They went inside. Rigby made him sit in the living room while the other men searched the house and rousted out Egg and Charley, who were forced to join Rip on the couch. One of the men sat in a chair opposite them. He took a gun from a holster under his armpit and placed it in his lap. Another man made coffee in the kitchen. Rigby removed a cellular telephone from a jacket pocket and made a call.
“It’s here,” he said exultantly. “In a little wooden hangar by a grass runway, about fifty meters below the house… We’re in the living room.”
He checked on the man making coffee, then looked at Charley. “Your name Pine?”
Charley was staring at her feet. She ignored him. Rigby stepped toward her.
“Yeah,” Rip quickly said. “She’s Pine.”
“She’s here,” Rigby said into the telephone. He listened a bit more, grunted once, then turned it off and put it back in his pocket.
“Who are you people?” Egg demanded. “Threatening people with a gun is a felony in this state.”
“Darn,” said Rigby. “I just hope and pray we don’t have to shoot you. That’s an infraction of the law too, or so I’ve been told. I try not to do more than six or eight felonies before breakfast. Jack, is that coffee ready yet?”
“Contain yourself,” Jack replied in a flat Australian accent.
The four thugs were sipping coffee when Rip heard a car drive up outside. Rigby went to the window and looked out. In less than a minute he opened the door.
The man who entered was a bit above medium height, superbly fit, with a tan that could come only from a tanning bed. He wore a dark blue suit and hand-painted silk tie. He came into the room, looked around at everyone and everything, then stopped in front of Charley.
It was then that Rip realized the man was at least seventy years old. From ten feet away he could have passed for fifty.
“Captain Charlotte Pine, United States Air Force,” he said, with just the faintest trace of an Australian accent.
“I used to be in the Air Force,” Charley said coolly. “Now it’s just Ms. Pine to you.”
“I see.”
“When people come into my house, mister,” Egg said, “I like to know their names.”
“You must be Egg Cantrell.”
“I am.”
“My name is Roger Hedrick.”
“I’ve heard of you,” Egg said. “And what I heard wasn’t good.”
“We’re being held here at gunpoint by these thugs, Mr. Hedrick,” Rip told the man. “That’s a crime in the United States. Would you please help us escape from these people?”
Hedrick looked amused.
“Because if you don’t,” Rip said, “I’m going to report you to the police and swear out a warrant. Australia is a big place, but it ain’t big enough to escape extradition.”
Hedrick smiled. “Rip Cantrell. Engineering student, survey worker, young Quixote. A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cantrell. Rigby, hand him your cell phone.”
Rigby tossed the telephone in Rip’s lap.
“Call the police, Mr. Cantrell. Tell them who you are, where you are, and that you are being held at gunpoint.”
Rip looked from Hedrick to the telephone. Hedrick found a chair and pulled it around. He sat down and crossed his legs.
“Ah,” Hedrick said. “I can see the wheels turning. If you make that call, the Air Force will confiscate the saucer and you’ll never see it again. The technology will be classified. Perhaps someday one of your children will zip across China in a spy ship based on that saucer, if he or she joins the U.S. Air Force and becomes a pilot. Makes you want to wave the flag, doesn’t it?”
Rip picked up the telephone and opened it, but he didn’t dial.
“Before you call the police, Mr. Cantrell, perhaps we should discuss how it was Mr. Rigby and I found you. Would you care to guess?”
Rip shook his head no.
“After you slugged my employee in the saucer in Chad, you made a serious tactical error. He had in his possession a satellite telephone that he had been using to converse with me as he examined the saucer. You discarded that telephone. Before he was captured by the Libyans, another of my employees, a Mr. Hampton, called me on that telephone, Mr. Cantrell. He told me what had just happened. He also gave me your name and that of Ms. Pine.”
Hedrick smiled. “Needless to say, I was startled to hear that the saucer had been flown away. Startled? I was astounded. That call was the shock of my life.”
He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “You can surely appreciate the position in which I found myself. The most valuable repository of high technology on the planet had just been flown away to an unknown destination by a ex-United States Air Force test pilot and a twenty-two-year-old survey party laborer. An artifact worth billions, tens of billions, of American dollars had just gone… poof.” Hedrick snapped his fingers.
