Saucer: Savage Planet Read online

  “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 na
ils, 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.

  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.”