Saucer: Savage Planet

8

“A starship will arrive in orbit a week from now,” Adam Solo told his passengers, who were floating about the interior of the saucer.

“I didn’t hear you talking on a radio,” Charley objected. “Nor did I hear alien voices.”

Solo shrugged.

“So how does the comm gear work?”

It reads my thoughts and broadcasts them, emitting a much stronger signal. And it picks up theirs, too faint for me to receive, and rebroadcasts them to me.

With a start, Charley Pine realized that she had heard Solo, yet he hadn’t made a sound.

You can read minds? she asked, not voicing the words.

Yes.

“Holy damn,” she said aloud, looking at Rip and Egg. “He can read our thoughts.”

Egg looked thoughtful. So that’s how he learns languages so quickly, he thought.

Yes.

Rip wondered, How many languages does this guy know, anyway?

All of them, was Solo’s reply. This skill helped me stay alive. I knew what people I met were thinking when they were thinking it, regardless of the language they spoke, regardless of what they said.

Did you read the president’s thoughts? Egg wanted to know.

Oh, yes. Amazingly, he is an honest man. He said precisely what he thought. That kind of honesty is rare in the human species.

“I suppose,” Egg said aloud. He wasn’t sure he liked hearing Solo’s voice in his head when none of the others could hear it. He definitely was uncomfortable with Solo reading his thoughts. “Maybe you’d better stay out of my head,” he said aloud and got no reply.

“You’re a difficult man to lie to,” Rip mused.

It is difficult, but not impossible. A few have done it.

“Tell you what,” Egg said. “Since I am kind of old-fashioned, I’ll pretend you can’t get into my noodle and we’ll all just keep saying aloud whatever we want others to know. Deal?”

“Deal,” each of his companions said in turn.

“Well, we can’t stay up here a week waiting for the cavalry to come riding out of the void,” Charley Pine declared. “I need a pit stop within a few hours or it’s gonna get messy.”

“Canada,” Solo said. “We’ll start down in a few minutes.”

They discussed it and agreed since no one else had a better idea.

“But some starship rescuing you from these people howling for your blood isn’t going to do us any good,” Rip said to Solo. “You may have a way off this planet, but we are kinda stuck here. While we are alive, anyway. And I don’t want to be in any other condition anytime soon.”

“I have a plan,” Adam Solo replied. “We need a diversion, something for the public to think about besides us. I’ve given the orbiting saucer instructions.”

“I thought its comm gear was hors de combat?” Charley said.

“Its long-range communications gear certainly is, but it can receive my brain waves. However, it can not transmit.”

“So you didn’t get an acknowledgment that it received your order?”

“Life is often uncertain. Let’s wait and see what happens.”

Thick stratus clouds covered most of Canada. The saucer’s pilot and passengers could see the cloud cover from space. Solo had the saucer plunging downward toward the white gauze. It was still afternoon here, with the sun low on the western horizon. A sliver of moon was visible in the eastern sky.

The saucer raced downward, drawn by gravity. The atmosphere below would slow the machine with friction, heating up the leading edge of the saucer to a cherry red glow.

Charley Pine saw it and marveled yet again at the technical achievement of the saucer people, to build such a ship. At least 140,000 years old, it could still perform its mission, carrying people and things up and down from the surface of the planet.

Adam Solo was an alien, and his people were coming back to rescue him. What, she wondered, must the starship be like?

Egg Cantrell was not enjoying the ride. He was fretting about the antiaging drug and the havoc it would cause. Then there was the impact the presence of an alien starship circling the planet would have on the people of earth. Once and for all, irrefutable proof would be flung in the faces of the world’s people that they were not alone in the universe.

A good thing or a bad thing?

Or a fact that would have to be faced, and damn the consequences.