He grinned, displaying perfect white teeth. “Of course I resolved to get it back. I—”
“It was never yours,” Rip put in. “It’s mine.”
“Oh, Mr. Cantrell. Surely you don’t believe that any court on this planet would honor your claim. You discovered it, that is true, but while you dug it out you were hard at work for Wellstar Petroleum Corporation. Mr. Cantrell, I own Wellstar Petroleum Corporation. You were my employee.”
Rip listened to this in bitter silence. When Hedrick stopped speaking and leaned back in his chair, Rip said, “So sue me.”
“I have no doubt about my legal position, Mr. Cantrell. It is impeccable. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to litigate. The lawyers can litigate to their hearts’ content later.” He made a gesture. “In the meantime, I am taking possession of the property that belongs to me.”
Rip looked at the phone in his hand and punched in numbers.
Hedrick held up a finger. “Before you do that, ask yourself how I knew that you were here.”
Rip’s finger froze inches above the phone.
“Perhaps you should call your mother. Talk to her. Then, if you wish, you may call the police.”
Rip turned off the telephone, turned it back on, and redialed.
In a few seconds he heard his mother’s phone ring. A man answered. “Mrs. Cantrell’s residence.” A flat nasal voice.
“Mrs. Cantrell, please.”
“Who may I say is calling?”
“Her son, Rip.”
“Just a moment.”
Seconds passed. Then his mother’s breathless voice. “Rip, are you okay? Have they—” And the connection broke.
Rip snapped the telephone shut. He eyed Hedrick.
“They’re holding Mom hostage,” he said to Charley and Egg.
Hedrick stood. “Do you still want to call the police?”
Rip threw the telephone at the kitchen wall. It bounced off the wall and caromed halfway back toward the couch. Rigby picked the thing up and examined it.
“So,” Hedrick said, smiling again. “That is the situation. Captain Pine, I have need of your services. We will leave these gentlemen here unharmed if you will fly us and the saucer to Australia. The men with young Cantrell’s mother will leave. Everyone will be safe and the world will once again be as it was.”
Charley stood up. She looked at Egg, then at Rip. “Okay,” she said.
“Hey, Charley,” Rip said, “don’t let these guys bluff you. They aren’t going to hurt anybody. Hedrick doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in a pen somewhere.”
“Rigby,” Hedrick barked.
Rigby moved toward Egg, who was still seated. He came in light on his feet, moving with deceptive quickness. He was going to kick Egg right in the face.
Rip pushed himself off the couch and dove for Rigby’s legs. The two of them went sprawling. Before Rip could recover, Rigby had him by the throat and was shaking him like a terrier shakes a rat. He heard Hedrick say something, then the lights went out.
He came to when someone poured water in his face. Hedrick was kneeling beside him. “See,” he said. “He’s good as new. He’ll have a sore throat for a few days, but he’s young.”
Hedrick put his face down inches from Rip’s.
“She’s going with us, Mr. Cantrell. If you involve the police, create any unpleasantness, she will suffer. Do you understand?”
“Why—?” His voice box wouldn’t work. The words came out a hoarse whisper. “Why are you…?”
“Money, Mr. Cantrell. Money. That saucer is very valuable. It’s going to make me the richest man on earth.”
“Gates is the richest…”
For the first time, Hedrick snarled. “I’m going to bankrupt that bastard.” He straightened. “Come, Ms. Pine.”
Apparently while he was unconscious, Charley had gone upstairs and changed into her flight suit. Her new clothes, pajamas, and jacket she put into a pillowcase that she was carrying in her left hand.
Now she turned and shook hands with Egg. Rip managed to get himself into a sitting position. He was about to try to get to his feet when Charley bent over and kissed him on the lips. “Thanks for trying,” she whispered.
Then she walked from the room. Hedrick followed her.
Rigby and his thugs waited for a minute or so, then followed along.
• • •
“It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” Hedrick said as his men opened the hangar doors. Charley Pine thought that the morning sunlight seemed to be absorbed by the saucer’s dark skin. “Sublime,” Hedrick said and walked over to the saucer, touched it, ran his fingers along the smooth leading edge. He cocked his head and looked at Charley Pine, who also had a hand on the machine.
