Saucer

Chapter Two

'So whaddaya think, Professor?' Rip asked as they bounced along in the Jeep at thirty miles per hour, at least ten miles per hour too fast for the ancient caravan trail that he was generally following.

'The thing in the rock?'

'The saucer. Yeah.'

'It's too soon to say. I don't recognize the metal, if it is metal. I don't yet have explanations for anything.'

Hans Soldi weighed his words. 'I feel overwhelmed. This discovery is unexpected. If it is what it seems to be, the scientific benefits are going to be extraordinary. Think of the spillover from the American space program of the sixties and seventies — this could be many times that big. Ultimately the life of everyone on this planet could be affected.' He released his death grip on the side of the Jeep momentarily to wipe his forehead with his sleeve. 'I just don't know what to think, where to start.'

'We need some other scientists in on this, wouldn't you agree?'

'Of course. Experts in a variety of fields. First, however, I think we should uncover the ship, see what is there, satisfy ourselves that it is what it appears to be. If we even hint to the outside world that we've found an alien spaceship and it isn't, I'll be laughed out of the profession. I won't be able to get a job digging basements.'

'Uh-huh.'

'When we are absolutely convinced that it could be nothing else, then we tell the world.'

'I was thinking about the local government,' Rip said with a glance at the professor. 'The Libyan border is just a few miles north, isn't it?'

Soldi frowned. 'Our dig is in Chad. They issued the archaeological permit.'

'The saucer may be in Libya, Chad, or the Sudan for all I know,' Rip remarked. 'Borders are political — you can't see or touch them. Qaddafi might run us off and confiscate the saucer if he gets wind of this. We've got to get it out of this desert before we say anything to anybody.'

'Let me do the talking at the dig,' Professor Soldi told him.

By evening the following day, the four men had the sandstone completely removed from the top of the spaceship, which was indeed circular in form, with a diameter of a few inches over seventy feet. The top of it seemed to be in perfect condition, although the bottom was still embedded in stone.

'The thing looks like it's sitting on a pedestal in front of a museum,' Dutch remarked.

'That's probably its ultimate fate,' Rip replied, then went back to work clearing the last of the stone from the four exhaust pipes that stuck out the rear. Each of these nozzles was about a foot in diameter.

Arranged around the circumference of the ship, but pointing up and down, were more exhaust nozzles, small ones. These, everyone agreed, must be maneuvering jets, to control the attitude of the ship in yaw, roll, and pitch. The upper ones were packed with sandstone.

Although it was late in another long day, Rip still had plenty of energy. He had ceased asking Professor Soldi questions only when the scientist quit supplying answers.

Soldi was lost in his own private world. He and Bill measured the ship with a tape as carefully as they could. Soldi took notes on a small computer and shot more videotape. He also shot up several rolls of 35mm film.

The archaeologist studied the surface of the ship with a pocket magnifying glass, dripped a bit of acid from the Jeep's battery on one tiny spot, and muttered over the result.

'It's a giant solar cell,' Rip remarked.

'What is?'

'The skin. Put your fingers on it. You can feel it absorbing energy from the sun. And notice how the reflectivity has changed — it seems to change with the temperature, and probably the state of the battery charge.'

The professor gave Rip a surprised look. As soon as the younger man turned away, he caressed the skin with his fingers. A solar power cell, absorbing the sun's energy and converting it to electricity! Of course!

He drew back suddenly, as if he had been shocked. Rip implied that the solar cells were absorbing energy now! Could that be true?

He lay for an hour on top of the ship with a mirror to direct the sun's rays down inside the cockpit like a spotlight. Each of the men joined him there, looking at the seat and controls, the blank dark panels. The cockpit looked like nothing they had ever seen, and yet it was familiar in a way that was hard to describe.

'It's human-size,' Rip remarked.

'Isn't that extraordinary?' Soldi muttered.

Most of the afternoon Soldi spent sitting in the shade tapping on his computer, with long pauses to stare at the ship.

They had found no blemish on the upper skin of the ship and no way in. The skin was seamless.

'The hatch must be underneath,' Rip told Dutch and kept working with the jackhammer. He seemed almost immune to the heat and dust.

Twice the jackhammer slipped when Rip was working close to the ship's skin. The hard steel bit whacked the ship several smart raps. Soldi examined the spots with his magnifying glass and said nothing.

Finally, with the evening sun fully illuminating the ship, Soldi shot two more rolls of 35mm film.

The rock under the ship was difficult to remove. After it was broken up, the shards and remnants had to be shoveled away.