Rip’s thoughts were about Adam Solo. He believed Solo’s tale, he decided … and yet he didn’t. The ability of the mentally ill to weave complex alternative realities was on his mind. As the first tugs of the atmosphere upon the saucer caused him to grab the back of the pilot’s seat, he resolved to keep a wary eye on Solo.

If the guy tried to steal the saucer … well, Rip had a rifle and no qualms. He, Charley and Egg weren’t going to freeze to death in the Canadian Arctic if he could help it. Alien or nutcase, if Solo pulled something, he was going to stop some lead.

That’s a warning, Solo.

Received.

After a long ride down, the saucer plunged into the top of the stratus layer. “At least everyone on the ground won’t see us,” Egg remarked.

Rip wondered how many people were this far north as the Canadian winter began to wrap its icy fingers around the land and lakes.

Plunging downward through the clouds, everyone in the saucer watched the computer presentations on the instrument panel. The radar was painting a picture of land and places without return — no doubt frozen lakes. The radar’s energy bounded off the ice and didn’t return to the antenna.

Solo seemed quite comfortable with the presentations on the screens before him. They changed occasionally, as fast as thought, because he was wearing the headband and had merely to think about the information he would like to have, and the computer presented it to him.

Down, down, down. Toward the surface of the planet. Still doing several times the speed of sound.

Solo leveled finally and let the speed bleed off. He didn’t start the rocket engines, didn’t change course, merely let the saucer slow, and when he judged the moment right, he raised the lever on his left to activate the antigravity rings and prevent the saucer from impacting the earth.

At last it came out of the clouds, a thousand feet or so above a flat countryside of snow-covered trees and frozen lakes. Solo changed course almost ninety degrees, to the northeast. He let the saucer descend until it was running perhaps a hundred knots just above the treetops in this flat wilderness.

The sun slipped below the horizon and the sky darkened. The saucer ran on in the twilight.

“You do know where you are going?” Rip asked Solo.

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you were here?”

“A long time ago.”

“How long?”

“Very long.”

“How about a straight answer?”

“I lost count of the seasons several times in my life. Nine hundred of your years ago, I think, give or take.”

“Who were your shipmates?” Egg asked, although he expected he knew the answer.

“Little men, bearded, tough. Warriors inured to the cold. Vikings.”

“You were with them?”

“I was their leader. I pointed out the dangers of the voyage, and they insisted we go anyway. They trusted me. They knew life was short and they would end up in Valhalla, so the adventure drew them on.”

“And you?”

“I didn’t care if I lived or died.”

“Do you care now?” Charley asked.

Solo didn’t reply. Ahead in the twilight they could see water. Hudson’s Bay.

“It’s Canada,” Johnny Murk told Harrison Douglas. They were sitting in the FBO lounge at the Greenwich, Connecticut, airport. Heidi was massaging Murkowsky’s neck. The chairman and CEO of Murk Corporation turned off his cell phone and dropped it into his shirt pocket. “That was a guy with Space Command who wants a job after his military hitch is up. He says the White House is being notified.”

“So we are ahead of the government?”

“If we can move fast enough, we are.”

Heidi finished Murkowsky’s neck with a vigorous short rub. “You need to stay loose, Johnny.”

“Yes, dear.”

The cliff at the edge of the lake was about a hundred feet high and ran parallel to the lakeshore for several miles. It was a geological anomaly in this flat country scoured by glaciers.

Solo cruised just above the water, looking at the cliff. He couldn’t seem to find what he was looking for. If he was looking for a cave, it wasn’t visible.

“Was the water level lower then?”

“Higher, actually. The world was warmer.”

He stopped the saucer and stared through the canopy at a massive round formation that ran right to the water.

“I think there has been an earthquake,” he said. “Looks like that formation has slipped toward the water.”

“No cave there now.”

Solo didn’t answer. He flipped on the saucer’s landing light and let it drop into the choppy water. It went under and he used the antigravity rings to take it toward the cliff.

In a few seconds the stone formation appeared before them, illuminated by the light.

