Saucer

Chapter Fourteen

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.'

'I do have the right, Ms. Pine.' Hedrick smiled genially at one of the Japanese who turned around to listen. I'll talk to you tonight after dinner. Run along now, please.'

Charley went.

A group of five Chinese landed in an airliner a few minutes before the dinner hour. From her room, Charley watched them walk up the gentle incline toward the main house.

At dinner she heard someone mention that a Russian delegation was arriving around midnight.

She had no appetite. She smeared her food around her plate, listened to Bernice expound on the joys of shopping in Paris, and excused herself before dessert was served.

Up in her room she turned on the television. Hedrick had a satellite dish system, she deduced, because several American networks were on the idiot box. She made sure her door was locked, then settled in to watch a rerun of an interview with Professor Soldi broadcast by a Melbourne station.

'The Cantrells are here for their appointment, Mrs. Higginbotham.'

'Show them in.'

Mrs. Higginbotham didn't rise from her desk. Her office was on the thirty-fifth floor of the Higginbotham Building in downtown Dallas.

She was a white-haired woman in her late seventies with a firm chin and clear blue eyes. The two men came in and reached across the desk to shake hands. One was overweight, shaped like a pear, and the other was completely bald. Both were in their fifties.

The bald man spoke first. 'I'm Olie Cantrell, Mrs. Higginbotham, and this is my brother Arthur. We're here on behalf of our deceased brother's boy, Rip. I believe he was employed by your company on a seismic survey crew in the Sahara.'

Mrs. Higginbotham nodded. 'What can I do for you gentlemen?'

'Well, let me explain the situation, then we'll discuss possible solutions. You've probably been following the saucer crisis…?'

'Indeed. Quite extraordinary.' Mrs. Higginbotham's eyes twinkled. 'I have followed the story in the newspapers and on television. It's so exciting. That saucer is a hundred and forty thousand years old. Isn't that amazing?' The Cantrells agreed that it was. 'This is the most fun I've had since Bill Clinton and Zippergate. When I get up in the morning I can't wait to turn on the television and look at the newspaper.'

'You probably know that Rip found the saucer while working for your company,' Olie Cantrell said.

'Oh, yes. That makes the story sort of personal, don't you think?'

'It's personal, all right. That's why we're here. Several days ago Roger Hedrick showed up at my brother Egg's place in Missouri — Oh, I'm sorry. Egg's real name is Arthur.'

Mrs. Higginbotham didn't know quite what to say.

'In any event,' Olie continued, 'Hedrick told Egg and Rip that he owned Wellstar Petroleum and advanced the theory that the saucer belonged to the company and therefore to him. He then proceeded to kidnap the civilian test pilot who was there and force her to fly the saucer to Australia.'

'That sounds like the Roger I know,' Mrs. Higgin-botham said acidly. 'He hates to be thwarted.'

'Arthur consulted me because I am an attorney and charge him only modestly for my time, if at all. In the course of my research, I discovered that Hedrick does not own all the stock of this company, although he is indeed a major shareholder and controls one of the seats on the board.'

'Hedrick owns about ten percent of the stock,' Mrs. Higginbotham said. 'I own or control twenty-eight percent, and my sons and daughters have a smidgen over nine.'

Olie Cantrell nodded. 'I also understand that your late husband founded this company, Mrs. Higginbotham, and both your sons have built their careers here in oil exploration.'

'Your research is impeccable.'

'With all that said, here is the problem. The saucer is very valuable. Hedrick wants it desperately. He has physical possession right now by virtue of several felonies, none of which are provable in court. He has the saucer in Australia and probably intends to exploit it commercially. Sooner or later he may decide to ask an attorney about Wellstar's claim to title of the saucer by virtue of its discovery by an employee. What he will be told is this: Wellstar does indeed have a claim to the saucer, but it is a poor one because young Cantrell did not discover the artifact in the course of his employment. He was not hired to search for flying saucers. He is in the position of a mailman on his appointed rounds who saw a dollar lying on the sidewalk and picked it up. The dollar belongs to the mailman, not the postal service.