Just before dusk, they managed to clear the first landing gear. It was a simple skid protruding from the bottom of the saucer, held down by what appeared to be a hydraulic ram.

'No wheels,' Soldi muttered and resumed chewing on his lower lip.

'It must land vertically,' Rip Cantrell said.

'So it would seem,'

'That means it must have some other mode of thrust besides the rocket engines to hold it up.'

'One would think so, yes.'

'What kind of thrust?'

'I dig up ancient villages,' Soldi said irritably. 'How would I know?'

'Well, Professor, I never saw an airplane like this. No, sir-ree. Did you?'

Soldi pointed at the stone. 'Hammer some more rock out. There's another fifteen minutes of daylight left.'

Just before he quit for the evening, Rip uncovered the first landing light. The material that covered it seemed as hard and impervious as the canopy. Still, through the covering he could see the bulb of a powerful spotlight.

That night they ate dinner sitting on folding camp stools in the circle of light cast by a propane lantern mounted on a pole. 'We have a supply plane from Cairo scheduled in tomorrow afternoon,' the professor told his hosts. The transport landed on unprepared flat, sandy places as if they were a huge paved airfield.

'It would be best if the crew of the plane didn't see the saucer,' Dutch Haagen remarked.

'I think that's wise,' the professor said. 'We have several large tents at my dig. I suggest that after dinner we drive over and get one. We can erect it over the saucer tomorrow morning.'

'Okay,' Dutch agreed. 'And I was thinking that perhaps we should move our camp closer to the saucer.'

They talked about the day's events, about what the ship looked like. They were winding down, watching Rip eat the last of the cooked vegetables as they sipped their coffee, when Rip asked, 'What have we really got here, Doc? Give us your off-the-record opinion.'

Soldi puffed on his pipe as he scrutinized each face. 'It's very, very old. Ancient man didn't make it. That much I am reasonably sure of.'

'Is it a spaceship?' Dutch asked.

'You see, that's the danger of loose language. The thing may fly, probably does — the shape is a symmetrical, saucer-shaped lifting body — but whether it is capable of flying above the atmosphere… ' He shrugged. 'Later, if we can get inside, we'll get a better idea.'

'So who brought it here?'

Soldi puffed slowly on his pipe and said nothing.

'Why did they leave it?'

'I have seen no exterior damage.'

'Where are the people who flew it?'

'People?'

'Whatever.'

Soldi waggled a finger. 'The answers to those questions, if we can find answers, are going to rock civilization.' He nodded in the direction of the saucer, several miles away in the night. 'That thing is going to revolutionize the way we think about the universe, about ourselves. We must be very careful about the words we use because they have enormous implications.' He smoked some more, then repeated the phrase, 'Enormous implications.'

Bill Taggart ran his fingers through his hair. 'Maybe we should have left it in the rock.'

Rip Cantrell looked up at the sea of stars almost within arm's reach. 'We couldn't, Bill,' he said softly. 'We had to dig it out because it's our nature to wonder, to explore.'

'Maybe that's why they came,' Dutch Haagen remarked.

Soldi, Rip, and Dutch were deep in a discussion of the physics of atmospheric entry when Bill Taggart wandered off into the darkness. When he was well away from the light of the camp lanterns, he walked quickly to the supply tent. By the light of a pencil-thin flash, he found the satellite telephone. He opened the dish antenna and turned the thing on.

Bill removed a small book from his hip pocket and consulted it by the light of the pencil flash. He dialed in the frequency he wanted, picked up the telephone like handset, and waited for the phone to lock onto the satellite.

He punched a long series of numbers into the keyboard, waited some more. He looked again at the numbers. That country code, that was Australia, wasn't it?

He heard the number ringing. A sleepy voice answered.

'This is Bill Taggart. Is Neville there?'

'Neville who?'

'Just Neville.'

I'll see. Say your name again, mate.'

'Bill Taggart.'

'Wait.'

Time passed. A minute, then two. Taggart glanced through the tent flap at the three figures sitting in the light near the camp stove. They hadn't moved.

Finally the voice came back on. 'Neville isn't here. Why don't you tell me what you want, mate.'

'I met Neville about eighteen months ago. In Singapore. He mentioned that he would be interested in buying certain kinds of information.'

'That Neville… ' the male voice said noncommittally.

'I have some information to sell. It's very valuable.'

'All information has value. The question is, is it valuable to us? We will discuss price with you after we have evaluated what you have. Sorry about that, but it's the only way we can do business. You have to trust us.'