“No cave there,” Rip said flatly.

The saucer went deeper, with the cliff right in front of it. Then it wasn’t there. It ended in a shelf. Deeper still Solo took the saucer, then began creeping forward, under the stone roof. The glow of the landing light helped. The floor of the sea bed rose, so Solo coaxed the saucer up. They broke the surface. The landing light revealed that they were in a large cave, surrounded by rock. Ahead of them was a beach, perhaps a hundred yards long. High on the beach, under another stone shelf, sat a ship. A wooden ship, but without a mast. Sweeping prow and stern. Clinker-built.

“A Viking ship,” Charley whispered.

“Still there,” Solo said with a sigh. “Right where we left it.”

“Mr. President, one of the saucers is coming out of orbit.”

“Which one?”

“The one that launched from Missouri.”

The aide gave him the projected flight path. Space Command said the saucer descended over Alaska. The projected flight path had it impacting in the northern Canadian wastes.

“Ridiculous,” the president said, glancing at the three-foot globe mounted on a stand in the corner. He stepped over to it and gave it a spin.

“They’ll refuel it in a lake somewhere,” O’Reilly suggested. He was, the president thought, a master of the obvious.

“The United States government had better find out which lake before anyone else does,” the president said pointedly, frowning at O’Reilly.

The president was worried. Petty Officer Hennessey’s comment about waiting for aliens had planted a seed. This situation was out of control, with everyone in an uproar over an antiaging drug. Yet if there was any truth to Hennessey’s comment, things could get worse. A lot worse! Aliens!

A painting on the wall caught his eye. It was an original, on loan from the Smithsonian. A group of almost naked Indians with a few feathers in their hair stood on a beach watching Christopher Columbus’ three ships approach.

Things hadn’t worked out so well for the Indians after Columbus’ arrival. Would the arrival of people — or creatures — from another planet start a similar collapse of the current civilization?

The president rooted in his drawer for his Rolaids bottle and helped himself to a handful.

Solo landed the saucer on the rock-strewn beach beside the Viking ship. When he turned off the landing light the darkness was total. The four people in the cockpit looked at each other in the glow of the instrument lights, but no one spoke.

“I brought a flashlight,” Egg said finally.

“Let’s get out,” Rip suggested, “see if we can find some wood to use for a fire.”

“We can always burn the ship,” Charley noted.

“If we spend the winter here, we’ll have to.”

They opened the hatch and Rip dropped through. Then Charley, Adam Solo and Uncle Egg.

Indeed, there was ancient dry wood in a crevice near the ship. Slivers cut with Rip’s pocketknife provided the kindling. In minutes a small fire was burning, and its light illuminated the ship’s hull. Charley came to the fire straightening her clothes. “Are we going to get asphyxiated in here?” she asked.

“I feel air moving,” Rip said. “I think we’re okay.”

“You guys need to put toilets in those flying plates,” she told Solo.

After answering nature’s call, Solo inspected the sides of the Viking ship, then clambered aboard.

Charley joined him. The flashlight beam illuminated seats, some shields, spears … short swords. Helmets. Bones in one corner. “Caribou,” Solo said.

A large slab of stone that had apparently fallen from the roof lay on a portion of the stern, which was wrecked when it fell.

“After all these years…” Charley mused.

“The wood is deteriorated but not dust. The cold air preserved it, I guess. The thing wouldn’t even float now, even if that rock hadn’t fallen on it. But back then she was a good ship. Rode the back of the seas, didn’t leak much, sailed well downwind … a good ship.”

He climbed over the side and boosted Egg up.

They heard a shout from Rip. “Hey, over here. There is a breeze coming in from the outside.”

After scrambling over the rock, he found the opening, a crack that led to the outside. Rip took the flashlight and, turning sideways, slipped through. In a moment he was back. “Goes all the way outside. Cold out there.”

“Must have opened in the landslide that dropped the roof,” Solo said.

