Saucer

the flight back from Denver were spent at two hundred feet using only the antigravity rings for propulsion, well below the coverage of most air traffic control radars. When the main flight computer indicated they were home, Charley Pine flipped on the landing lights. They were right over Egg's hangar.

With the saucer inside the hangar and the doors closed, Egg yawned. 'Thanks, kids. That was a ride of a lifetime.'

Rip just grinned.

'The sun will be up in a couple hours,' Egg added. 'This old man is going to bed.'

'Me too,' echoed Charley and followed him toward the house.

Rip stayed with the saucer. Suffering from jet lag, he was so tired he ached, but he wasn't sleepy.

As they walked up the hill toward the house, Egg thanked Charley again for the ride. 'That was an experience of a lifetime.'

'Tell me, Mr. Cantrell, who owns the arrowhead collection upstairs? I hope you don't think I was snooping, but this afternoon I was looking for clothes and found that collection.'

'Those arrowheads are Rip's. He's spent every summer here with me since his father died. He hunted arrowheads after people plowed their fields, dug likely places himself.'

'That's quite a collection.'

'Rip's got a good mind,' Egg said. 'Going to be a good engineer too.'

Rip Cantrell sat on the couch in the corner of the hangar contemplating the saucer's ominous curved shape. The dark metallic material that formed the skin seemed to absorb the light from the overhead bulbs. For some reason the reflectivity seemed low just now, in the cool of the dark, humid night.

Finally he had to touch it again. He went over to it, ran his fingertips across the surface.

The saucer was a monument to the immensity of time. A hundred and forty thousand years! More than six thousand generations of humans. Six thousand!

Was Egg right? Did humans build it? Surely not.

And yet, it had to be. The headbands were for human heads, the computer read human thoughts.

So how did the saucer get into that rock?

The secrets this machine could tell, if a man had time to hunt patiently for answers. Professor Soldi intended to look for answers, didn't he?

Strange that he should think of Soldi just then.

Soldi was right about the saucer, of course. It belonged to all mankind. The technology embodied in it should benefit everyone on earth.

So just what was he going to do with it?

The hatch was hanging open under the machine, so he climbed back inside and made his way to the pilot's seat. The cockpit was gloomy, dark: the only light came from the bulbs mounted on the roof trusses of the hangar, shining through the canopy.

He pulled the reactor knob out to the first detent. The instrument panel came alive, the computers lit up, the indirect illumination that lit the saucer's main cabin came on. Like magic!

Magic! Those people who were living on the earth one hundred and forty thousand years ago, when they saw this saucer they must have thought it was magic. Dark, black magic, beyond the ken of mere men. And when the spacemen came out of the hatch…

What?

Rip Cantrell sat transfixed by his own imagination, wondering how it had been.

They were men, Egg said. This ship was crafted by the hand of man, to fit the hand of man, to fit the head of man…

He picked up the headband for the computer and settled it around the thickest part of his head.

He had to grab for the arms of the pilot's seat. His vision expanded, he was hunting through possible flight options, thinking rapidly about possibilities.

Possibilities.

The thoughts were in graphic form, almost symbolic. If something appealed to him, he pursued the thought to see where it would lead. Faster and faster, through options and possibilities…

Back to possibilities.

Tonight Charley flew the saucer without touching the controls. She just thought about it. How did she do that?

His mind raced along corridors of possibilities. In seconds he came to one that looked like it might be an answer.

Even as he examined it, the saucer lifted ever so gently from the earth. The hangar doors were closed, and the saucer was inside, but it slowly rose until it was suspended about twenty inches above the dark earth floor.

Rip tore off the headband and rushed to the open hatch.

The dark packed earth that formed the floor of the old hangar was now at least six feet below him.

He turned and looked back at the instrument panel, all lit up.

Magic!

Oh, yes yes yes.

He would tell the computer to set the saucer onto the ground. Even as that thought formed in his mind and he stepped toward the panel to reach for the headband, he felt a slight jolt as the saucer again came to rest on its retractable legs.

Startled, he turned back to the open hatchway, to verify the thing with his own eyes. He stuck his head down. Yes, the saucer was back on the ground.

Hanging out of the thing, looking at the most forward landing stilt, he asked the saucer for a climb of a few inches. It rocked ever so gently, then lifted. Dust swirled from the hangar floor.

Down. Sit down, boy!

And the saucer again came to rest.

Rip slithered out of the hatch headfirst, catching himself on the ground with his hands. He crawled from under the machine and sat again on the couch under the old Coca-Cola sign.

Up. And it lifted.

Down.

He opened one of the hangar doors and walked fifty feet or so across the grass. He turned to look through the open door at the saucer under the lights.

Up. Down.

The thing stunned him. He fell to his knees, rocked back on his heels, stared unbelievingly at the ancient machine.

He picked up a handful of dirt, felt the moistness, the cool, tangible, puttylike consistency.

Finally he lay down, rolled over on his back.

The clouds were completely gone. He could see stars, thousands of stars, a sky full of stars.

After a while Rip went back inside. He asked the saucer to turn off the reactor, and it did so.

He lay down on the couch. He was so filled with marvels, yet so tired…

The president and his minions got no sleep this night. Huddled in the White House, they raged against the hurricane that was racing down upon them while the television stations played the footage from Coors Field over and over, endlessly. The lights of Washington were visible through the windows, but they knew that beyond the lights was chaos.

'It's as if we are being assaulted by a whole squadron of saucers,' someone said after spending another mesmerizing minute staring at the idiot box.

The chief of staff, PJ. O'Reilly, held one finger aloft as he faced Bombing Joe De Laurio. 'Our first priority,' he said, 'is to find out how many saucers there are. Can the Air Force figure that out?'

Bombing Joe seethed like a volcano about to erupt, a towering, molten pillar of fury barely under control. He hadn't been patronized like this since he was a doolie at the Air Force Academy, way back when. still, now didn't