Saucer: The Conquest

6

Pierre Artois and Henri Salmon found Claudine Courbet stretched out on the floor beside the beam generator. A half-full bottle of water sat on top of the control console. Artois squirted some in Claudine's face. Her eyes opened.

Salmon lifted Claudine to a sitting position. Artois squatted and examined the engineer's face. Her jaw was severely swollen. He was still looking her over when his wife, Julie Artois, came in.

She knelt beside Pierre, who tersely filled her in on the situation.

"What did you tell Pine?" she snarled at Claudine.

Courbet's eyes swam. Julie Artois slapped her. That focused her eyes.

"What did you tell Pine?" she repeated.

Claudine took a few seconds to collect herself before she spoke. "She knew about the reactor. Came in here to see what it was going to be used for."

"How did she get in?"

"Followed the men who wheeled the reactor in on a dolly, I suppose. I thought she knew. I thought she was one of us."

'You were told that she wasn't."

"But she was here, and she knew so much." Claudine really believed this.

'You know my rules."

"She jerked the covering off the beam generator," Claudine explained. "Recognized it for what it was."

Pierre rose and walked around aimlessly.

"Hiring her was really stupid," Claudine continued. She struggled to her feet. Once erect, she glared at Julie. "She flew in a saucer, knows what's in the computers. And she can add two and two. Of all the pilots on the planet you people could have hired—"

"Enough!" Julie commanded with a chopping gesture. "What's done is done. How long before you can get the generator operational?"

"We'll have to hook up the reactor and test the system. Can't run it to full power without serious testing, not unless you want this cave to glow in the dark for the next ten thousand years."

"How long?"

"A week. Perhaps a day or two less."

'You have three days," Julie said, staring at Claudine. "And if you don't make it work, I have people who can. We'll put you in the air lock without a space suit and watch you die. Do you understand?"

Claudine Courbet appealed to Pierre, who turned his face away. She turned back to Julie. 'You are really sick, madame."

"The future of mankind is at stake," Julie Artois said. "I'm not going to let you or anyone else stand in our way."

Julie looked at Salmon. "Have someone with her every moment. Don't leave her alone," she said coldly.

Then she walked out. Pierre followed.

They went to their private suite and made sure the door was locked behind them before they spoke.

'Years of work, a decade of planning, billions of euros invested, the future of mankind at stake, and one foolish woman allows another to sabotage everything!" Pierre stormed.

His wife took a deep breath, closed her eyes momentarily, then opened them again.

Pierre rubbed his eyes, tried to steady his breathing.

Illogical, stupid, venal, selfish people he understood. He had certainly met enough of them through the years. Those people he could handle. On the other hand, the Charlotte Pines of the world were a different breed.

He had counted on the spaceplane, which was a guaranteed ride back to earth when the time came. Without it, he and everyone else on this rock were marooned until another spaceplane made the trip.

"Can we force the French to send a spaceplane?" he asked Julie.

"Nothing important has changed," his wife said curtly. "Key people in the government are with us, as they have always been. Under our leadership France will assume its rightful place in the world. Our friends want us to succeed— they will bring Europe with them. France, Europe and the world. The glory of France will shine as it never has before."

The pitch and timbre of her voice rose as she spoke, mesmerizing Pierre. She had always had the ability to show him the grandeur that lay just beyond the shadows. He believed, and he knew others would too.

Still… "What of the British, the Americans?" he asked now.

"Their day is done. The world will speak French. If they refuse to see reason, we will bring them to their knees." She made a fist. "And destroy them."

After rocket engine shutdown, when the three flight computers all agreed that the spaceplane was established on course to an earth orbit rendezvous with the refueling tank, Charley checked the ship's habitability systems one more time, leaned back and sighed.

Without the background chatter from Mission Control and people in the ship talking on the intercom, the cockpit was unusually quiet. The only sounds that could be heard were ship's noises, the hum of air circulation fans and an occasional thumping from a pump that kicked in for a few seconds.

She yawned. "What say we see if there's anything aboard this garbage scow to eat, then grab a few winks."

"Maybe you had better tell me why we did an unscheduled boogie without people or cargo," Joe Bob Hooker said. "Sorta curious, I guess."

"Over food. I haven't eaten" — she looked at her watch— "in fifteen hours."

She unstrapped and headed for the locker where the space suits were kept. After she had properly stored hers, she went to the kitchen, where she found Joe Bob floating around.

"There isn't much," he said. "Gonna lose a few pounds on this flying fat farm."

He extracted some tubes of pureed goo from a refrigerator and tried to read the French labels aloud. "What's chevaR"

"Horse, I think."

"I forgot that we're dealing with gourmets. Here's something green."

"I'll take it. Nuke it to warm it up."

"This red stuff looks good to me. I'm a real sucker for red goo; can't get enough of it."