“Let’s get the rest of our stuff on the beach and build a bigger fire. We’ll need it tonight.”

Rip went back to the saucer and climbed inside. He grabbed bundles and pushed them through the hatch. Solo and Charley took them and headed toward the fire, where Egg unpacked and arranged things. When all the duffel was out the hatch, Rip climbed down. He picked up two sleeping bags and the sack of food and trailed along toward the fire.

“What do you think of the Viking ship?” Rip asked softly, so only Egg could hear.

“It’s real, all right.” Egg sighed. “Every museum on the planet would love to have it. The wood has deteriorated, but still … Rip, it’s as if they pulled it up on the beach, climbed down and walked away, intending to come back, but they never did. Or when they returned a slab had fallen from the rock roof, or perhaps the whole mountain had shifted and they couldn’t get their ship out of what had become a cave.”

Egg warmed his hands at the fire and finally began inspecting the interior of the cave, what he could see. The only illumination was from the fire, so it was difficult. The ceiling appeared to be about eighty feet high.

“Smoke is rising nicely,” Rip observed. “There might be a hole or crack in the roof.”

Using the flashlight, Egg inspected the rear wall of the cave. He found a Celtic rune hacked into the stone. He cast the beam around to see what else might be there, then studied the rune by flashlight.

Solo joined him. “I buried a man here,” he said. “Scurvy, starvation, and a respiratory infection. He didn’t last long.”

“To die here in this wilderness…” Egg looked around again with the flashlight’s beam.

“We all have to die someplace, sometime,” Solo said curtly. “He died among friends, and this is as good a place as any.”

“How would you know? You’re the man who doesn’t die.”

“Oh no, Egg Cantrell. You have that wrong. I am just a man who is living a little longer. But my time will come. Rest assured of that.”

The night could have been worse, Charley Pine reflected. The fire burned well, fed by dry wood that burned quickly, the cave was reasonably warm, and the sleeping bags were comfy. Before she drifted off, she checked her companions, who were all snuggled up in their bags. Uncle Egg snored softly.

On the far wall of the cave, in the dim reflected firelight, beyond the dark, ovoid shape of the saucer sitting on its landing gear, she could just see the outline of the Viking ship.

She was studying its shadow on the cave wall when she drifted off to sleep.

Petty Officer Hennessey wasn’t the only person on the planet to connect two orbiting saucers with the possible arrival of a mother ship. People tweeted about the possibility; then it went viral on Facebook and the other social networking sites. Within minutes, the possibility became a certainty and everyone everywhere knew everything about it and was absolutely sure. After all, we’re wired up now.

The world’s population was a bit nervous. As the minutes ticked by, they became more nervous. Visions of alien space fighters zapping everything, ten-foot-tall green predators with spiderlike mandibles catching and gobbling folks, starvation, anarchy, chaos and civilization in ashes flashed through the collective mind. The possibilities went from the triple-digit cable channels to the network news shows and the world’s front pages as fast as fingers could type, which was almost at the speed of light.

The networks’ babes and commentators talked about these sci-fi fantasy possibilities with straight faces. The reaction of the viewing public was predictable: Teenagers the world over began screwing like rabbits, unhappy spouses abandoned their families, people maxed out their credit cards in restaurants and jewelry stores, and survivalists took to the hills to fort up.

A tidal wave of people headed for Las Vegas, which for the first time in the history of the world had to declare itself full — closed to new visitors. Police turned away all traffic into town, and the FAA would allow only empty airplanes to land at McCarran. The casinos were packed wall to wall; strippers wriggled and writhed around the clock; hookers doubled, then tripled, and finally quadrupled their prices. Every woman in town with fake tits ordered a new car; Corvettes and Porsches seemed to be the most popular.

In cities and towns across America some people even went to church. Collection plates filled to overflowing as thousands of preachers dusted off their best sermon on “Where Will You Spend Eternity?” mounted their pulpits and spurred the choirs.