'Still, as an attorney, I can assure you that even a poor claim to a valuable item is better than no claim at all. The rub, for you, is that Hedrick owns ten percent of the company. He may well elect to try to buy control of Wellstar just to be in a position to assert the company's claim.'

'I could assert the claim for Wellstar,' Mrs. Higginbotham said.

'Indeed you could, ma'am. Unfortunately for you, Hedrick doesn't seem the type who likes to share. And he has the saucer in Australia. Even if you got a court order directing him to return it to the United States, enforcing it will be problematical, at best.'

Mrs. Higginbotham looked from one face to another. She scratched an eyebrow. 'What do you propose, sir?'

'We came here today, ma'am, hoping that we could persuade you to sell Wellstar's claim to the saucer, whatever it is, to our nephew, Rip Cantrell. This course would avoid any threat to your control of Wellstar by Mr. Hedrick.'

Mrs. Higginbotham tapped the desk with one finger. 'And the threat of a lawsuit by your nephew?'

Olie Cantrell raised his hands in acknowledgment of her point. 'It may never come to that, but it might. Yes, ma'am.'

'What haven't you told me that my lawyer will want me to know?'

Olie grinned. 'He may want to take a look at the law of Chad, where the saucer was found. I have discussed Chadian law with a firm in New York that practices in Africa. My contact tells me that he can find no Chadian statutes, decrees, or court decisions that deal with found property.

'As you are probably aware, Chad is a miserable, parched little country ruled by a dictator. I'm sure someone could zip off to Chad with a pile of money and the law could become whatever he or she was willing to pay for. I don't think that would play very well in an American court, but it would be another claim, another lever.'

Mrs. Higginbotham used her hands to push herself erect. 'Gentlemen, I want to talk this matter over with my attorneys. Why don't you come back to see me tomorrow morning at ten o'clock?'

The Cantrell brothers stood, shook hands, then took their leave. When the door closed behind them, Mrs. Higginbotham called her lawyer.

It was three in the morning in New South Wales when Charley Pine finally turned off the television. Roger Hedrick had not called her or come to her room; in fact, no one had. She saw the airplane bringing the Russian delegation arrive just after midnight, a four-engine Tupo-lev. Lights remained on in the hangar area for another two hours. Finally most of the lights were extinguished.

Charley waited another twenty minutes, then opened her window. Just as she thought. Four feet away was a large downspout. The roof of the porch on the main floor of the house was fifteen or so feet below.

She climbed up onto the windowsill, took one last look around, then leaped for the downspout.

She almost missed it, striking her head on the pipe and slipping several feet before she managed to jam her foot between the pipe and the wall, stopping her descent.

Down she went, straining every muscle, holding on for dear life. Safely on the roof, she felt her lip, spit out something black. Blood. She had bitten her lip. Her right foot was hurting too, so she rubbed it.

Charley Pine tiptoed across the roof and lay full-length so she could look over the edge and see if anyone was on the porch.

One man, smoking a cigarette.

He was forty feet away, facing the other way, listening to music coming through a French door that was open a few inches. Someone was playing a piano. Bach.

From time to time the smoker turned and looked across the lawn. From his position he could see the hangar and the main horse barn, both of which were lit only by security lights.

Moving ever so slowly, Charley crawled across the roof to the corner farthest away from the guard. Here a column held up the roof. As she looked the area over, she decided she would hang by her hands from the gutter and put her feet on the porch rail. The column would help. It would be behind her, breaking up her silhouette if the guard should look this way.

Just as she was about to swing a leg over, the guard left the French door where he had been listening and walked in her direction.

She held her breath. Now she could see that the guard carried some kind of weapon on a strap over his shoulder.

The guard stopped after he had traversed half the distance between them and stood looking at the hangar and barn. Beyond were low mountains under a clear night sky full of stars.

Charley Pine could just hear the piano, ever so faintly.

The guard took a last drag on his cigarette and flipped it away. Then he turned and walked slowly back toward the open French door.

Charley swung a leg over, then forced her body over the edge. Her hands and arms absorbed her weight. She lowered herself until her feet touched.

