Saucer: The Conquest

2

The obsidian sky full of stars, the weightless feel-ing, the earth hanging beside the spaceplane with storms over the oceans and snowy mountain peaks twinkling in the sun — Charley Pine had been here before and been forever changed by the experience. Now she was back. She was sooo excited… and just as her personal karma account began overflowing she remembered Rip and felt the tiniest twinge of guilt.

Yeah, so, he wasn't here! He was only twenty-three, for Christ's sake. He didn't earn a seat in a spaceplane's cockpit; she did! All those years in college, flying, test pilot school— yet she wouldn't be here if it weren't for Rip.

Well, she would tell him about it when she returned to earth. That was the best that she could do. She brushed Rip away and returned to the business at hand, controllers and trajectories and systems.

Charley Pine took physical control of Jeanne d'Arc for the first time over the Pacific Ocean to effect the rendezvous with the orbiting fuel cell. With the sound of her breathing rasping in her ears and her heart thudding in her chest, she made tiny control inputs as the spaceplane crossed the distance between the two orbiting bodies. She knew from her military flying experience and the simulator that it was necessary to check the closure rate on the instruments — not to rely on her eyes — since the rate would appear to increase as the bodies closed the distance.

With Lalouette monitoring the instruments and calling out the distance and closure rate, she flew the spaceplane into the rendezvous position and stopped all closure. Only after all relative motion had stopped did she nudge the controls enough to gently bring the spaceplane into the fueling port. The clunk of the hydraulic latches closing, locking the ship firmly to the tank, was the best sound she had heard in years. She breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"Nicely done," said a male voice, not Lalouette.

She looked around. Pierre Artois was watching. He was suspended in the cabin, floating, maintaining his position by occasionally touching something fixed to the ship. Even though this was his first journey into space, he looked quite comfortable.

"Thank you."

"If I may ask, mademoiselle, why did you accept my offer to join our expedition?"

Charley glanced at Lalouette, a working pilot who had beaten out hundreds of other applicants for one of the four first-pilot positions, and saw him glance curiously at her.

"I was looking for a flying job," Charley replied, "and you made an offer." She shrugged. Gallicly, she hoped.

Artois wasn't satisfied. "I have heard that you are a part owner of the patents on the flying saucer propulsion technology that was recently licensed by Monsieur Cantrell. If true, you must be a very wealthy woman."

Lalouette's eyes widened when he heard that remark. To the best of Charley's knowledge, her ownership of a portion of the proceeds from the saucer propulsion licensing deals had not been publicly reported. Apparently Artois had done his homework before he hired her.

"That comment is going to do wonderful things for my social life," Charley shot back. "Listen, Mr. Artois. I'm a professional aviator. Flying is what I do. I'll fly anything you people own, including spaceships, as long as the paychecks cash. Bounce one and I'm outta here."

"Sounds fair enough," Artois said dryly, and shoved off.

Charley Pine shrugged at Lalouette, one of those what-can-you-do? shrugs that are popular in New York, and together the two of them began the process of readying Jeanne a" Arc to receive fuel as the coast of California slid under them.

It was after midnight in Missouri when Egg Cantrell went looking for Rip. The assorted scientists were fast asleep in every bed in the house, on the couches and on cots in a large tent a rental firm had erected on the lawn.

In the hangar, Egg called Rip's name, got a muffled answer and followed the sound. He found two feet sticking out from under his old pickup, the 1957 Dodge.

"What are you doing under there?"

"I'm about finished. Two more minutes."

Egg's hangar was built during World War II for the Army Air Corps; it and the nearby air traffic control tower where. Rip was sleeping these days were the only structures still remaining from the military past. Egg had jackhammered the concrete runways years ago and reseeded them in grass. Today the hangar contained an Aeronca Champ airplane, several old farm tractors, an Indian Chief motorcycle, a Model A Ford and an assortment of antique furniture and farm machinery he had acquired at estate sales, plus numerous items he just found interesting, such as an old printing press and Linotype he purchased when the county newspaper went digital.

