tiniest bit… '
As she did, the saucer lifted itself from the earth. It rocked slightly from side to side, touching on the skids that were still down. Charley overcontrolled with the stick in her right hand, then had the sense to let go of it. The pedals at her feet she barely touched… and felt the ship slew.
'
The tarp was still covering the saucer, so Charley couldn't go up very far or that thing would drape itself over the canopy. She eased the right-hand stick forward just a touch.
The saucer moved ever so gently out from under the tarp. Some sand flew around, about as much as a hello would raise.
Dutch Haagen was standing with his hands raised when he heard Bill Taggart cry out. He looked back at the saucer.
The spaceship was a silent silver shape, coming out of the glare of the floodlights toward them.
It was moving slowly, like a helicopter. Only there was no sound. Without even a whisper of sound, the thing was uncanny, like something from a silent movie.
'Sweet Jesus!' Bill said.
'If that kid crashes that thing… ' Professor Soldi swore. He knew to a certainty that Rip Cantrell was in the pilot seat.
The Libyan officer in charge couldn't believe his eyes.
He screamed something in Arabic, pointed his pistol at the saucer, and pulled the trigger.
His troops let fly with bursts of automatic fire. Sparks appeared along the body of the ship where the bullets were bouncing off.
Charley raised the collective and pulled back on the stick.
The saucer tilted up. She and Rip could hear the whump of bullets striking the ship.
'I can't see,' she shouted as the illuminated camp disappeared under the nose.
'Fly the instruments!' Rip cried.
Sure enough, there was an artificial horizon on the computer screen in front of her. Charley lowered the nose to get the ship level.
'We're not going very fast,' Rip pointed out.
'I haven't lit the burners yet. I need to feel this thing out, fly it around a while.'
'Lady, I don't think this is the time or place. We gotta boogie.'
Charley Pine felt completely out of her depth. Panic swept over her as she scanned the instrument panel. She pushed a button. Nothing happened. Flipped a lever. Symbols appeared above the lever. Three arrows pointing up. Then little green lights.
'Gear up.'
Maybe the rockets were controlled by the buttons on the grip of the collective.
She took her eyes off the artificial horizon to examine the grip. When she pushed a button on the very end of the stick, she heard a rumble.
'Watch where you're going,' Rip urged, his voice an octave higher than normal.
Charley got her eyes back on the artificial horizon and leveled the ship with the stick in her right hand. Then she twisted the grip on the left-hand control. She heard the rocket engines ignite, a throaty rumble, and acceleration pressed her back hard into the seat. Rip Cantrell lost his fight against the acceleration G and fell toward the rear of the compartment.
Somehow Charley managed to pull the stick back; the nose of the ship came up. Straight ahead, through the canopy, was a sky full of stars.
The fire from the rocket engines lit the desert for miles in every direction. The light was blinding, like a small sun.
And the noise was deafening, the loudest noise Dutch Haagen had ever heard. It vibrated his skull and teeth, massaged the flesh of his face. Dutch clapped his hands over his ears and fell to his knees. He kept his eyes shut against the searing light, which was so bright he could see it through his eyelids.
When the sound and light had faded somewhat, he opened his eyes to slits. The saucer was fifteen degrees above the horizon, accelerating away, the exhaust a sheet of white fire.
Chapter Six
The severe acceleration forces held Charley Pine imprisoned against her seat. Rip was on the floor, trapped against the bottom of a forward-facing seat.
Rip pushed off with his legs until he could reach the pedestal that supported the pilot's seat. He pulled himself to it, then clawed his way erect. That he was able to accomplish this task under at least four G's of acceleration was a tribute to his physical condition.
'Get off the juice, Charley, for God's sake!'
She twisted the grip on the left-hand stick back somewhat and the G eased considerably.
'How much water did you put in this thing?'
'Ten gallons,' he replied.
'That isn't going to get us far.'
'Maybe we can make the Nile. Lake Nasser. We're heading east, I think.'
'How can you tell?'
'Look at this computer display. You tell me.' In front of them was a globe with a small arrow in the middle, which now pointed to the right.
In the crystal-clear desert air the earth below was an empty, dark wasteland under an infinite sea of stars. The sliver of moon that had been just above the horizon when they took off was now well up in the night sky and rapidly climbing higher as the saucer gained altitude.
'Oh, God!' Pine exclaimed. 'What in the world have we done? How are we going to get down?'
Rip tried to swallow and couldn't. 'We'll make it,' he said, his voice an octave too high.
'We can't even see to land!'
Rip searched the control panel. 'There has to be a light switch on here someplace,' he said. 'There are two big landing lights on the bottom of this thing.'
Charley let the saucer tilt slightly. 'Watch your attitude,' Rip said sharply, causing her to pick up the left wing, if there had been a left wing.
'How high are we?' she asked plaintively. She tried to keep the fear out of her voice, but she knew it showed a little.
'God knows,' Rip Cantrell answered, his voice tight.
He played with buttons and switches on the instrument panel until he found the lighting panel. Confident that he was turning on lights, Rip turned on every switch on that panel. Landing lights made the leading edge of the saucer glow, although the air was too clear to see the beams.
'Look at the displays,' Charley demanded. 'Figure it out!'
'I'm trying! I'm trying!'
She still had a little nose-up attitude on the artificial horizon, so she assumed she was climbing. She had no idea what her speed might be.
Almost as if he could read her thoughts, Rip Cantrell remarked, 'We must be supersonic. This saucer shape is optimal for hypersonic flight.'
Charley twisted the grip to add a little more power.
Off to her left, at about her ten o'clock position, she glimpsed the twinkling of city lights embedded in the vast blackness. Aswan? Luxor? It couldn't be Cairo, could it?
Her heartbeat and respiration rate were almost back to normal when she said to Rip, 'This is pretty cool, huh?'