'How do I know you will play fair?'

'As I said, you have to trust us. Do you?'

'No.'

'Well, you have our number. If you — '

'Wait a minute! Okay? I have to think about this for a minute.'

'We're on your dime, mate.'

Soldi was standing, looking into the darkness toward the ship. Rip lay in the sand, looking skyward at the stars. Dutch was sipping coffee.

'I work for an oil company,' Bill Taggart said to the man on the other end of the satellite phone. 'I'm on a seismic survey crew working in the Sahara Desert. I'll give you the coordinates in a minute. We've found something, something extraordinary that I think would be of interest to Neville and his associates.'

'I'm listening, Bill. Talk away.'

'I want two million dollars.'

'I'd like ten my own self.'

'I'm serious.'

'I am listening, my friend. You're paying for this call.'

Captain Kathleen Sullivan was the duty officer in the operations center at Space Command, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, when one of the enlisted technicians called her over to his computer console.

'We were processing data from the equatorial satellite when the computer found an anomaly, Captain. I think you should take a look at this.'

'Okay,' Captain Sullivan said.

'The area we are looking at is the Sahara, on the border between Libya and Chad. The computer says the area of interest is a few meters inside Libya, but as I recall, the exact border has never been formally agreed upon.'

'What do you have?' Sullivan asked brusquely. She was in no mood for a long wind-up.

'This.' The sergeant punched a key on the computer keyboard and a picture appeared. He used a track ball to make the picture larger, and larger, and larger. In the center was a perfect circle. The sergeant stood back from the console with his hands behind his back.

'That circular shape is made of metal, is highly reflective, is about twenty meters in diameter, and wasn't there four days ago on the satellite's last look at that area.'

Sullivan leaned close to the computer screen. 'This is a new one on me,' she muttered.

'Yes, ma'am,' the sergeant agreed. 'Me too. If I didn't know better, I'd say the damn thing is a flying saucer.'

'Or the top of a water tank.'

'There? In the middle of the Sahara?' The sergeant reached for the computer keyboard. 'There is one vehicle near it and one small piece of wheeled equipment.'

'People?'

'At least one, perhaps two. If we had a little better angle on the sun we might have gotten a shadow…"

Sullivan straightened up and frowned. 'You don't believe in flying saucers, do you?'

'I have an open mind, Captain. An open mind. I'm just saying that circular shape looks like a saucer. It could be a water tank. It could be the top of a nuclear reactor. It could be a twenty-meter metal sunshade for the queen of England's garden party.'

Sullivan picked up a notepad, jotted a series of numbers off the computer screen, then tore off the sheet of paper.

'Thank you, Sergeant,' she said and walked back to her office.

'Since I'm not an officer,' the sergeant muttered under his breath, 'I can believe any damned thing I want. Sir.'

Captain Sullivan consulted the telephone number list taped to her desk, then dialed a secure telephone. After two rings, a male voice answered.

She explained about the anomaly and dictated the latitude and longitude coordinates. She was very careful not to label the anomaly a flying saucer. 'It appears to be the top of a water tank, but it's in an empty, barren godforsaken place. I suggest, sir, that we request a more thorough examination of this site.'

'Libya?'

'Near the place where the borders of Libya, Chad, and Sudan come together.'

'I'll be down for a look in five minutes.'

Exactly six and a half minutes later, the general was leaning over the sergeant's shoulder while Captain Sullivan watched from several paces away.

'We're doing an initial analysis before we send this data to NIMA,' she explained. NIMA was the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which collected, analyzed, and distributed imagery for the various agencies of the U.S. government.

'Hmm,' said the general.

'Yes, sir,' the sergeant agreed flippantly.

'What do you think it is, Sergeant?'

'Looks like a flying saucer to me, General, but I just work here.'

'Darned if it don't,' the general said. He straightened, checked the lat/long coordinates on the screen, nodded at Captain Sullivan, then walked away.

In less than an hour a computer printer spit out a sheet of paper in a windowless office on the ground floor of a hangar in Nevada, at an airfield that wasn't on any map, in a place known only as Area 51.

Two hours later a pilot wearing a helmet and full pressure suit manned an airplane that had just been pushed from the hangar. The airplane was all black and shaped like a wedge, with seventy-five degrees of wing sweep. An enlisted crew helped the pilot get into the cockpit, then strapped and plugged him in.

The airplane was receiving electrical power from a piece of yellow gear. The pilot set up his cockpit switches, then spent fifteen minutes waiting.