This old Dodge wasn't his everyday pickup, of course. He had paid two hundred dollars for it way back when, and amazingly, it still ran.

Rip crawled out from under the engine compartment, wiped his hands on a rag and said, "Okay. I'm ready to try it."

"Try what?"

There was a piece of plywood in the bed of the truck. Rip picked up a corner and let Egg see the automobile batteries underneath arranged in rows. He put the plywood back in place, flashed a grin at his uncle and got into the pickup. The engine started right up.

"The problem is power," he explained to his uncle as he revved the engine. His eyes gleamed. Egg hadn't seen him this excited since Charley left, forty-four days ago. Egg had been counting. "The engine in the pickup doesn't make enough of it," Rip continued. "I use the generator to charge the batteries, then use the batteries to power the system."

"What system?"

"Stand back a little and I'll show you."

Egg took several hesitant steps backward, and as he did the pickup lifted off the dirt floor of the hangar and rose several feet in the air, where it stopped. The nose was at least a foot higher than the rear corner of the truck, which was barely clear of the ground.

"Antigravity," Rip said, laughing. "I built a small system like the one in the saucer. What do you think?"

"Seems as if you have a bit more work to do."

"I haven't got the lift lines in the right places. Turns out it's a bit more difficult than I figured, but that's the way it goes. Life is tougher than it looks, isn't it? I'll iron out the glitches." He turned off the engine of the pickup, which had no effect on the vehicle's position in the air. "Stand back and watch me move this thing around."

Egg took several more steps backward, bumped into a tractor, and decided to take cover behind it. As he did so the truck silently moved aft toward the center of the hangar, still suspended at an odd angle above the dirt floor.

Rip tried to make the truck turn — and succeeded in slewing the nose around dangerously, almost hitting Egg's Aeronca. He got it stopped just in time. Dust from the hangar floor swirled around.

"Sorry, Unc. I'll take this thingamabob outside." With that, the truck crept forward out of the hangar. It slowly accelerated until it was moving at about the speed a man could trot. It crossed the runway, heading for the trees on the other side.

Egg could hear Rip cussing. He was saying some rather nasty words in a loud, clear voice when the truck smacked into a large tree on the far side of the runway.

There it sat intimately embracing the tree, the nose several feet in the air, the rear still sagging dangerously. Rip climbed out of the cab and jumped to the ground. He was standing with his hands on his hips staring at the damaged grill and bumper when Egg reached him.

"Another technical problem rears its ugly head," Egg murmured.

Rip shook his head in frustration.

Then the batteries powering the antigravity device began losing their charge. The truck eased toward the ground inch by inch until it was once again sitting on all four wheels.

"Darn," Rip said mournfully.

Egg couldn't help himself. He exploded in laughter.

When he finally calmed down, he asked, "Why, pray tell, are you putting antigravity rings on that old truck?"

"Actually I'm trying to figure out how to put them on the

Extra. Then I'd have a fast, maneuverable airplane that could land anywhere. We could make airports obsolete. Thought I'd start with the pickup to see what the problems were."

"Hmm."

"Yeah, I know. If I'd done this two months ago maybe Charley would still be here." He raised his hands and dropped them. "What can I say?"

The sliver of new moon had set hours ago. Egg and Rip were lying side by side in the grass looking at the stars through gaps in the clouds when Rip said, "She's on her way."

"Wish you were with her?"

"Well, heck yeah. Big adventure. 'Course, she's an older woman and all. You just knew a romance like that wouldn't work out. She's a good pilot, though."

"So what are you going to do with your life, Rip?"

"Get on with it. Nothing else I can do, is there?"

Jeanne d'Arc left earth orbit with a long burn designed to accelerate her to escape velocity. With the Global Positioning System (GPS), automatic star trackers and the small onboard computers that didn't exist in the mid-1960s when the Apollo craft were designed, the French ship was much more self-contained than the American moon ships had been. Due to the vast strides in computer technology, each computer on Jeanne d'Arc contained more computing capacity than all the NASA computers together had when Apollo 11 successfully voyaged to the moon.