Inevitably the politicians wanted their constituents to see them molding and shaping events. Hordes of them descended on the White House, where the president was forced to admit them in waves of fifty each.

From Congress and statehouses and city halls all over America, the politicos demanded action. They wanted the government to protect everyone, to negotiate with the alien space monsters and remind them of the glories of diversity, and if that failed, to send them all straight to hell. Or to somewhere politically correct, if by chance the monsters didn’t believe in hell. A few pacifists and left-wing dingbats counseled nonviolence and turning the other cheek, but they were howled down or ignored.

“Find that saucer!” the president told P. J. O’Reilly every time he saw him. “Space Command said it came down in Canada, which is a very large place.”

“It might not even be in Canada,” O’Reilly protested. “Just because it came down headed for Canada doesn’t mean—”

“Find it.”

“Mr. President, that saucer could be anywhere. It might even be on the bottom of Lake Mead. Solo and the Cantrells might be partying in Vegas.”

“Find it!”

Being human, the president wondered how it would go down if aliens arrived to fight or parley. He had sweated all that during the first saucer crisis just over a year ago. The memory of those days gave him the shivers. He recalled that his political adviser then had told him to look presidential and not to give away the country or pee his pants. Sound advice that, he reflected.

Pulling off those three feats was going to be a real trick, however.

He glanced at his watch. He had five minutes before the next herd of politicians was due to storm the East Room. He asked the honor guard aide to send for Petty Officer Hennessey. They met in the hall outside the East Room. Through the closed door, the president could hear the herd shuffling in.

“These aliens,” the president began. “If they show up … Got any thoughts on that?”

“They’ll want something,” Hennessey said. “Wouldn’t have bothered to come all the way from wherever to here if they didn’t.”

The president nodded. Sure. He saw that.

“They’ll want to talk to the head dude. That’ll be you. You just gotta take charge, get what you want in return for what they want.”

“So what do I want?” the president asked aloud, staring at the wall.

“I dunno, sir,” the petty officer said. “Maybe them Fountain of Youth pills, which don’t sound too smart to me, or a cure for cancer. Give something, get something.”

“Yes. Yes.” The president straightened his shoulders and adjusted his tie. He could handle negotiations.

Hennessey thought so too. “You’re our guy, sir,” he said and saluted.

The Secret Service agent opened the door to the East Room, and the president strode in.

The president was taking a makeup and potty break between delegations when O’Reilly came rushing in with a message. He handed the sheet of paper to the president while he told him what it said. “The NRO has tracked the saucer. It’s in Manitoba.”

The president shooed out the makeup artist, a cute twenty-something female with a theater degree from a little college in New England. She was doing this gig powdering the presidential nose until something on or off Broadway opened up. The president watched her hips as she walked out.

“Manitoba, like in Canada?”

“Yes, sir,” said P. J. O’Reilly. “Near Hudson’s Bay. Or in Hudson’s Bay.”

“You know I don’t know all those damn initial agencies.”

“The National Reconnaissance Office. The spy satellite people.”

The president folded the paper into a little square and handed it back to O’Reilly. “Well, who are you going to send after them?”

“There’s this little problem, Mr. President, and State is working it. Canada is a foreign country, so we can’t just send a squad of U.S. Marshals or Marines up there to arrest them without the Canadian government’s permission.”

“Get it. Bet the people in the saucer didn’t go through customs or immigration.”

“Yes, sir, but there is a complication.” O’Reilly enjoyed telling the president about complications, so he perked up now. “Canadian sovereignty is at stake, according to their ambassador, and they are being sticky. State is drafting a formal request.”

The president stared at his shoes, then into the mirror at his powdered nose and forehead, which didn’t shine anymore, and at his balding pate. Finally he said, “O’Reilly, you are a good chief of staff because you are a first-class son of a bitch.”