There was wine. With a squeeze bottle of vino each and their goo, they headed back for the flight deck.

The earth was visible through the windscreen, off to the right. They were on course for the point in space where the planet would be in three days. Behind the left wing, a sliver of the sunlit surface of the moon was visible. On the right, the surface of the moon was still in shadow, a dark presence.

As they squeezed and squirted, Charley told Joe Bob about finding the reactor on the outbound voyage, her inspection of the observatory and her conversation with Claudine Courbet.

When she ran down, Joe Bob said, "Pierre Artois, ruler of the universe. Not very catchy."

"Yeah. He's not a corporal with a cool name, like Hitler."

"I see your point. So what do you want to do?"

"I'm inclined to do nothing for a while. We have about seventy hours before we rendezvous with the fuel tank."

"Is the French government behind Artois?"

"Beats me. The politicians put up a huge chunk of the cost of the lunar project. Either he's betraying them or he's acting on their behalf. But that's neither here nor there. I get on the radio with this tale and no one will believe me. You can bet Pierre is telling as big a lie as he thinks he can get away with right now."

"We could listen in. Don't the radios pick up the base frequencies?"

"We could listen," she acknowledged. "But I don't want to. He'll think I'm listening and threaten me. I don't need the aggravation. I want to sleep and think."

"So what happens when he starts firing this antigravity beam at the earth?"

"Assuming the reactor generates sufficient power, the polarity of the earth's gravitational field will be reversed in the area of the beam, so objects on the surface will be repelled by the planet."

"You mean…?"

"Stuff will fly off into space," Charley Pine said, and squirted the last of her wine into her mouth. "Buildings, ships, people, cities, everything."

'You can bet someone will launch a rocket with a nuclear warhead at the moon. Squash the lunar base."

"Not if Pierre zaps the rocket before it's ready to fly."

Joe Bob thought that over before he said, "Do you really think he'd kill people?"

"I think Pierre Artois is a Looney Tune. If Henri Salmon and Claudine Courbet are fair samples, he has surrounded himself with people just as crazy as he is. There is no way to predict what crazy people will do."

"Unless you're a shrink."

"I'm a pilot. Flying is my gig."

"What if he fires the beam at this ship?" Joe Bob asked softly.

"He'd have to know precisely where we are. We're not flying a straight line; we're flying a parabola. I don't think he has a radar that can pinpoint us. Space is a big place."

"Even bigger than Texas," Joe Bob admitted.

Pierre Artois sat in the base communications room collecting his thoughts as the radioman on duty played dumb with Mission Control. They had heard the exchange between Artois and Charley as she took off and were demanding an explanation.

He stared at the radio. All his plans, all his dreams, the very future of the human race, jeopardized by that woman! She wasn't talking on the radio to Mission Control, but she could come on at any time.

She had gone crazy. That was it. The stress of training and the flight — she was unsuitable, had become extremely paranoid, accused them of horrible things, then, when they tried to sedate her, escaped and stole the spaceplane.

He tapped the operator on the shoulder. The man moved from his chair. Pierre sat down, arranged the microphone in front of him and called Mission Control.

Rn> Cantrell was installing antigravity rings on the bottom of the Extra when his uncle Egg came down the hill and called, "Hey, Rip. Better come look at the television. Something has gone wrong on the moon."

Rip dropped his tools and trotted past the hangar. "What?"

"Come watch."

Soon they were in front of the television watching one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. A reporter was interviewing one of the spokespersons for the French space ministry.

"According to these guys," Egg said, summarizing, "one of the pilots has taken Jeanne d'Arc and left the moon, presumably headed back for earth. The flight wasn't authorized."

'You mean somebody stole the spaceplane?"

"An unauthorized flight, they called it."

"Same thing."

"So who is the pilot?"

"They haven't said. This happened six hours ago, according to the spokesman."

"So is Charley stranded on the moon or flying the plane?"

"Rip, I don't know."

The story unfolded slowly. Jeanne d'Arc had been the only spaceplane on the moon, so the passengers and scientific experiments that were to return aboard her were still there. Another spaceplane would be ready to launch in two weeks. Food and supplies at the lunar base were sufficient to sup-

port the people who were there for months, perhaps as many as six. The people — they implied there was more than one — aboard Jeanne d'Arc were maintaining radio silence. She had insufficient fuel to orbit the moon, return to the lunar base, then return to earth, so the experts believed she was heading for earth now.

The press conference raised more questions than it answered, yet the spokesperson refused to give additional information.

"They've gotten the when, what and where," Rip grumped, "and left out the who and why." 'Yeah."

"So what do you think, Unc?" "Something weird happened on the moon." As the sun set and night crept over the earth, they sat watching television, hoping for more information. None came.