The crew had taken off their space suits, positioned the ship in the proper orientation, checked the computer programs, locked in the autopilot and waited.

The burn, when it came, was a rush of acceleration and emotion. The trajectory they hoped to achieve was a parabola that would take Jeanne dArc to within sixty miles of the lunar surface. If the spaceplane didn't decelerate as it circled the moon, it would slingshot around it and return to earth. Tears leaked from the corners of Charley's eyes and were pulled back into her hair by the acceleration, which was designed to raise their velocity to a trifle over thirty-five thousand feet per second.

An hour later, with the engines secured, all the checklists finished and the planet slowly falling behind, Charley and Lalouette unstrapped and floated out of their ergonomically correct couches.

Lalouette gave Charley a big grin and said, "You did very well. I have never before flown with a beautiful woman." Apparently the fifty hours he had spent with Charley in the simulator this past month didn't count.

"I'm so happy for you," Charley Pine said sweetly.

"We'll get to know each other much better in the coming weeks," he said confidently.

"Down, boy. Remember the cameras." Small cameras in the cockpit were sending continuous streams of audio and video back to Mission Control in Paris. Unfortunately there were no cameras in the sleeping compartments.

Well, she had known the French were romantically challenged when she signed up for this gig. She hadn't given that aspect of the adventure much thought, though, because she had been so busy. She didn't even know if Lalouette was married. Hadn't asked, hadn't looked at his ring finger, wasn't the least bit interested. The worst of it was that the more difficult she was to conquer, the more the Frenchman would enjoy the chase.

With that gloomy thought in mind Charley Pine floated down the passage toward the head.

"Jean-Paul Lalouette said you are rich. Is it true?" The person asking was Claudine Courbet, an engineer on her way to the lunar base for a six-month stay. She and Charley Pine shared a tiny cabin. Neither had any say in the pairing since they were the only women on the flight.

Since Claudine asked the question in French, Charley had to translate the question in her head, then think of an appropriate response. "Oui, " she said, not knowing enough of the language to deflect the question.

"Some people think that explains it."

"What? Explains what?"

"Why you are here. Did you or your family agree to pay money so you could be on the crew?"

"No."

"Someone said you probably did after they heard Jean-Paul's story. Pierre has invested his fortune in this project. Some say he is down to his last euro. That's why he sold a round-trip to the American. Still, he'll never get the money back."

"Easy come, easy go," Charley Pine said.

"On the other hand, some people said you are Artois' next girlfriend," Claudine confided, then hurried to add, "but I do not think that. He has a girlfriend, an extremely rich one — her grandfather is one of those Italian car people. She is very pretty even though her breasts are not real."

"The curse of the store-bought tits," Charley murmured in English. "I thought he was married?"

"Oh, yes. Julie Artois. But men like Pierre also have women friends. It is expected."

"I see," said Charley Pine, who didn't. The thought of being some married man's mistress left her cold. She began the process of zipping herself into her hammock so that she could sleep. This was the first time she had tried it in the weightless environment, and she was finding it a serious chore. When she was in training, the French had told her all tasks in weightless environments took more time and effort. "How do you say 'damn' in French?" she asked Claudine.

Her roommate ignored that comment. "Pierre was under extreme pressure to include a European in the flying crews or lunar team," she continued earnestly. "For political reasons, you understand. The European Union and all that. He refused to be pressured, but he had to do something since the government is investing so much in the lunar project. He would have been wise to hire a European scientist long ago and be done with it, but he did not wish to chance a breach in security. I think he recruited you to silence his critics in the government."

"Those pesky critics," Charley replied. She managed to tug the zipper home and sighed in relief. She had hated sleeping bags since her camping days as a preteen. Just when you finally get zipped in, you have to go to the bathroom. Thank God she remembered to go before she started this evolution.

Before Claudine could get started on another juicy tidbit, Charley asked, "How do you like your first spaceflight?"

That got Claudine revved up. Her husband refused to allow her to go, but she signed up anyway. This was the adventure of a lifetime; the view of the earth from space was fantastic; she had dreamed of standing on the moon looking at earth all her life, ever since she saw those photos of the Apollo crews as a child; she would just get another husband when she returned to earth. She was still chattering away when Charley drifted off to sleep.

