Saucer: Savage Planet

7

Harrison Douglas and Johnny Murkowsky were in the lounge of the fixed-base operator at the Columbia airport when the television began airing the video of the saucer rising on a cone of fire through puffy clouds into the heavens. They were waiting for the crews of their respective private jets to complete the preflights and come for them. Air Force One had just taken off and retracted its wheels. Heidi, Murkowsky’s masseuse, was having a glass of wine in the bar.

Now, as the roar of the saucer’s rockets emanating from the speakers of the TV set filled the room, the two moguls stood in front of the idiot box shoulder to shoulder, watching.

When the saucer’s exhaust was but a pinpoint of light on the screen, Johnny turned to Douglas. “We should join forces, combine our efforts. That flying plate has to come down somewhere. When it does…”

“What is this ‘we’ shit, Kemo Sabe?” Douglas shot back bitterly. “I spent eight million bucks raising that saucer, or one like it, from the Atlantic. You’re a little late to the party, Johnny-boy.”

“Late?” Johnny Murkowsky asked incredulously. “Eight million bucks? What a skinflint you are! That kind of money is chicken feed, pocket change. Every single person on this whole round rock, all six or seven billion of ’em, will want a regular supply of those antiaging pills. We’ll be richer than Buffett and Gates combined. We’re not talking about a nice profit — we’re going to get all the money. All of it. Every last, dirty, solitary dollar.”

Harrison Douglas stared at Murkowsky.

“Man, if we work together and don’t try to sabotage each other, you and I can own this damn planet,” Johnny Murkowsky roared.

The light began to dawn for Harrison Douglas. “You’re right,” he said softly. After all, somewhere along the way he could always double-cross Johnny Murk, and probably would have to, before Murk did it to him.

“Of course I’m right! All we have to do is cooperate, get that formula one way or another. Any way we can. Then we will have to defend it, keep everyone else from ripping us off. If we can do that, we will have won the game. We’ll get all the marbles. All!”

Harrison Douglas had the same vision. “It’s possible,” he said. “A long shot, but possible.”

Murkowsky swelled up like a toad as he contemplated the future. “Maybe we’ll change the name of this planet,” he said. “Name it after ourselves.”

The president was in his private compartment aboard Air Force One, somewhere over Illinois, when he opened the computer case that Egg had given him. He reached in to pull out the computer and realized that his hand was touching bits and pieces. He emptied the computer case onto the bunk.

A pile of junk.

He stirred through the shards as the realization came to him that Egg had somehow smashed the computer before he gave it to the president.

Egg knew all along that he would eventually have to give the computer to someone, so he destroyed it before that moment arrived.

Maybe the wizards could put it all back together and get something out of it.

Even as that thought crossed his tricky mind, the president realized how forlorn that hope was. He cussed a while, really got into it, said every dirty word he knew, which was a staggering lot because he had been in politics for twenty-five years. He smacked the bulkhead with his fist, which made him wince.

Damn and double damn!

When he finally calmed down, he began to survey the size of the mess he was in. What had he said to the television people as he stood in front of Egg’s house? He remembered, all right. “I have in my hand a saucer computer that contains a formula for an antiaging drug, a Fountain of Youth drug, some call it.”

Well, he didn’t have it. That was a hard fact.

He was sitting down, trying to control his breathing, when there was a knock on the door.

“Yes.”

The door opened. It was O’Reilly.

“The air force reports that a flying saucer went into orbit from central Missouri ten minutes ago.”

The president lowered his face into his hands.

O’Reilly’s eyes went to the junk strewn on the blanket of the bunk bed. “What’s that?”

The president didn’t look up. “That pile of crap is the computer that Egg gave me. The bastard smashed it to bits.”

A wave of self-pity swept over O’Reilly. He didn’t much care if anyone else got access to the Fountain of Youth drug, but as a very high government official, he knew he was fully entitled to a prescription and had let his hopes soar. Now they came crashing down. He sagged against a bulkhead.

“So what are we going to do?”

The president gestured futilely. “We’ve got to get our hands on that saucer. Somehow, some way.”

O’Reilly had never seen the president so low. He kinda enjoyed that, but he felt pretty low too. “It’s gotta come down sometime, somewhere.”

“Yeah,” the president said. Then he added, “Maybe.” A moment passed; then he asked, “Is that saucer Solo stole from Douglas still up there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Solo isn’t in it. He was sitting in Egg’s kitchen telling lies. Have the FBI find out if anyone is still at the Cantrell farm. For all we know, there is no one in either saucer.”

“That’s impossible!”

“And find a tame judge somewhere that will issue arrest warrants for all that bunch: Solo, Egg Cantrell, Rip Cantrell and Charley Pine.”

“What’s the charge?”

“Hell, I don’t care. Make something up. Income tax evasion, bank robbery, treason, sex with farm animals, whatever. Go, O’Reilly. Make the calls.”