He speared O’Reilly with his eyes and continued, “Still, there are a lot of sons of bitches out there, and if you want to keep this job you had better prove to me that you are the meanest and toughest of the bunch. Light a fire under that ambassador. Light a fire under ours. I don’t care if you burn their balls off. I want that saucer. I want Adam Solo and Egg Cantrell. I want that youth serum or pill or suppository. And, by God, I want them now!”

The new day came slowly at the cave on the bay. An ice fog obscured the ocean and surrounding land and filtered the daylight. It also penetrated the cave, despite the fire that kept the temperature just above freezing. The four travelers sat huddled around the fire eating from the bag of grub Rip had packed and washing the food down with bottled water.

“It’s going to be difficult to stretch our supplies for a week,” Egg said, frowning at his ham sandwich. “When your ride arrives, where will they meet you?”

Solo shrugged. “Anywhere I ask them to. In orbit would probably be best.”

“Another week,” Rip mused. “I suppose we could stay here that long, unless someone finds us. The bay is full of fish.”

Solo laughed. “I once spent a winter here. There were caribou in the forest and fish in the bay. With your rifle, we are well equipped to hunt caribou, and we can chip holes in the ice to fish.”

“Heck. This little penknife is the only blade we have,” Rip said sourly, holding up his. “Won’t cut much firewood or skin many caribou with this.”

“We’re also a little short of coffee and soap and a way to wash clothes,” Charley added.

Solo looked amused. “I would bet there are at least a half-dozen knives within ten feet of where you are sitting.”

“Show me one.”

Adam Solo began scraping at the loose dirt near his feet with one boot. When it seemed soft enough, he began digging with his hands. In a moment he pulled up a shard of a flint blade. He laid it aside and kept digging. Pieces of flint, a broken arrowhead and an intact arrowhead were revealed as the hole got wider and deeper.

After another minute he said, “Aha,” and pulled a flint blade from the dirt. It was perhaps three inches long, and both sides were edged. There was no handle.

“A knife.”

Rip inspected the blade, turned it over repeatedly in his hands and held it so the fire illuminated it. Solo rose and walked to the Viking ship. In a moment he was back with a sword. It was short, broad and covered with rust. “I can scrape this rust off, and we can sharpen this on a stone. It’ll cut wood and butcher game and, if need be, cut people.”

Adam Solo slashed the air with it. The weapon seemed to fit his hand, Charley noted with a start.

Solo gave the sword to Rip, butt first. “Now, if you will loan me your rifle?”

Rip passed it to him. “It’s loaded.”

Solo inspected it as carefully as Rip had the flint blade. “Twenty-five thirty-five. Obsolete caliber.” He flashed Rip a grin. “But adequate.” He stood and adjusted his coat. “I’ll go see what I can find.”

Adam Solo walked around the fire and headed for the opening in the rocks.

Charley Pine said, “A week in a freezing cave hideout! Robbers Roost. And they say civilization is moving right along.”

“Didn’t you ever go to Scout camp?” Rip teased.

Charley didn’t look amused. She said to Egg, “How long before the U.S. government finds us?”

“Two or three days. The heat of the fire leaking from this cave will show on infrared sensors.”

“Uncle Egg, we need a plan.” Charley wasn’t smiling. “After Solo gets rescued by his buddies and flies off into infinity, we are going to be stuck here with six billion people who think we have the formula for eternal life and won’t give it to them.”

“The formula is in the saucer’s computer,” Egg admitted, “and you are right. I won’t give it to them.”

“Six billion crazy people,” Charley said. “You are going to have to give them the formula or we are going to have to get the hell off this rock while the getting is good.”

“Go with Solo, you mean.”

“Uncle Egg, you can’t resist a tidal wave.”

Egg added another dead limb to the fire. They sat staring into the fire, thinking their own thoughts.

Rip broke the silence. “Who wants to go fishing?”

