'If I hadn't needed to go to the rest room so badly, maybe I would have.'
'Why didn't you?'
'I want to know everything there is to know about that ship before I walk away from it.'
She turned over the paper place mat in front of her, took a pen from the left sleeve pocket of her flight suit, and began making notes. She wanted to get down her impressions of flying the saucer while they were still fresh. The handling was excellent at low speeds but at large Mach numbers the saucer was almost impossible to maneuver. She wrote fast and quickly, scribbling thoughts as they came to her.
They were working on their second cups of coffee when a man parked outside, took a long look at the saucer, then walked over to it. He walked around it slowly, touching it, rapping on it, then he came over to the diner.
'Flo,' he called, 'what in hell is that thing across the street?'
'That you, Oscar?'
'Yeah. What's that thing across the street?'
Flo walked out of the kitchen carrying three plates. As she set them on the table before Charley and Rip, she said, 'That thing is a flying saucer, Oscar, you ignorant boob. These folks here flew it in from Mars.' She put two plates in front of Rip, one in front of Charley, then winked at her.
Charley tried to grin. She folded up the paper place mat and stowed it in a flight suit pocket.
'Don't you know a flying saucer when you see one, Oscar?'
'That's my first one this week, woman. How about some coffee?'
Rip picked up his knife and fork and went to work as Flo and Oscar bantered back and forth and the TV played in the background.
He was working on the second glass of milk when a deputy sheriff parked his patrol car out front and came inside. Soon a man parked a medium-sized farm tractor alongside the deputy's car and joined him on a stool at the counter. Oscar told them about the sign for the St. Louis amusement park and everyone tried to think up something witty to say about saucers. Meanwhile a small crowd of half dozen people had gathered by the saucer. Some of the people were from vehicles sitting at the pumps, but the rest were from pickups that had parked on the side of the road.
The television went back to the California meteor story as Rip gobbled the last of his potatoes. Charley had finished five minutes earlier and was watching him with an amused expression on her face.
She started to get out of the booth. 'I'll pay the bill while you finish,' she said, to his obvious discomfiture. 'Please! I'll do it. I've got some money.' Charley was amused.
'Just doesn't look right, a woman paying,' he muttered. He stood up, strolled casually to the register. Flo came over after a bit. She was figuring the bill when a picture of the saucer in flight came on the television behind her. 'Here's a curiosity,' the announcer began. 'This morning in Aswan, Egypt — '
Rip reached over and changed the channel on the television. A commercial came on. He smiled at Flo and handed her a fifty. 'Sorry, this is the smallest I have.'
'We're seeing more and more pictures of U.S. Grant these days, honey. I got change.'
Down the counter the deputy was telling an off-color joke.
Rip took his change, then lingered until Flo went down the counter to pour coffee.
'That was close,' Charley muttered. 'Somebody on that lake boat must have had a camera.'
'Let's mount up and start kicking, amigo.'
They sauntered out the door and across the street, two people with no place to go and all day to get there.
Ten people were standing around the saucer now and three more were looking at it as they pumped gas into their vehicles. The kid who worked in the filling station was telling them all about it, apparently. 'Here they come now,' he said. He addressed Rip as he walked up. 'Hey, buddy. Didn't you say this thing is going into an amusement park in St. Louis?'
'Yeah.'
'Is that Six Flags?' a woman asked. She had a baby in her arms.
'Well, I don't know, ma'am. Fella didn't say.'
'Sure looks real, don't it?'
'My dad saw a real saucer, one night, few years back,' said another.
'Where was that, Butch?'
'Out at the farm. Darn thing was hovering over the cows. Got 'em all upset, so it did.' The speaker continued, telling his rapt audience of the close encounter.
Charley walked once around the saucer, looking it over, then she went underneath and opened the hatch. As she climbed in, Rip said to the crowd: 'You folks might want to move back a bit, give us a little room here.' He ducked down, went through the hatch, and pulled it shut behind him.
Charley already had the reactor on.
Apparently the crowd heard the hum. They were stumbling backward now. Many were agape, too stunned to say anything. Rip waved at them through the canopy as Charley gently lifted the ship. The usual cloud of dirt and pebbles flew into the air.
She took the saucer up about ten feet and stabilized there as the landing gear retracted. The crowd below was scattering; several of the men were in full flight. The mother with the baby went onto her knees by the gas pumps, clutching the child fiercely. People poured out of the diner across the street. The deputy sheriff ran this way.
Rip waved at him as Charley eased the stick forward and pulled up on the collective. She soared over the cornfield by the diner and put the sun behind the saucer. 'Missouri?'
'Missouri.'
'Wish we had some charts.'
'I can recognize the rivers and stuff. I'll get us there.'
'Hold on,' Charley said and twisted on the throttle grip. The rocket motors hiccuped once, then lit with a pleasant roar.
'Yeah!' Rip shouted. The G's felt terrific.
Charley pulled the nose up and the saucer accelerated into the Indiana morning sky.
Chapter Nine
Like the million other Americans who happened to be watching television that August morning as they dressed or ate breakfast, General Bombing Joe De Laurio, U.S. Air Force chief of staff, stared in unbelieving amazement at the flying saucer zipping around on his television screen.
'Holy smokes,' he muttered through his toothbrush, which was still in his mouth.
When the camera zoomed in on the fighter chasing the saucer, he dropped the toothbrush. The quality of the picture was poor as the amateur Egyptian cameraman tried to zoom in and focus on fast-moving machines, but one glimpse of the telltale puffs of white smoke zipping back over the fighter's wing was more than enough for Bombing Joe — the fighter was shooting at the saucer. The general grabbed for the telephone.
'White House!' he roared at the operator when she came on. 'Get me the White House!'
The cameraman centered the saucer's exhaust flame in his viewfinder and managed to keep it there as the saucer went almost straight up, accelerating. The saucer got smaller and smaller until all that was visible against the heavens was the spot of light that was the flame from the rocket nozzles. Then the flame merged with the sun.
'Oh, my God!' roared Bombing Joe De Laurio and rushed for the uniform hanging in his closet.
The general was charging through his outer office on the Pentagon's E-wing when a junior staffer arrested his progress.
'General, you must take a moment to look at the television! A little town in Indiana — people there claim that a flying saucer was there this morning!'
Bombing Joe rocked with the punch. When he saw that video from Egypt, he was convinced. Now they're in Indiana? Was this an invasion?