Charley Pine awoke when Claudine Courbet closed the compartment door behind her as she left. Charley lay floating weightless in her hammock for a few minutes trying to get back to sleep. It was a lost cause.

She examined the compartment thoughtfully. It was not large; every cubic inch was utilized in some manner. Color-coded pipes and conduits ran through the room against the wall that was the ceiling when the spaceplane was on earth. Emergency oxygen masks were rigged on one wall beside a fire alarm and portable extinguisher. Near the portable extinguisher was a nozzle on a flexible hose that hooked into the ship's main firefighting system.

Arranged so that she could see it while lying in her hammock was a computer screen. She reached out and turned it on. In seconds she was looking at the main systems displays. A touch of her finger brought up navigation information. Another touch gave her a camera's view of earth, a huge blue presence surrounded by the blackness of deep space. She lay for a few moments watching the night line move over the surface as the massive orb rotated.

As she watched she realized that the planet was moving ever so slowly away from the camera. This was an illusion, of course. Actually the spaceplace was flying away from the planet in free fall on a course that would put it in orbit around the moon in about seventy hours.

Her parents had divorced when she was seven. She grew up with her mother, who taught school in a Washington suburb. During the summers she visited her father, a building contractor in Atlanta. She had an unremarkable childhood, doing all the usual things that bright girls growing up in the American suburbs do. She played soccer, field hockey, basketball and baseball, giggled with her friends, went on dates, made straight As in junior high and high school — and managed to avoid the marijuana and hard drugs that many of her friends dabbled in, and some were consumed by. Was in a bad car wreck and walked away with only a broken arm. Decided she wanted to fly and worked hard to get an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The flying had been challenging, so she applied for the test pilot program and was accepted. Moved in with a few guys along the way and always moved out after a while.

Just when she gave up on the air force, Rip and his flying saucer came into her life.

Rip Cantrell. As she watched the earth on the monitor she thought about him, about his face and smile and touch.

She had it bad. Damn!

The heck of it was that the kid hadn't really grown up yet. He was willing to lie around doing nothing — well, doing nothing but having sex five times a day and eating three meals — while the days slid past one by one, turning into weeks, then months.

She couldn't live like that.

Oh, well. She would have to make a decision about Rip after she returned from the moon. She had agreed with Artois to work for the French lunar project for at least one year, making at least three lunar flights. When she returned from the moon in three weeks, she would have a week off. She decided to call Rip and invite him to France.

That decision made, she was still too keyed up to sleep.

She unzipped the hammock, got out of it and stowed the thing, then checked her reflection in a mirror. She had two hours before she had to be back in the cockpit. She decided to explore, maybe visit with some of the other people on board and share the adventure.

Charley Pine opened the door of the compartment and launched herself slowly through it, careful not to carom off the bulkhead. She closed the door behind her.

Charley Pine found Pierre Artois and Jean-Paul Lalouette filming a cell phone commercial on the flight deck. Artois had a small phone in hand and was placing a call to someone while the cameras rolled. Perhaps, Charley thought, Claudine was right about Pierre's financial situation.

Charley watched a few moments, then drifted back along the passageway. The chef was preparing a meal. No freeze-dried grub on this French space freighter — the crew ate French cuisine and drank small portions of wine with every meal. Preparing real food and serving it in a weightless environment was a serious challenge, but the French were up to it.

The chef offered Charley a sample of several of his creations. She used an eating utensil that totally enclosed the morsel while it was under way from a covered dish to the mouth. The food was delicious and the covered spoon ingenious, and Charley said as much to the chef, who beamed.

The cargo bay was the heart of the ship, its raison d'etre. One of its doors was ajar — it was usually locked — so Charlie opened it. Containers and large assemblies took up most of the sizable compartment. Every container or assembly had to be carefully suspended and braced so that it would not move when the rocket engines were running nor drift in weightlessness. There was little room in the cargo bay for people; the passageways through the cargo reminded Charlie of the passageways in submarines — except you floated effortlessly along this one, propelling yourself with an occasional gentle push, now and then touching something to prevent impacting the sides.