After his chief of staff closed the door and the president was alone, he began scooping shards of computer back into the case that had held it. He wondered, Was Solo lying?

A thousand years!

Oh, my God!

Rip, Egg and Charley floated near the saucer’s pilot seat while Adam Solo busied himself with the comm gear. If anyone was out there listening, he didn’t say. The three floaters balanced themselves in the weightless environment by using a finger on the back of the pilot’s seat or a touch of the overhead or floor or bulkhead. Didn’t take much, they discovered.

They watched fascinated by the planet they were spinning around, although it appeared that the planet hanging there in the black void was revolving slowly under them. Above it all, in the inky blackness a billion galaxies wheeled in the eternal sky.

“We are going to need a plan,” Egg said. “We can’t really stay up here in this saucer very long, not without toilet facilities and more food and water.”

“Amen to that,” Charley said. She was regretting not making a pit stop before they left.

“What are they going to do now?” The president asked the air force chief of staff when his plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base. The general was there to meet him and walked with him to the helo, Marine One, that would take the commander in chief back to the White House. The general had so much chest cabbage that it was difficult to see that the front of his suit was blue. The four large silver stars on each shoulder were pretty gaudy too.

“Ah, I dunno, sir,” the chief of staff said.

The helicopter pilot was a marine major. The president stuck his head into the cockpit and asked him, “What are Rip and Charley going to do with that saucer?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir,” the major said, so the president took his seat and strapped in.

When the chopper landed on the White House lawn, the president went down the stairs and returned the salute of the enlisted honor guard. The first guy in line was a navy petty officer third class. The president paused and asked, “What do you think the Cantrells are going to do with that saucer?”

“They can’t stay up there very long, sir,” the petty officer said. “Ain’t got a head in that thing, I heard. I kinda figure they’ll find a place to hide it and wait.”

The president took a good look at the sailor’s face. He looked maybe twenty years old and shaved perhaps twice a week. “What do you think they’re waiting for?”

“Aliens, sir. A starship.”

P. J. O’Reilly nudged the president’s elbow, trying to get him to move along. The old man wasn’t moving. He looked at the sailor’s name tag. Hennessey.

“Thanks, Hennessey. Glad to know that someone around here is thinking about possibilities. Keep it up.”

“Yes, sir.”

The president walked on into the White House.

The new partners, Harrison Douglas and Johnny Murkowski, were wondering too. What would Egg, Rip, Charley and Adam Solo do next? Presumably they were in the Sahara saucer orbiting the earth.

“Are they really?” Murkowsky asked. He was in the left seat of his Citation V, and Douglas was flying copilot. They were in the flight levels, on their way back to Connecticut, where they kept wives, mistresses, extra clothes and Christmas decorations. Their companies were also there.

“I’ll admit, seeing Adam Solo at Cantrell’s farm was a shock,” Douglas replied. “I checked with a contact in Space Command ten minutes before I drove up to the place. That saucer Solo stole is still in orbit, circling the earth every ninety and one-half minutes.”

“And Solo isn’t in it?”

“Apparently not.”

“Well, who the hell is?”

“Damn if I know. I kinda suspect no one is. That being said, if anyone is in that thing, it’s probably somebody we don’t know about. It’s up there going round and round, thinking big thoughts.”

“It?”

“It,” said Harrison Douglas. “If anybody is flying that thing, it’s probably an alien. Some critter from outer space. Hell, I bet Solo is an alien himself. He flew that saucer right off that salvage ship like he knew what he was doing.”

“You know, we’ve got ahold of something that is a lot bigger than it looks,” Murkowsky said.

“Who knows how many aliens are out here running around,” Douglas mused, “looking like real people, but ready to do something rotten. Something terrible. Conquer the world or blow it up.”

Murkowsky was dubious. “Why would an alien civilization launch a starship across the void, at tremendous cost in treasure and perhaps lives, just to blow up stuff, eat kids and scare the crap outta everyone?”

“Man, weird people have been writing stories like that for a hundred years. The bookstores and movie theaters are full of them. I know it sounds goofy, but maybe it could happen.”

“Let’s assume, for the sake of argument,” said Johnny Murk, “that aliens are rational creatures who have done a ton of research that we would like to have. Research that is going to make us rich.”

“Okay.”

“Pine and young Cantrell and the fat one may be aliens too. Ever thought of that?”

“Solo couldn’t be the only one. They’re like snakes.”

“Even if they are aliens that live in a sewer and want to conquer the world, what the heck are they going to do with that saucer?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Harrison Douglas confessed.

Adam Solo felt a strange lassitude as he sat strapped to the pilot seat of a saucer, watching the earth spin slowly by underneath. The stars were there in the obsidian heavens, of course, hard and bright as they can only be when their light isn’t diffused by the atmosphere. Yet they were made trivial by the sun. The brilliant energy of the local star swept the saucer’s cockpit with every orbit of the planet. The sun rose over the horizon, climbed the sky and then descended, flooding the cockpit with light and heat. When it became too much, Solo merely rolled the saucer until the sun was below the belly.

