“He will get it as soon as he finds the time, sir. Right now he is meeting with leaders of Congress.”
“Umm,” said Bombing Joe.
“To continue, gentlemen, Roger Hedrick has the saucer at his cattle ranch—or station—in Australia. He is currently inviting the governments of China, Russia, and Japan to send representatives to his station to inspect the saucer and bid on it. He intends to sell it to the highest bidder.”
“Why would anyone want one saucer?” someone asked.
“Technology, sir. Our scientists say that the technology contained in the saucer will drive worldwide technological development in the twenty-first century.”
“Why wasn’t the United States invited?”
“We are not privy to Mr. Hedrick’s thinking,” the briefer replied as respectfully as he could, “but we suspect he is inviting only governments that would not enmesh him in litigation over the ownership of the saucer.”
“How much does Hedrick think the saucer will bring?” the chairman asked.
“Our source tells us he mentioned a figure to one of his aides: Fifty billion dollars.”
• • •
When Charley got back to the main house from her ride, Hedrick was waiting. He had with him two academics, graying, distracted men in cheap clothes. Charley and the professors followed Hedrick the hundred yards to the aircraft hangar where the saucer was parked. Rigby appeared from nowhere and joined the little party.
The machine was right where Charley had left it. She explained the basic functioning of the propulsion system to the professors and Hedrick, then opened the hatch and let them go inside.
They inspected the flight deck, then entered the machinery bay. One of the scientists had a radiation detector with him, a device about the size of a laptop computer, which he used to check the reactor and water separator.
“Extraordinary,” one of them muttered, but mostly they kept their comments to themselves.
Rigby ensconced himself in the pilot seat. For a moment or two Charley thought he might be a pilot himself, then she decided he wasn’t.
Hedrick stayed with the scientists.
“We could learn a lot more,” one of them said, “if you let us take things apart.”
“Can you guarantee that you could properly reassemble everything?”
“No, sir. There may be seals and whatnot that would have to be replaced.”
Charley got tired of watching Rigby preen, so she let herself down through the hatch and sat beside one of the landing gear pads.
The guards—there were eight of them, all armed—paid little attention to her.
After about an hour, Hedrick lowered himself to the hangar floor. “Ms. Pine, we would appreciate a short demo flight.”
“Have you fueled the saucer?”
“Uh… no. We haven’t touched it.”
“We will need some water, the purer the better.”
“The well water is quite free of minerals and impurities. I have it checked monthly.”
“Get your thugs to rig a hose.”
When the tank was topped off, Charley ordered the hangar doors opened.
Only then did she climb back into the saucer and close the hatch behind her.
“Seats, please, and strap yourselves in.”
Hedrick stepped up beside the pilot seat as she strapped in. “Ah, Ms. Pine. I know you’re the world’s hottest jet jock and you could win the world acrobatic competition with this thing, but I want you to take it easy.” He looked at her with eyebrows raised. “Stay near the farm when you are below a hundred thousand feet. Don’t cross over any cities or towns at low altitude. Got it?”
“We’re on your nickel, Mr. Hedrick.”
Charley Pine lifted the ship gently off the concrete, snapped up the gear, and drifted it out of the hangar. The professors were staring. Whatever they expected, this wasn’t it. The only sound was a subdued hum from the machinery spaces. Flight was smooth, effortless, even when Charley lit the rocket engines and added power in a seamless rush.
This, she thought as she put the saucer through a gentle three-hundred-sixty-degree, two-G barrel roll, is the essence of freedom.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Hedrick whispering with the scientists, which shattered her reverie. She leveled the saucer, flew it in a straight line for several minutes, then made a wide, sweeping turn to head back to Hedrick’s station.
When the saucer was back in the hangar, the scientists wanted to see the computers in operation. Charley fired off the main flight computer, but she didn’t don the headband, preferring to punch the buttons beside the screen to bring up various displays. Hedrick didn’t object; he merely watched.
When she had the reactor secured, Hedrick asked Rigby to escort Charley to her room.
