’s seat wearing the headband.
A long hour later, Artois asked Chadwick, “This saucer has a weapon?”
“Oh, yes.” Chadwick put the optical sighting crosshairs on the canopy and ran through what he had learned of the system from his explorations of the computer.
Artois listened intently. “With this weapon we can prevent the saucer that is on its way here from Washington from hurting us.”
“True,” Chadwick admitted.
“Can you fly this ship?”
Chadwick took a deep breath and held it while he studied the instrument panel. He had watched Egg do it, of course. Watched intently. Wearing the headband, one merely asked the computer for the appropriate maneuver and it manipulated the various propulsion, control and navigation systems. And yet…
Newton Chadwick exhaled. “No,” he said forcefully. He glanced at Jean-Paul Lalouette, then looked Artois in the eyes. “I could teach him, though. He is a pilot. He has the… the confidence, the judgment, the experience… that I do not.”
Artois looked expectantly at Lalouette, who was not thinking of the saucer but of Charlotte Pine. She would be flying the saucer that he was supposed to attack. She had become famous last year by flying it, and now she was at it again. He had gotten to know her fairly well during the training cycle for the spaceplane mission. A U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, Pine served a tour in F-16 fighters before she went to test pilot school. When Artois had hired her to fly the spaceplane, Lalouette was very skeptical. He didn’t believe anyone could learn the ship in the short time available. And she had. Not only had she learned to be a copilot, she had flown it solo back to earth and landed in Utah. She was, he thought now, perhaps the finest natural pilot he had ever met.
Lalouette cleared his throat and examined the various displays on the instrument panel. There was no book that explained all this. One had to intuitively grasp the significance of what one was seeing or… or else.
He looked again at Artois. “You want me to shoot down the other saucer?”
“Yes.”
So there it was. Lalouette rubbed the stubble on his jaw. He found that Salmon was staring at him, his face expressionless.
When Salmon captured Jean-Paul’s eyes, he said, “If you don’t fly this ship, the other saucer may destroy or hopelessly damage it. The only other ship on earth capable of reaching us is in the United States. The American president will probably order it destroyed. The lunar base will be our burial crypt. Do you want to die here?”
Still Lalouette hesitated. When he was younger he spent three years flying Super Entendard fighters. He fingered the throttle grip on the antigravity lever. The water necessary to refuel this saucer was here, at the lunar base, but without a radar or GCI controller, intercepting the other saucer at altitude was impractical. The interception would have to be made low, near the lunar base, while the other saucer was on its final approach with the antigravity system. Yes, he decided, that was the best way to do it.
“Chadwick will fly with you,” Artois said. “He knows the systems. He doesn’t want to die.” He turned his gaze on the redheaded American. “Do you?” he asked.
There was something in the tone of his voice that sent a cold chill up Chadwick’s spine.