Pierre Artois considered his options. He had, of course, told Mission Control and the French space minister that Charley Pine had gone insane and stolen Jeanne d'Arc. As he sat watching Claudine Courbet run tests on the reactor and slowly power it up, he examined the moves on the board.

Pine had said nothing on the radio to anyone so far, and perhaps she would not. With women, one never knew. On the other hand, what could she say that would hurt him? Well, she could stir up such a mess on earth that the people here at the lunar base might refuse to obey orders. Or try to refuse. Once he gave the governments of the earth his ultimatum, what she had to say wouldn't matter. Oh, she would undoubtedly wind up on television and tell what she had seen, but so what? That turn of events would be at worst only a minor irritant, Pierre concluded.

What he really needed was a way to get back to earth if the unexpected happened, as the unexpected was wont to do.

It didn't take much noodling to arrive at a method that might work. Pierre returned to the communications center and tuned the radio to a private frequency. Then he removed a notebook from his pocket and consulted it. When he found the code he wanted, he dialed it into the voice encoder. After the encoder timed in, he keyed the mike and began speaking.

Charley tossed and turned and dozed a little in her hammock, but she couldn't get to sleep. She couldn't relax knowing that no one was in the cockpit. Finally she gave up, took a shower and put on the clothes she had just taken off. She went to the galley to make coffee. Without gravity, the process was a chore. After the coffee grounds and water were heated together, you pushed a plunger that forced the hot liquid into a squeeze bottle while trapping the grounds. At least it was hot.

She went to the cockpit and strapped herself into the pilot's seat. She spent fifteen minutes checking ship's systems and the flight computers while pulling gently on the coffee. Satisfied that all was well, she sat staring at the earth, a black-and-white marble against a sky shot with stars. She could perceive deep blue hues amid the swirls of clouds. The planet appeared slightly larger than it had been when she went to bed. When they reached it, of course, it would fill half the sky.

She toyed with the controls of the radio panel. Did the French government know about Pierre's antigravity beam generator? Were the people at Mission Control on Artois' team, or was he a French traitor, an adventurer with an agenda? What were his plans?

She didn't know any of the answers. She put little faith in anything Claudine Courbet had told her. The woman defined "flake." On the other hand, the reactor and beam generator had been the real McCoys, despite the fact that lunar project managers had repeatedly assured a nervous public through the years that no nuclear material would be carried aloft from French soil.

She got out of the pilot's chair and went aft to the main communications room, where the video cameras and lights were stored. Artois had filmed a cell phone commercial from orbit. Did he leave the phone here?

After a one-minute search she found it. It had a sliding cover. She opened it and turned it on. No service, but the battery charge was good. She turned it off and pocketed it.

She was working on her second bottle of coffee when Joe Bob Hooker joined her. He hung his coffee squeeze bottle in midair, strapped himself into the copilot's seat so he would stay put, then rescued the bottle.

"Sleep okay?" he asked.

"No. You?"

"No. So what do you think we should do?"

"Can't decide."

"Me either."

They sat looking at the earth.

"I never met anyone like you," Joe Bob said.

Charley eyed him suspiciously. "Oh?"

'Yeah. You're a smart, take-charge, capable lady who isn't afraid to do what you think right. Aren't many of those around. Not where I've been hanging out, anyway."

"Don't get any big ideas."

"Heck, I'm a married man. You realize, though, that down in Texas there's folks who would say that we're shacked up."

Charley Pine couldn't help herself. She laughed. "Hoo boy."

"Honestly," he said. "Man and woman, all alone for three days. Long enough to fall in love or raise the dead."

"There went my reputation."

"So, you married?"

"No."

"Fool around?"

"Listen, Mr. Hooker. Joe Bob. I have a boyfriend. I think it might really lead to something. I want it to lead to something. You're a nice guy, but let's leave it there, shall we? Stifle yourself until you get home to your Junior Leaguer."

"We could be the first couple to do it in space."

"Wow, we'd be a footnote in the history books. It's tempting, but no thanks."

"Fair enough," he said. "Had to ask. You're mighty nice, and I wouldn't want to go on down the road not knowing. Owed it to myself."

"I understand. No hard feelings."

"So who we gonna call?"

"Damn if I know."

The news that Charley Pine had stolen Jeanne d'Arcwas a bombshell worldwide. Within ten minutes of the announcement by the French ministry, she was one of the most famous women on the planet, right up there in the pantheon with Britney Spears and Madonna.

The premier of France watched the media circus on television sets in his office with great misgivings. The accusation that Pine was mentally ill was met with media skepticism. Two hours after the announcement, CNBC had a clinical psychologist on camera pointing out that if she were really bonkers, she probably couldn't fly Jeanne d'Arc.

Of course, no one knew the spaceplane's exact location, so the talking heads had a lot of fun with the possibility that a crazy woman pilot and a Dallas car dealer were on a doomed voyage into the sun, or out of the solar system. Or perhaps they were going to immolate themselves in a spectacular fiery reentry to the earth's atmosphere.