She went willingly, leaving the scientists to confer with Hedrick. Rigby trailed along three paces behind her like a well-trained dog.
• • •
After his session with the leaders of Congress, the American president was a subdued, thoughtful man. His orders to shoot at saucers had panicked the electorate, the senior legislators said. They demanded that he call off the military and that he publicly reassure the country that under no circumstances would he order or allow rash military action against possible alien ships with unknown military capabilities.
The president caved in to congressional demands. Outraged voters he understood. He had made a mistake, he acknowledged.
Huddled now with his national security team, the president seemed distracted as the CIA briefer went through his presentation. The president’s face was gray and sweaty, his shirt a sodden rag. The saucer was for sale, the briefer said, to the highest bidder. If the president thought that fact significant, he gave no sign.
At one point he muttered, “We must be bold,” but he didn’t explain the relevancy of that observation.
Finally O’Reilly said, “Roger Hedrick seems bent on setting the world economy on its ear, as long as he makes a profit.”
That remark seemed to get through to the president. He jerked, then looked around wide-eyed.
“Is the saucer valuable?” he wanted to know.
“Oh, yes, sir. Hedrick seems to think it will bring at least fifty billion in cash. If he sells it to Russia and allows them to pay for it over time, it is possible he might get two or three times that amount.”
“Perhaps more,” Bombing Joe said. This afternoon he had a long talk with the colonel who headed the UFO team, now just back from Libya. Colonel West thought the saucer worth whatever it took to get it.
“The saucer is everything from computers to metallurgy,” Bombing Joe explained to the serious people, “from computers to propulsion. It’s a ship that flies into space and returns, a ship that can do it again and again and again. We are still many years away from that capability.”
The secretary of state said slowly, “Imagine the competitive advantage we would gain in every technical field if we had that capability now.”
“So what is your recommendation?” the president asked State.
“Mr. President, we cannot sit idly by and watch Hedrick sell that technology to a rival nation,” the secretary said. “He stole the saucer from us. He kidnapped the pilot and forced her to fly it to Australia.”
The national security adviser chimed in. “That technology should benefit American industry. If the Chinese or Japanese get it, our economy in the years ahead will be at a serious competitive disadvantage.”
“American industry?” Bombing Joe was appalled. “That saucer is a national security treasure. It should be classified, taken to Area Fifty-one. We can use it as the basis for a generation of fighter planes that will be so technologically superior that war will be impossible. Imagine fighter planes that could fly into orbit, then descend and fight anywhere on earth they were needed. Mr. President, war is the oldest scourge of all; we can inoculate ourselves. Surely the American people deserve the greatest gift of all—freedom from war.”
“What about Russia?” someone asked. “What if they get the saucer?”
“They don’t have a chance if Hedrick wants cash, but if he is willing to take something the Russians are willing to trade, then…”
“Don’t underestimate the Russians,” Bombing Joe remarked. “When you factor in the technology they had to work with, they built the best planes on earth. Russian engineers can work miracles, especially in metallurgy.”
“All of you people have overlooked one basic fact,” said the chief of staff, O’Reilly. “The human race is not ready to face up to the reality of other life in the universe. Western civilization is built on the premise that mankind is unique, that we are made in God’s image, that somewhere up there is a kindly old man with a white beard who cares about each and every one of us, cares about our little triumphs and disasters, about our cuts and bee stings, and listens to every child’s prayers every night. Our uniqueness is the bedrock for religion, philosophy, ethics, morals, for our sense of self-worth.”
O’Reilly looked around the room at each of his listeners. “Don’t you see? We humans were doing fine without the saucer. We are trapped on this little rock orbiting this modest star on the fringe of a vast galaxy. You”—he pointed at the secretary of state—“want to rip the curtains off the windows, show everyone how insignificant human life is in the grand scheme of things. After you destroy the very foundation of human relationships, with what will you replace it?”