“When I heard about this saucer,” he said, “I didn’t believe the report. Fantastic! A great hoax. I see more grandiose schemes than one might imagine, all designed to separate me and my money.” He snorted. “As if that were easy to accomplish.”
He caressed the saucer’s skin, stared at his reflection in the dark material.
“You will fly this saucer for me, Ms. Pine.”
“Let’s have the rest of it. If I don’t…”
“Ah, but you will not refuse. You have a mother teaching school in Virginia, a father building houses in Georgia, a sister in New York who wants to paint… How long should I make the list? Whom should I add? Egg Cantrell, young Rip…?”
“Extortion is a crime in America, Mr. Hedrick. So is kidnapping and murder.”
“Ms. Pine. You are young, beautiful, foolish. You will do what I ask, when I ask it. This saucer is very valuable. I want it. I will do whatever it takes to get it. Do you understand?” He was closer now, looking straight into her eyes, without blinking, without a twitch anywhere on his face. “Whatever it takes!”
Charley hoped she was doing as good a job controlling her own expression.
“You will do as I ask, Ms. Pine, or no one will ever find the bodies.”
“And afterward. You’ll let me go?”
“I’ll do better than that. I shall pay you for your time and services. Three thousand American dollars per day or any fraction thereof, including today.” Hedrick grinned, a disarming, charming grin. “Think of this as a well-paying short-term job, Ms. Pine, and of me as your employer.”
“I’ll fly it.”
“I thought you would see it my way. But first, tell me a little about this machine. What powers it?”
Charley gave him a five-minute brief covering the main points. When she finished, he smiled. “Shall we?” he said, indicating the saucer.
Charley led the way through the open hatch. Hedrick got into the ship with her, as did his chief lieutenant, Rigby. Charley closed the hatch behind them, then climbed into the pilot’s seat and fastened the seat belt and shoulder harness.
Pulling out the main power control to the first detent lit off the reactor. As the computers and cockpit panel lights came alive, Hedrick stood frozen, watching.
Rigby looked around curiously.
Gently, gently, Charley lifted the saucer off the ground, snapped up the gear, and eased it out of the hangar, which stood at the western end of the grass runway. She halted the saucer, still about five feet above the grass, then turned it with the foot pedals, the ‘rudder.’ A few grass clippings lifted by the antigravity field were picked up by the breeze and swirled away. The windsock near the trees was indicating four or five knots from the northeast.
Hedrick’s thugs stood by the open hangar door, their mouths hanging open.
She reached for the computer headband, adjusted it over her head.
Computer, do we have enough hydrogen for full power?
A linear graph appeared on the screen before her. About ninety percent, climbing nicely. Another few seconds.
Hedrick was standing beside her looking at the instrument panel. Rigby was opening the equipment bay, looking inside. It was doubtful he realized that the saucer was off the ground, so gently had Charley handled it.
“Where to, Mr. Hedrick?”
“A hundred miles due west of Sydney. I have a cattle station—a ranch, if you will—located there.”
Charley Pine looked straight ahead, down the runway, put her head back in the headrest, braced her feet on the rudder pedals, and twisted the rocket throttle control to the stop.
The rocket engines lit with a roar and the G came almost instantaneously. Hedrick and Rigby were swept off their feet and smashed against the rear panel of the compartment.
• • •
Egg and Rip were sitting on the back porch when the saucer floated from the hangar into sight. It turned there in front of the hangar and stopped with the nose pointed east, down the runway.
Rip massaged his neck.
“I wonder if she told everyone to take a seat and strap in,” he whispered to Egg.
The first glimmer of fire from the rocket exhausts made both men clap their hands over their ears. They missed the worst of the noise, a howl rising in pitch and volume to soul-numbing intensity. Behind the saucer the fire from the nozzles scorched the runway grass, lit it on fire.
When the saucer was doing about a hundred knots, Charley pulled the nose up into the vertical. The thunder of the engines massaged Rip and Egg’s flesh and vibrated the windowpanes.
The two men sat motionless on the porch until the sound of the rockets had completely faded.
The grass fire burned for a minute or so, then went out, leaving a black, smoking strip on the runway sod.
Hedrick’s flunkies came walking up from the hangar. Their suits looked as if they had been rolling in the grass. They were rubbing their ears, opening and closing their mouths repeatedly.