“I’m saving fishing for my old age,” Egg replied. “So I’ll have something to look forward to.”

“I caught my fish at Scout camp,” Charley said dryly. “That was enough.”

“No sense of adventure,” Rip grumped. He put his fishing pole together, checked the reel and line and hook, then made a little ball of bread and impaled it on the hook.

He walked to the edge of the water lapping at the dirt and cast the hook and bread in.

“You can’t catch a fish in here,” Charley objected. “You’ll have to go outside.”

The words were no more out of her mouth than something big hit the hook and the line bent and started ripping off the reel. Rip laughed and played the fish.

Charley Pine was watching Rip fight the fish and didn’t see Uncle Egg enter the saucer and close the hatch.

Adam Solo walked north along the shore of the bay. To his right the escarpment that held the cave was gradually getting lower, becoming first a hill, then just a swell in the land, then petering out altogether.

The shoreline curved around to the east. Solo paralleled it, walking through low birches and scrub covered by several inches of snow. The air was below freezing. A light snow, almost a visible mist, was sifting down on the westerly breeze. Visibility in this gray world was no more than two hundred yards.

In just a few days, Solo knew, the bay would begin to freeze along the shore, and the ice would march out into the bay, sealing the water from the snow and wind. Winter was on its way — not the winter of the temperate zone farther south, but a subarctic winter. Fortunately the snow was not accumulating much just now. He pulled his hat down hard on his head, turned his coat collar up and buttoned the top button.

He walked deeper into the forest, looking for tracks. He kept the rifle balanced under his right armpit with the barrel down and his hands in his coat pockets. His feet would be wet within an hour or so — if he didn’t find anything he would have to turn back. If he got lucky with a caribou, he could make good boots and gloves, even a hat that covered the back of his neck and kept snow from going down his coat.

All these things he had learned the hard way, once upon a time. When he was much younger.

He tried to recall how the land lay, but the memory was old and the forest no longer looked the same. Trees had grown old and died in the intervening centuries; beavers had altered the streams; meadows now existed where once creeks had flowed through gullies.

Solo was standing behind an alder, looking across an old beaver meadow, when he saw movement. Just caught it out of the corner of his eye.

Without turning his head, Adam Solo searched with his eyes and saw the flash of white moving through the brush on the other side of the meadow. He stood frozen, watching.

A bear. A white bear. With two cubs. They were heading north. When the ice froze on the bay, they could get out on it in search of their favorite prey, seals.

Solo made no move to lift the rifle. First, he didn’t have a bullet heavy enough to stop a polar bear unless he made a perfect, lucky shot, and there were three of them. Killing two and wounding the third would be as fatal as missing with the first shot.

The large adult paused and sniffed the breeze. Fortunately the gentle wind was in Solo’s face, not behind him.

She turned her head and visually searched downwind. She looked right at Solo and didn’t see him. She wouldn’t, unless he moved.

The Vikings had thought the white bears enchanted and were frightened of them. He remembered the bears and the contagious fear. With only shields, swords and battle axes, the Vikings lost many bear encounters, which meant the bears ate some of them. The bears had never met a creature they couldn’t kill and eat. Standing now with an inadequate rifle and no other weapon, Adam Solo felt the fear again. He stood as still as he possibly could, trying to minimize the white cloud caused by his exhalations.

Today, thankfully, the white bear and her cubs moseyed on north along the creek until they were out of sight. Solo waited for several minutes, listening to the silence, the whisper of the wind.

He heard something, just a suggestion of a sound, then a breathing in and out. The hairs on the back of his neck and arms prickled. He turned slowly.

Turned, and there stood a bear on its hind legs, just a few feet from him, its black eyes in its expressionless white face looking down upon him.

Instinctively Solo dropped to the ground, bringing up the rifle. As the bear lunged he was under it, with the rifle coming up, thumbing back the hammer. He jabbed the barrel toward the descending head as he pulled the trigger.