It was great television, the biggest thing to hit the tube since the great saucer scare last year. And Charlotte Pine had been involved in that! What was Artois thinking?

The premier had never really trusted Artois, but had hitched his wagon to Pierre's lunar base scheme anyway. The spending had kick-started the French economy and made France the acknowledged leader of Europe. With 350 million people and the world's largest economy, the European Union was a superpower, and the premier was in the driver's seat.

That is, he was until Charley stole Jeanne d'Arc. The television announcers' uninformed speculation gave the premier a queasy feeling. In truth, the minister had known next to nothing when he briefed the premier via telephone before he announced the theft. The minister had grabbed at the straw profferred by Artois: Charley Pine was a deluded paranoid who had snapped.

Watching the story unfold on television, the premier felt like a man on a runaway train. He had no control, no way to stop the thing, no idea where it was going or what was going to happen when it got there. Except that the wreck was going to be bad. After an adult life spent in politics, he had a sixth sense about unexpected events. Artois could have gotten a German test pilot, or an Italian, but no, Pierre had to assert his independence, not to mention thumbing his nose at the premier, and bring in the American woman who flew the saucer last year.

The premier didn't think Charlotte Pine had gone crazy. He had met her once, and he came away thinking her a competent professional. If she hadn't gone crazy, Artois was lying.

By craning his neck, the premier could see the moon in the evening sky over Paris through his office window.

In Washington, the American president was also watching television, and he was in a fine mood. It was nice to watch a crisis unfold that would not cause him grief regardless of how it ended. No one was going to snipe at him. No one was going to demand legislation to right a wrong, an investigation to fix blame, new statutes to ensure it didn't happen again or a cabinet officer's head on a platter.

The president poured himself a diet soft drink and put his feet up on his desk. Aaah!

Amazingly, the woman involved was Charlotte Pine, who had caused him so much angst with the flying saucer scare a year ago. Thank heavens, this time she was picking on someone else.

She had had a boyfriend, he recalled, the saucer guy, ol' what's-his-name. Rip. Rip Something. That's the kid who found a flying saucer in a sandstone ledge in the Sahara and scared everyone on the planet. What a piece of work he was!

At least Rip was out of it. Now, if Pine would just keep that spaceplane out of the U.S. Let the French sweat for a change.

The president belted down a big swing of Diet Coke and belched loudly.

"You go, girl!" he said to Charley Pine, wherever she might be.

Charley slept in the pilot's seat of Jeanne d'Arc on the trip back to earth. She tried sleeping in the hammock she had occupied on the flight out and found that with no one in the cockpit monitoring the ship's systems and the navigation computers, sleep was impossible. So she went back to the flight deck, strapped herself into the seat and promptly dozed off. Every few hours she awakened and checked every system. Satisfied, she would allow herself to drift off again.

When she was fully awake, she thought about the situation. She discussed it with Joe Bob Hooker, who had no strong opinions. After all, she realized, he had only her word that Pierre Artois was a maniac. Anyone she talked to would have only her word, until such time as Artois and Claudine Courbet began zapping the earth with an antigravity beam.

In fact, she even doubted herself. What if Courbet had pulled a grotesque practical joke on her? If that thing wasn't an antigravity beam generator, then what was it? Why the reactor? And where, pray tell, had Artois and his minions learned how to build an antigravity beam generator? If Artois didn't need the reactor to power the beam generator, what did he need it for?

Try as she might, she could come up with no other explanation for the use of the reactor. The lunar base didn't need the kind of electrical power that reactor was capable of generating unless they really did have an antigravity beam.

She had been convinced then and she still believed. Pierre Artois, Henri Salmon and Claudine Courbet were rats. Even if she could feel a little worm of doubt gnawing at her.

From time to time she fingered the radio controls. No. The French wouldn't believe her. They would declare her insane before they admitted that Artois was a venal traitor who had duped the government and all the scientists associated with the lunar base project. After all, if they stood by him and he changed his mind and didn't use the beam generator, they would be vindicated. The presence of the reactor and generator on the moon could be hushed up, with no one able to prove anything.

But would Artois give up his dreams of glory? The man wanted to be emperor of earth. He had spent the family fortune preparing for this moment — what were the odds that he would chicken out now?

Perhaps the wise thing to do was wait for Pierre to hoist his flag. She lost nothing by choosing to wait, she decided.

Perhaps that was her only choice.

Charley Pine sat watching the cold, hard, immovable stars and the living earth as gravity accelerated Jeanne d'Arc toward the waiting planet. From this distance she could actually see the motion of the planet and the sun line moving across clouds and mountains and oceans. Mesmerized, she watched by the hour.

When Joe Bob came to the flight deck wanting to talk, she chatted with him about inconsequential things, and kept her own counsel.