“Why,” Egg asked, “isn’t intelligent life more common in the universe? Why aren’t we here on earth bombarded with alien radio broadcasts and television shows?”

Solo took his time replying. He had to focus on the question and think about it. “It takes billions of years for life to evolve. Most solid planets within the life zone, which means a significant percentage of the planet has a temperature below the boiling point of water and above the freezing point, are too unstable. Other planets pull them out of orbit, asteroids crash into them, some cosmic catastrophe wipes out budding life.”

“Why didn’t that happen on earth?”

“The presence of the moon helped enormously. Stabilized the planet’s orbit. And this is a quiet little corner of your galaxy.”

“We like it,” Egg admitted.

“You should. If it were busier, with a nearby nova or supernova, or a neighborhood black hole, or your solar system had a massive planet in an irregular orbit, or a star that was a little bit bigger or smaller, things would be much more exciting and higher life forms wouldn’t exist. Wouldn’t have had the time to evolve.”

“The moon,” Egg mused, looking at it.

“It was torn from the planet by an asteroid collision, when the solar system was very young. Reduced the size of the planet by one-seventh and stabilized the earth’s orbit, causing it to be more regular. Lucky for you.”

“Is this situation rare?”

“Oh, no. There are millions of solid planets with life on them. The universe is a big place, though. A really, really big place. The edges are expanding at a huge fraction of the speed of light. The edges are traveling away from each other at a combined speed that exceeds the speed of light, so light from one side of the universe never reaches the other.”

Egg hadn’t entirely swallowed Solo’s tale of his life and adventures, so he shot back, “We’re lucky? You are implying that intelligent life that realizes it is mortal is a good thing. Is it?”

A trace of a smile crossed Solo’s face, and he didn’t reply.

Egg pressed. “And you, Solo. Let’s talk about you. Perhaps everyone on your planet lives for a thousand of our years, but I doubt it. Evolution would slow to a crawl. So is your experience typical of your species?”

“No,” Solo said curtly.

Looking at the planet from this vantage point was an emotional experience that hit Solo hard. It had been over a millennium since he had seen this view. Since then he had lived through so many experiences and known so many people, almost all of whom were long dead, and he alone walked on into the unpredictable, unknowable future. A good thing? Wasn’t that Egg’s question?

Well, is life a good thing or a bad thing? A positive or a negative? Or just a wash?

He had had the good parts, and the bad. And those times when he was unsure if the pain was outweighed somehow by something more.

Like the time … oh, it was a winter day, he remembered that. Cold, the naked trees, the wind … The weather had been warm for a few days and the snow on the ground had melted, but spring was still a long way off.

The hut was one of a dozen or so near the river, among the big trees. He could never remember seeing trees so large, each over five feet in diameter, as if they had been growing since the earth was born.

Inside the hut was an old, old woman. She lay on a bed of skins and dry leaves that had been gathered earlier in the fall and only now spread to give the bed some softness, some cushioning. Her hair was white, her face lined, her breathing irregular. He sat beside her and held her hand … examined the blue veins and tendons that stood out clearly … looked at the work-cracked nails, the calluses on the fingers …

Said her name.

She opened her eyes. She didn’t recognize him, which was perhaps fortunate. The experience was one he wanted, and was for him. Not for her. She wouldn’t have understood. She would have been confused, frightened.

He studied her features. Yes, he could see something of her mother in her. Of course, her mother died young, murdered by Hurons. He had taken his vengeance, glutted it, a memory he now regretted. Vengeance does not bring back the dead, does not solace the empty place.

But he was younger then and he didn’t really think about it. Just did it. The others expected it of him, and he thought perhaps she would have expected it too. So he had given himself to revenge and blood and slaughter … and eventually the Hurons were no more. He and his warriors killed them all. All! Each and every one. Until not a drop of their blood flowed in the veins of any living creature. The arrow, the tomahawk, the knife … blood. Red blood, warm, flowing freely …

Their daughter knew none of that, of course. She had been an infant, nursed and loved and taught her words by her mother’s parents.

Now she was old. Very old. Eighty winters. Most of her teeth were gone, and her heartbeat was irregular — he could feel it in her wrist.

His wife was murdered … and eighty years later he sat watching their daughter die of old age.

He couldn’t stay, of course; that would have aroused suspicions. So he spent another hour with the old woman, said he had known her sons and grandsons, which was true, and then left long before the shadows turned to darkness.

It had snowed that night. Now, sitting in the saucer pilot’s seat, staring at the eternal blue Pacific and the clouds swirling over it, he remembered walking through the forest in the snow crying for his wife, Minnehaha, and their daughter … and for himself.

He had lived too long.

He knew it then.

He knew it now.