Only when the minute hand of his wristwatch was exactly on the hour did he signal the ground crew for an engine start.

Precisely ten minutes later he advanced the throttles of his four rocket-based, combined-cycle engines and released the brakes. The noise from the engines almost ripped the sky apart. Even snuggled in the cockpit under a well-padded helmet, the pilot found the noise painfully loud.

As he rolled down the runway, the engines were burning a mixture of compressed air and methane, augmented with liquid oxygen. As the plane accelerated, the mixture would be automatically juggled to maintain power.

The spy plane rolled on the fourteen thousand-foot runway for a long time before it lifted off. With a flick of a switch the pilot retracted the gear. Then he pulled the nose up steeply and climbed away at a forty-five-degree angle. Passing Mach 2, the pilot toggled a lever that hydraulically lifted an opaque metal screen to cover the windshield and protect it. He had been using computer displays as his primary flight reference since liftoff, so being deprived of an outside view was of no practical consequence.

He watched his airspeed carefully, and at Mach 2.5 monitored the computer-controlled transition to pure ramjet flight. The air compressor inlet doors were closed and the flow of LOX secured. When the transition was complete, methane burning in the free airflow through the four ramjets provided the aircraft's propulsion. Fifteen minutes after lifting off, the plane leveled at one hundred twenty-five thousand feet above the earth and accelerated to fifty-four hundred miles per hour.

The pilot kept a careful eye on the computer screen that displayed the temperature of various portions of his aircraft. He was especially vigilant about the temperatures of the leading edges of the wings, which he knew were glowing a cherry red even though he couldn't see them.

Despite the deafening roar of the engines and the shock wave that trailed for miles behind the hypersonic plane, a placid calm had descended upon the cockpit. Engine noise reached the pilot only through the airframe. Amazingly, almost none of this noise reached the ground. The sonic wave of aircraft flying above one hundred thousand feet dissipated before reaching the ground, as did ninety-nine percent of the engine noise. And at this altitude the stealthy plane was invisible to radar and human eyes. Only infrared sensors trained skyward could detect it, and there were few of those.

The pilot ensured that his two Global Positioning System (GPS) devices agreed with each other, then coupled the primary autopilot to one of them. The autopilot would take him to the first tanker rendezvous over the Atlantic. He would drop down to thirty thousand feet and slow to subsonic speed on the turbine engines to refuel from a KC-135 tanker, then climb back to altitude while accelerating to hypersonic cruise for the flight across Africa.

The night would not yet have passed when he arrived over the central Sahara, but no matter. His synthetic-aperture radar could see through darkness, clouds, or smoke. The digital signals would be encrypted and transmitted via satellite to NIMA for processing into extraordinarily detailed images.

With its mission in the Sahara complete, the hypersonic spy plane would make another pass over the Mideast — this pilot made the Mideast run at least once a week — then turn and head for a second tanker rendezvous west of the Azores on the way back to Nevada.

Just another day at the office, the pilot told himself, and tried to make himself comfortable in his padded seat.

When Bill Taggart got back to the circle of light from the propane lamp, the professor was explaining: '… Modern man appears in the archaeological record about one hundred thousand years ago, but the story is mixed, hard to decipher. At least two other species of hominids lived at the same time. All we know for a fact is that modern man survived and the other hominids became extinct.'

Professor Soldi gestured into the larger darkness. 'A hundred millennia ago this area was probably a lot like parts of Arizona are today, with wooded hills and mountains rising above the arid desert floor. People lived wherever there was a dependable source of water — didn't have to be much, just a little, but steady. The desert encroached and retreated with variations in rainfall.'

'How do you see what's under the sand?'

'We use radar. We look through the sand with radar, map the terrain, locate places that we think it likely that water might have been more plentiful than elsewhere. If these sites aren't buried too deep, we dig.'

'Any luck so far?'

'Oh, yes,' Soldi said, and from a trouser pocket he removed a large flint blade. 'This knife,' he said, cradling it in his hand, 'may be fifty thousand years old.'

'The saucer might be that old,' Rip said. 'Or older.'

'Extraordinary, isn't it?' Soldi exclaimed, his voice vibrant and full of energy. 'The technology in that saucer and the technology represented by this knife blade. They were found just thirty miles apart and are apparently so dissimilar. And yet… '

The sky was just beginning to lighten in the east when Rip Cantrell awoke. He was too excited to sleep. He could think of nothing except the saucer.

He rolled off the cot, pounded his boots to make sure that they were empty, then put them on. He pulled on his shorts and a T-shirt he had worn only a couple of days, then slipped out of the tent.

