Saucer

'Ahh, yes… 'Bill Taggart is a jerk'.' That's the translation, anyway.' Rip shrugged. 'I think they covered this stuff in the sixth grade, but I had the flu that week.'

'This couldn't be the only marking. Look around.'

It took Rip only fifteen seconds to find another marking, this time on a pressure line. This was different from the first set of symbols.

Over the next half hour they found that almost every line was marked, and many of the symbols seemed to be the same.

'If we could read these damn marks, we could figure this thing out,' Rip exclaimed.

Dutch didn't reply. He continued to look for marks, examine fittings, study everything he saw. After a bit he said, 'This piece of gear in front of me looks like a generator. See all these electrical wires coming off it? They go down there, hook into those cable ends.'

The two men continued to explore. Finally Dutch said, 'Well, it looks to me like the generator makes power, which is sent to these circular cables that go around the bottom of the ship.' There were six of these cables, making six concentric rings that circled the bottom of the saucer. 'More juice goes into those big buses over there. I'll bet a nickel those things are circuit breakers or fuses of some kind. From the buses, the juice goes all over the ship.'

'Antigravity rings?' Rip suggested. 'Maybe the big circular cables cut the gravity force lines of the planet?'

'Maybe, kid. Maybe.' Dutch crawled on.

In the hour before dark, Rip worked on clearing sandstone from the saucer's maneuvering ports. He used a small screwdriver as a chisel, pounding on the handle with a hammer. Blowing into the hole cleaned out the shards. The job went pretty fast.

Rip enjoyed touching the ship, running his fingers over it. The saucer fascinated him. As the sun got lower and lower on the horizon, he found himself sitting, staring at the ship, mesmerized. Who flew this ship here? Who were these people?

'I had to get our geologist involved,' Professor Soldi reported that evening when he returned from his dig. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the propane stove. 'He examined the sandstone sample under an electron microscope.'

'What did he think?' Rip asked as Soldi paused to sip coffee.

'It took him a while to sort out the pollens.'

'Uh-huh.'

'One hundred and forty thousand years, plus or minus ten.'

Dutch Haagen whistled. Soldi sipped coffee. Rip Cantrell wrapped his arms around his legs and stared into the fire.

Tonight the seismic crew was camped in front of the ledge, less than a hundred yards from the saucer. Moving the camp was no big deal, a chore the crew normally accomplished every other day. The camp consisted of two tents, one for sleeping, one for cooking, and a sunscreen rigged to keep the sun off the two water wagons, each of which was a two-hundred-gallon tank welded to a wheeled chassis. Most evenings Rip slept outside in a sleeping bag.

'We're going to have to tell somebody about the saucer,' Dutch said after a bit.

'Like our boss in Houston,' Bill Taggart rumbled. 'That poor fool thinks we're doing honest work.'

'What do you think, Professor?'

'The geologist is a gossip. My assistant wanted to know where I've been. Maybe I should have taken more time to listen to him tell me what they have accomplished.' He shrugged, drained the coffee cup. 'I asked them to keep quiet for two more days. Maybe they will, maybe they won't.'

'You mean you told them about the saucer?'

'I had to.'

'I'll bet they're on the horn this very second,' Rip said glumly.

'Well

'What about that pile of stuff we found in the machinery spaces?' Rip asked.

'Our lab man was working on that when I left. The stuff isn't paper.' Soldi poured a second cup of coffee. 'He's running some chemical tests, but I think we'll have to send it to a lab in the States to get a reliable analysis.'

It was one a.m. when Rip awakened with a start. He had been dozing, examining the saucer inch by inch in his mind when the answer came to him. He sat up in his sleeping bag.

No one else was awake. The camp lanterns were out, a million stars looked down from a deep black sky.

In the starlight he could just see the outline of the tarp that covered the saucer.

Shivering in the chill air, he felt for his boots, knocked them out, slipped them on. Pulled on a sweater, fumbled for his flashlight.

Inside the saucer the temperature had not changed. It was insulated equally well from heat and cold.

Warmer, Rip crawled straight into the machinery compartment and put his light on the inscription he had first noticed.

Well, it could be. Maybe. If that raised figure between the two symbols stood for the number two, then the inscription might mean H₂O. Water.

If so, then there should be a cracker, some device that separates the hydrogen and oxygen. Mix gaseous hydrogen and oxygen together, burn the mixture in the rocket engines, use some of the oxygen for the cabin atmosphere.

Rip traced the line. Okay, this thing could be a tank. This could hold water. The line went… This thing with the reinforcing bands must be the cracker, or separator.

Lines leading out, yes, they are labeled with one of the two symbols from the water line. This one must be hydrogen, this one oxygen.

Full of his discovery, Rip sat on the floor staring at the machinery. Everything was packed so tightly it was difficult to see how the system functioned, but he had it figured out now. He hoped. Well, it made sense… sort of.

The water intake valve must be on the outside of the ship. How had he missed it?

He had been busy with the jackhammer breaking rocks. He hadn't had time to examine the surface of the ship inch by inch or the nooks and crannies of the exhaust nozzle area. There must be a water intake there somewhere and he hadn't seen it.

He went outside, began exploring with the flashlight.

Water!

Oh, man. Water is everywhere. Except here in the desert, of course. Maybe they ran out of fuel over the desert…

But it might not have been desert then. Maybe the crew was out exploring and something happened to them. Something ate them, or they got sick… Or humans attacked them.

He found it. He found a tiny hairline crack and used his pocket knife to pry on it. Finally it opened. A cover. Yes.

Inside the cover was a cap, a bit like a fuel cap on a car. This must be where the water goes in.

He had just closed the cover when a flashlight beam hit him. He turned toward it and heard a male voice say,

'Well, hello friend. Didn't expect you.' The words were English, the voice definitely American.

The flashlight played over the skin of the ship. Did he have the cover closed before the flashlight beam hit him? He decided he did.

The voice reflected its owner's amazement. 'By all that's holy! It is a flying saucer!'

'Or a good mock-up.' That was an American voice too, a woman's.