She saw people near the rear of the compartment, where the heaviest items were placed. One of them was Claudine Courbet. With a flick of her wrist Charley started that way. As she neared the container Claudine and a man were working on, she saw that they had taken one of the container's panels off to expose the contents. Both had their heads inside as Charley approached.

There wasn't much room, so Charley waited until someone noticed her. Claudine and the man were conversing, in muffled French that Charley couldn't understand.

Claudine finally backed out into the passage and saw the pilot. A look of surprise crossed her face. "What are you doing here?"

"Visiting. And you?"

The man also backed out and turned his back to the container, almost as if he didn't want Charley to see inside.

"I thought you were asleep," Claudine said.

"I was. Obviously now I am awake."

Claudine nodded her head at her coworker, then started toward Charley. "Come, let's go to the salon where we can talk. Dinner will be ready soon."

"Fine," said Charley Pine, and did a somersault to get her head pointed in the right direction. A pull with both hands sent her shooting along the passageway. Claudine followed her.

From her seat in the cockpit of Jeanne d 'Arc, Charley Pine faced a sky full of stars. The moon was off to the right about fifty degrees. The spaceplane wasn't heading for it, but for a point in space where the moon would be when the spaceplane arrived.

She was alone in the cockpit, which was a very pleasant feeling. By regulation, one of the pilots had to be in the cockpit at all times. She and Lalouette took turns, four hours on, four hours off.

She felt as if she had lived her entire life to get to this moment, flying through space with the earth at her back and the universe ahead. It was heady stuff. Cool, she thought. Super cool. A smile lingered on her lips.

Once again her eye swept over the computer readouts presented on the cockpit multifunction displays (MFDs).

Yes, the star locators were locked on their guide stars, the radar was indicating the precise distance to the moon, and the computers had solved the navigation problem and were continuously updating it. They presented the solution in the form of a crosshairs on the heads-up display (HUD), plotting velocity through space against time to go to the initial point, which was the point at which Jeanne d 'Arc would begin its maneuvers to enter lunar orbit. Best of all, all three flight computers were in complete and total agreement.

Absolute agreement among three individuals was only possible if those three were machines, she thought. "Not any three people alive," she muttered.

She checked ship's systems, flicking through presentations on another MFD. Hull integrity, air pressure, atmospheric gas levels, fuel remaining on board, water pressure in the lines, temps in the galley, internal and external hull temps — yes, all were as they should be, well within normal parameters. It made her feel a bit superfluous sitting here monitoring all of this, and yet the spaceplane's systems were not monitored continuously from Earth. To save money and weight, the French made their ships more self-sufficient than the old American space shuttles or Apollo spacecraft. Mission Control was always there, a valuable asset in case things went wrong, only a push of a button away on the radio, but truly, the pilots were in charge.

Charley was wearing a headset so that she could hear any transmissions from Mission Control. There had been none since she checked in twenty minutes ago. She had to check in every hour on the hour.

She pulled the earpiece from her left ear and placed it against her head so that she could listen to the sounds of the ship.

One would think that every click and clang inside the ship would carry throughout the structure, and it did, but not as audible noise. The ship was too well insulated for that. If one put a hand on the outside hull, the random tapping and rapping could be felt. One could almost imagine the ship was alive. She rested her right hand on the frame of the side window to enjoy the tiny tremors.

She was gradually coming down from the adrenaline high that had kept her wired for the last twenty-four hours. Maybe after this watch she could sleep.

She yawned. Actually, she was getting sleepy now.

Okay, Charlotte, old girl, stay awake!

The good news was that if she drifted off, any ship's system that failed or exceeded normal operational parameters would illuminate a yellow caution light and sound an audible warning. It sounded like a siren and would wake the nearly dead. A different tone would sound if one of the flight computers disagreed with the other two.