The secretary of state picked up the remote and turned on the television in the corner. In seconds a talking head appeared. The subject was the saucer. She changed channels and got the footage of the saucer over Coors Field. Professor Soldi was on the third channel she tried, showing still photos of the interior of the saucer that he had taken in the desert.
The secretary of state pointed at the television. “You can’t unspill the beans,” she told O’Reilly.
“We can do the next best thing,” Bombing Joe said. “We can clean up the mess. We could mine the saucer for its technology yet deny it even exists. Soldi will go away after a while. Without new revelations, the media will move on to something else. In a year the saucer will be forgotten.”
They argued some more, until everyone had their say. The long silence that followed was broken when the president asked, “So what is the consensus?” He was mopping his face with his handkerchief, wiping off swatches of wet makeup.
No one spoke.
“Can we at least agree that we should try to get possession of the saucer… before the new owner can fly it out of Australia?”
Everyone tried to talk at once. When the president finally motioned for order, the secretary of state managed to make herself heard: “The Australians will regard a military adventure as an act of war.”
“Everything has a price,” the national security adviser said. “The saucer will go to whoever wants it the most. We have to decide if that is us.”
Bombing Joe shook his leonine head. “You are all wrong. We have only one option. If we can’t get the saucer into a hangar in Area Fifty-one, we should destroy it.”
C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN
After Rip went through immigration and customs at the Sydney airport, he took a taxi downtown and found a hotel. The sun was well up on a brisk morning, but he was whacked with jet lag.
Later he emerged from the hotel and blinked in the late afternoon sun. He had slept for six hours and was famished.
After he had eaten, he went to the car rental booth in his hotel lobby. “I’d like to rent a car,” he told the desk clerk, a man in his early thirties, and tossed a credit card and his driver’s license on the counter.
The clerk picked up Rip’s Minnesota driver’s license and scrutinized it carefully. Finally he handed it back. “Sorry, mate. You’re too young.”
“How old does a fellow have to be?”
“Twenty-five, mate. Those are the rules.”
Rip pursed his lips. He pulled a wad of American money from his pocket, peeled off three hundreds, and laid them on the counter.
“Do you own a car?” he asked the clerk.
“Well, mate, this is interesting. Indeed, I do own an automobile. It’s a few years old, but it runs. And you look like a responsible lad. You’re not in the drug business by any chance, are you?”
“Lord, no,” Rip managed to look a bit sheepish. “There’s this woman. She’s out on a cattle station and I need wheels to get there.”
“How far?”
“Oh, a hundred miles or so.”
“How much is that in kilometers?”
“Hundred and sixty, thereabouts.”
The clerk reached for the money. “I hate to see true love thwarted,” he said with a smile.
Rip’s heart sank when he saw the car. The steering wheel was on the right side. Oh, yeah, they drove on the left coming in from the airport.
He got into the little car, fumbled with the key in his left hand but finally got it into the ignition. Found first gear, eased the car out of the parking space, and almost collided with a truck. He managed to jerk the car out of the truck’s way.
God, it looked weird with the traffic coming at him on the right. He almost had a wreck at the first intersection he came to. He had to concentrate fiercely to keep the car on the proper side of the road. If he let his attention wander the least bit he was going to hit someone head on.
Several times Rip had to pull over to check the map he had purchased in the hotel lobby. After three more near collisions, he managed to get out of the city on a highway heading west.
An hour and a half later he came to the town of Bathurst. There was a hotel in the center of town, so he parked the car and registered for a room. Tomorrow was the time to check out Hedrick’s station, not tonight after dark.
Walking the streets after another dinner, he found a clothing store and bought a sweater and a jacket because the air was chilly.
As he walked along the sidewalks he wondered where Charley was and what she was doing.
• • •
On the afternoon of the second day of her employment as Hedrick’s ‘saucer pilot,’ Charley Pine gave a group of Japanese businessmen a ride in the thing. Then she was escorted back to the main house while Hedrick played used-car salesman.
Just before she slipped through the hatch, Charley said to Hedrick, “You don’t have the right to sell the saucer, you know.”