She released the gutter and bent over. With her hands on the railing, she pushed off with her feet and dropped between the bushes below and the porch foundation.

She crouched there, scarcely daring to breathe.

The guard must have had his back turned during the descent, which had taken no more than five or six seconds.

Staying bent at the waist, she slipped along the porch to the corner of the house, then peered through the bushes.

Perhaps it was a sixth sense; she felt someone was near. She knelt there, watching and listening. A minute passed, then another.

Now she heard steps, voices. She lay on the ground behind the bushes, looked out underneath.

Two guards with rifles over their shoulders, chatting, pointing flashlights this way and that, walked slowly toward her.

She closed her eyes and lowered her head, just in case.

When the sound had completely faded, she looked again. The yard was clear. Inching her head up, she looked under the porch railing. The porch guard was not in sight.

She slipped out of the bushes and ran toward the dark area to the right of the horse barn. When she got there, she flattened herself against the wall and listened.

Moving slowly, carefully, from one dark shadow to another, she worked her way around the barn and toward the hangar. Another pair of guards passed her near the hangar. She was lying in a slight depression then, in plain sight if the guards had just lowered their flashlights and looked. They didn't.

Heart pounding, Charley Pine ran the last few feet to the personnel door on the side of the hangar and tried the knob. It turned. She let go of the doorknob and looked around one more time. There was a small naked bulb above the door, perhaps forty watts. She reached up and unscrewed it until it went out.

Twelve minutes had passed since she left her room.

She twisted the doorknob and pulled gently. With the door open about an inch, she put her eye to the crack.

The hangar was big, at least a hundred and fifty feet square. There was only one light, a spot that shone down from the roof trusses directly above the saucer.

Charley Pine pulled the door open and stepped into the hangar. She pulled the door completely closed behind her.

In the far corner of the cavernous space was a desk with a small illuminated lamp on it. Someone was seated at the desk, someone reading.

She surveyed the equipment parked and stacked along the walls. Like most hangars, this one was also used to store wheeled equipment that didn't have another home. She got behind an aircraft tow tractor and lay down so she could see under it, between the wheels. The hatch under the saucer was open. Oooh, that tantalized her. If she could just get in the saucer, she could fly it right through the closed main door. With just a squirt from the rockets, the saucer would take that giant overhead door right off its hinges.

She turned her attention to the man at the desk. He seemed to be slumped over, reading a magazine that lay flat on the desk in front of him.

She had watched him for several minutes when she realized the man was asleep.

Lord, yes. The idiot has fallen asleep! Charley rose noiselessly. She was wearing tennis shoes, which might squeak on that painted concrete floor, so she took them off, tied the strings together, draped them around her neck.

The man at the desk was still slumped over, motionless.

She took a couple of deep breaths, squared her shoulders, then stepped out of the shadows. She walked directly to the saucer, bent down, and went under it toward the open hatch.

Charley stood in the hatchway, climbed up… Rigby was sitting in the chair by the pilot's seat. He had a shotgun in his lap, pointed right at her.

'I thought you'd never get here,' he said. He looked at his watch. 'Seventeen minutes.'

Charley Pine climbed into the saucer, tossed down her shoes. The shotgun was pointed right at her gut.

'That's close enough, baby,' Rigby said. 'I'd hate to have to shoot — '

She knocked the barrel aside with her left hand and kicked Rigby square in the face.

Rigby's head bounced off the pilot seat pedestal and he lost his grip on the shotgun, but he didn't go down or out. Charley planted her left foot and kicked again with her right, aiming for his larynx.

She missed. Got him on the shoulder.

Rigby grabbed at her foot. She kicked a third time, but without shoes she wasn't doing enough damage.

Rigby got her ankle that time, held on to it, dragged her to the floor.

He was pounding on her kidneys when Hedrick said, 'That's enough, Rigby. We have more rides to give tomorrow.' Hedrick's head was sticking up through the hatch.

'I think the bleedin' bitch broke my nose,' Rigby said through gritted teeth and thumped Charley in the kidney one more time.

'Tsk, tsk.' Hedrick clucked his tongue. 'And you gave me your word, Ms. Pine.'