The air was invigorating, cool, and crisp. Actually, it was cold. He went back into the tent and rooted through his clothes for a sweatshirt. And a sweater.

After a long, delicious drink of cool water and a couple of leftover rolls from last night's dinner, Rip set off on foot for the saucer. Dutch and Bill and the professor could bring the Jeep later.

As he walked he watched the first light of dawn chase away the shadows. This summer job was his first real experience with the desert, and he loved it.

He was at least a mile away when he saw the saucer reflecting the dawn's pink light. God, it looked… so… sublime! Mysterious and sublime.

Today would be the day they got some answers. Yes. He could feel it.

He climbed around on the rock, looking at the saucer from every angle. He put his hands on it, felt the cool, smooth, sensuous surface. When he lifted his hands, their outline remained in the surface dust.

From the top of the stone ledge that had imprisoned the saucer, he watched the sun rise over the rim of the earth.

Why here? Why had they landed here, in this place? Was it a desert then?

When the sun was completely above the horizon, Rip got the shovel and began removing sandstone debris from under the saucer. He brushed loose sand and rubble away from the exposed landing gear skid with his fingers.

He almost missed it in the darkness of the early morning light. There, in the stone!

A handprint!

Just like the ones he had left in the dust on the skin of the ship… a handprint in the rock.

He blew all the sand from the print. Placed his own right hand in it.

The print in the stone was just a tiny bit smaller.

He sat down and stared at the print, trying to understand.

Finally he covered the print with loose sand, then packed the sand in hard.

He had the compressor going and was jackhammering rock under the saucer when the others arrived in the Jeep. He heard them drive up when he paused to move the hammer and rearrange the handkerchief he had tied over his mouth and nose.

Rip Cantrell grinned to himself. Yes. Today was going to be the day!

About nine that morning the men took a break from moving rock and rigged the tent, which was really a large tarpaulin without sides. An hour after they resumed work they uncovered a corner of the hatch in the bottom of the saucer. It was just aft of dead center, the thickest part of the ship.

The hatch cover joined the rest of the fuselage in a joint that was so fine it was easy to miss. As usual, Rip noticed it first.

They worked feverishly to break the rock loose from under the rest of the ship.

Panting from exertion and excitement, Professor Soldi crawled in and lay on his back, looking up at the hatch, which was about two feet above his head. Rip and Dutch lay on each side. In the center of the hatch was a drumstick-shaped cutout. At first blush, the cutout channel looked like an engraving. It was no more than a hundredth of an inch wide, if that.

Soldi wiped his hands on his shirt, then used his fingers to wipe the dust from his glasses. 'Look at the workmanship,' he whispered.

'Should we open it?' Dutch asked.

'You're assuming that we can,' Soldi remarked.

'Of course we can,' Rip said, his voice reflecting his optimism. I'll bet this whole ship is just the way they left it. There isn't a speck of rust on it.'

Soldi reached up and caressed the hatch with his fingertips. 'We are on the threshold of a new age.'

'Let's do it,' Rip said. He was out of patience.

'Relax, Rip,' Taggart rumbled.

'Perhaps we should wait for experts,' Soldi muttered, probably just to rag the young man beside him, who was almost quivering.

Dutch Haagen was kneeling beside a landing gear skid. 'I really don't want to meet anyone who claims to be an expert on flying saucers,' he said. 'Let's just get on with it before Qaddafi's boys arrive and run us off. Besides, the suspense is killing me.'

Soldi reached over his head. He pushed gently on the small cutout. Nothing. Pressed on one end, then the other. 'This is like pushing on a bank safe,' he said with his teeth clenched.

He pushed, tugged, pried with his fingers. Nothing.

'There's gotta be a trick to it,' Dutch remarked.

'I'm sure there is,' Dr. Soldi agreed.

'Let me try.' Rip bumped his hip against the professor, who glanced at the youngster's eager face, then moved over.

Rip put his hand against the cutout and held it there for a moment. Then he pressed on the large end. It gave. The small end moved down away from the fuselage.

'How about that!'

'It's sensitive to the heat of your hand.'

'How did you know that?'

'It just makes sense. Doesn't it?'

Carefully Rip grasped the handle. He applied pressure downward, then sideways. Finally he tried to rotate it. Now the handle turned, then the rear edge of the hatch moved inward.

The hatch opened slowly, making a tiny hissing sound.

When the sound stopped, the four men laid frozen looking at the gaping hole in the ship's hull.

'Oh, man!' Dutch exclaimed.