If she slept, the ship would continue on course, precisely as if she were awake, and Mission Control would give her a blast if she missed her hourly call-in. And yet, she was a professional. "I am not going to sleep in the cockpit," she declared out loud.

"I certainly hope not," said a male voice behind her, startling her. She had heard nothing as he came in.

She glanced over her shoulder. Pierre Artois.

"Bonjour" she said, successfully hiding her irritation at being surprised.

"Bonjour, mademoiselle. How do we progress?"

In answer, she punched up the navigation display on the MFD and pointed to the readouts. "Zipping right along, as you can see."

"So how does Jeanne d'Arc compare to your flying saucer?" Artois asked as he maneuvered himself into the pilot's seat and donned a seat belt to hold him there.

Charley considered her answer before she spoke. "This ship is nicer, more people friendly. The saucer was more of a pickup truck, designed to haul people and cargo back and forth from orbit to a planet. The saucer had no cooking, sleeping or toilet facilities. Very Spartan."

"Ah, the creature comforts. These days one expects them."

They discussed the differences for a few minutes, then the conversation petered out.

Finally Artois said, "And Madame Courbet, your stateroom companion, are you getting along with her?"

"She's very nice."

"Yes," he agreed. "Nice. Indeed."

Artois sat for a few more minutes, then unstrapped and pushed himself out of the pilot's seat with a gentle nudge. As he floated aft for the hatch he said, "I hope you have a good voyage."

"You too," said Charley Pine. She glanced back to make sure he actually left the compartment.

What was that all about} she wondered.

A few minutes later Joe Bob Hooker caromed into the cockpit. "Just like a goddamn cue ball," he said to Charley. He held himself suspended behind the seats and stared through the windscreen.

"Oh, my God! Would you look at that?" He shifted so he could look out the pilot's side window. "If that don't beat all! Who'd a believed it, I ask you that. Who'd a thought it?"

"So is this worth twenty-five mil?"

"Can't take it with you, kid. No, sir." Hooker crept forward so that he could look back over the tiny left wing at earth. Finally, when he had had enough, he slid backward and stabilized in a position where he could look at her. "It was more than that, actually, with the exchange rate and all. And the Frenchies made me pay a half million for my flight suit. They don't know it, but I'm taking it with me when I get home."

"Hell, yes."

"I'm from Texas," he continued. "Little crossroads in west Texas nobody ever heard of. Grew up without a pot to piss in. Went to Dallas right after high school and looked for something to get into. Figured cars were the deal. Everybody's always going to need a ride. Everything else comes and goes, but everybody will always need wheels. Started with a used car lot and learned the business. Bought another. Finally got into new cars. Sold my soul to the banks, but finally made it pay. Own a string of dealerships now. Can sell you any brand on the planet that's legal to sell in the U. S. of A."

"Already have a car," Charley said.

"They wear out. That's the good thing about 'em."

"So you're married?" Charley asked, for something to say.

"Third marriage," Joe Bob said with a sigh. "Cute little thing from Highland Park. Tan and toned up tight. 'Bout your age, I figure, a year older than my oldest daughter. I was the biggest bankroll available when she ditched her first husband. Loves to spend money and do the Junior League thing. She thought I was crazy to sign up for this flight, but what the hell, she's fixed for life if I don't come back, so she said yes. Get her a young stud-bucket the afternoon they tell her the good news."

"I see."

"Well, you should. You got the best seat in the house."

With that he squirmed around and launched himself aft.

When she finished her watch, Charley Pine crashed in her sleeping bag. She awoke refreshed and alert.

After another four-hour watch, during which Pierre Artois and two of the engineer passengers did a show for French television from the rear of the cockpit, she decided she could do with a bath. This task turned out to be a challenge in the weightless environment. One stripped and entered a tiny bathing chamber. A push of a button sprayed a minute quantity of water, about a pint, upon the bather from four dozen jets. When the dousing stopped, the bather scrubbed him or herself with a soapy rag. A touch of a button gave another few seconds of rinse water, which was then suctioned out of the chamber to be boiled and recycled.

Charley managed to wet her hair, which would have to do. No wonder most of the men wore their hair very short.

Water was precious. Jeanne d'Arc was carrying several hundred gallons to the lunar base for use there. It would have to be continuously purified and reused. Still, inevitably, some was lost. Charley knew that the French were drilling into the lunar surface searching for ice formed when meteors struck, or even older ice that crystallized after the moon was torn from proto-earth by a meteor billions of years ago. If they found a significant amount of ice, the lunar base had a bright future. If they didn't, it would never be more than a research outpost, one that would only be manned from time to time when political and financial realities allowed.

Artois believed the ice was there. Indeed, he had publicly guaranteed it to the French people. If it couldn't be found he was going to be embarrassed and French taxpayers were going to get the shaft — which is what taxpayers had been getting since the dawn of time, so they sort of expected it.

After she wriggled into her clean flight suit, Charley went exploring again, working her way aft and glancing into every compartment. Most of the other crew members were asleep, including Claudine Courbet. The adrenaline high that had carried everyone through launch and the first twenty-four hours in space had finally worn off.

Charley carefully inspected the ship's batteries, looking for acid leaks. All the ship's power right now was coming from batteries and solar panels. Electrical power was one of the absolute requirements for space travel; without it the rocket engines couldn't be restarted, and the ship would fly forever on a voyage into eternity.

Even the chef was asleep. Charley sampled some bread, cheese and wine, hummed a few bars of something romantic, then moved on.

Floating along the passageways was very cool, she thought. This small vessel of steel and aluminum reminded her of a seed pod. Filled with air and water, it carried its tiny blobs of protoplasm from one small island in space to another.

The coolest way to shoot the passageways was with the minimum motion of hands and feet, she decided, sort of like a seal slipping through an ice tunnel under the Arctic. Just push off with a flip of the wrist to start moving, then sweeten the trajectory when necessary with a touch of the bulkhead or deck or ceiling.

There was no one in the cargo bay. Charley flippered along the narrow passageways, checking tie-downs. When she found herself in front of the large container that Claudine and the male technician had been looking into, she paused. The container wore a key-actuated padlock.

She pursed her lips, then began examining the other containers more closely. None was locked. In fact, five minutes of inspecting revealed that there was only one padlock in the bay. Perhaps on the ship.

She went back to look again.

Now she was curious. Why would anyone lock a cargo container? It made no sense. Everything in the compartment was on the manifest.

Or was it?

She idly reached for the lock and gave an experimental tug. It opened in her hand. She stared at it dumbly for several seconds before she realized that it hadn't been locked. Whoever put it on hadn't squeezed it hard enough, so the lock failed to catch.

She took it off and began opening the six latches. Bracing herself, she lifted the container door.

And found herself staring at a symbol spray-painted in red onto a steel container.

She looked for five or six seconds, then shut the hatch, closed all the latches and installed the padlock.

Should she lock it, or leave it as she found it?

She decided that leaving it as she found it was the better choice. She glided on out of the compartment and shut the hatch behind her.

Charley had seen the cargo manifest, actually looked through it, a week or so ago. She didn't recall anything on the manifest that was radioactive. Nor should there be. Power at the lunar base was supplied by generators, batteries and solar panels. In fact, several solar arrays were in the cargo bay.

Isotopes? For running down drill holes in the search for water?

In the small compartment they shared, Claudine Courbet was zipped into her hammock fast asleep. She had tied the arms of her flight suit around one of the hammock hooks, so the legs and body were floating in midair, swaying to and fro as the moving air stirred them.

Charley Pine eyed the sleeping woman, then felt the flight suit. Something hard in one pocket. She reached in and pulled the object from the pocket to inspect it. Yep, a radioactivity safety badge. A few seconds later she found the key to the padlock. She checked the leg pockets. Eureka! A digital Geiger counter, about the size of a fountain pen.

She returned the objects to the flight suit pockets and headed for the cockpit. When she reached the door she saw Pierre Artois in the copilot seat. He and Lalouette were engaged in earnest conversation. They ceased the instant they glimpsed Charley.

Very curious, she thought.