saucer, you know.'
'I
Charley went.
A group of five Chinese landed in an airliner a few minutes before the dinner hour. From her room, Charley watched them walk up the gentle incline toward the main house.
At dinner she heard someone mention that a Russian delegation was arriving around midnight.
She had no appetite. She smeared her food around her plate, listened to Bernice expound on the joys of shopping in Paris, and excused herself before dessert was served.
Up in her room she turned on the television. Hedrick had a satellite dish system, she deduced, because several American networks were on the idiot box. She made sure her door was locked, then settled in to watch a rerun of an interview with Professor Soldi broadcast by a Melbourne station.
'The Cantrells are here for their appointment, Mrs. Higginbotham.'
'Show them in.'
Mrs. Higginbotham didn't rise from her desk. Her office was on the thirty-fifth floor of the Higginbotham Building in downtown Dallas.
She was a white-haired woman in her late seventies with a firm chin and clear blue eyes. The two men came in and reached across the desk to shake hands. One was overweight, shaped like a pear, and the other was completely bald. Both were in their fifties.
The bald man spoke first. 'I'm Olie Cantrell, Mrs. Higginbotham, and this is my brother Arthur. We're here on behalf of our deceased brother's boy, Rip. I believe he was employed by your company on a seismic survey crew in the Sahara.'
Mrs. Higginbotham nodded. 'What can I do for you gentlemen?'
'Well, let me explain the situation, then we'll discuss possible solutions. You've probably been following the saucer crisis…?'
'Indeed. Quite extraordinary.' Mrs. Higginbotham's eyes twinkled. 'I have followed the story in the newspapers and on television. It's so exciting. That saucer is a hundred and forty thousand years old. Isn't that amazing?' The Cantrells agreed that it was. 'This is the most fun I've had since Bill Clinton and Zippergate. When I get up in the morning I can't wait to turn on the television and look at the newspaper.'
'You probably know that Rip found the saucer while working for your company,' Olie Cantrell said.
'Oh, yes. That makes the story sort of personal, don't you think?'
'It's personal, all right. That's why we're here. Several days ago Roger Hedrick showed up at my brother Egg's place in Missouri — Oh, I'm sorry. Egg's real name is Arthur.'
Mrs. Higginbotham didn't know quite what to say.
'In any event,' Olie continued, 'Hedrick told Egg and Rip that he owned Wellstar Petroleum and advanced the theory that the saucer belonged to the company and therefore to him. He then proceeded to kidnap the civilian test pilot who was there and force her to fly the saucer to Australia.'
'That sounds like the Roger I know,' Mrs. Higgin-botham said acidly. 'He hates to be thwarted.'
'Arthur consulted me because I am an attorney and charge him only modestly for my time, if at all. In the course of my research, I discovered that Hedrick does not own all the stock of this company, although he is indeed a major shareholder and controls one of the seats on the board.'
'Hedrick owns about ten percent of the stock,' Mrs. Higginbotham said. 'I own or control twenty-eight percent, and my sons and daughters have a smidgen over nine.'
Olie Cantrell nodded. 'I also understand that your late husband founded this company, Mrs. Higginbotham, and both your sons have built their careers here in oil exploration.'
'Your research is impeccable.'
'With all that said, here is the problem. The saucer is very valuable. Hedrick wants it desperately. He has physical possession right now by virtue of several felonies, none of which are provable in court. He has the saucer in Australia and probably intends to exploit it commercially. Sooner or later he may decide to ask an attorney about Wellstar's claim to title of the saucer by virtue of its discovery by an employee. What he will be told is this: Wellstar does indeed have a claim to the saucer, but it is a poor one because young Cantrell did not discover the artifact in the course of his employment. He was not hired to search for flying saucers. He is in the position of a mailman on his appointed rounds who saw a dollar lying on the sidewalk and picked it up. The dollar belongs to the mailman, not the postal service.
'Still, as an attorney, I can assure you that even a poor claim to a valuable item is better than no claim at all. The rub, for you, is that Hedrick owns ten percent of the company. He may well elect to try to buy control of Wellstar just to be in a position to assert the company's claim.'
'I could assert the claim for Wellstar,' Mrs. Higginbotham said.
'Indeed you could, ma'am. Unfortunately for you, Hedrick doesn't seem the type who likes to share. And he has the saucer in Australia. Even if you got a court order directing him to return it to the United States, enforcing it will be problematical, at best.'
Mrs. Higginbotham looked from one face to another. She scratched an eyebrow. 'What do you propose, sir?'
'We came here today, ma'am, hoping that we could persuade you to sell Wellstar's claim to the saucer, whatever it is, to our nephew, Rip Cantrell. This course would avoid any threat to your control of Wellstar by Mr. Hedrick.'
Mrs. Higginbotham tapped the desk with one finger. 'And the threat of a lawsuit by your nephew?'
Olie Cantrell raised his hands in acknowledgment of her point. 'It may never come to that, but it might. Yes, ma'am.'
'What haven't you told me that my lawyer will want me to know?'
Olie grinned. 'He may want to take a look at the law of Chad, where the saucer was found. I have discussed Chadian law with a firm in New York that practices in Africa. My contact tells me that he can find no Chadian statutes, decrees, or court decisions that deal with found property.
'As you are probably aware, Chad is a miserable, parched little country ruled by a dictator. I'm sure someone could zip off to Chad with a pile of money and the law could become whatever he or she was willing to pay for. I don't think that would play very well in an American court, but it would be another claim, another lever.'
Mrs. Higginbotham used her hands to push herself erect. 'Gentlemen, I want to talk this matter over with my attorneys. Why don't you come back to see me tomorrow morning at ten o'clock?'
The Cantrell brothers stood, shook hands, then took their leave. When the door closed behind them, Mrs. Higginbotham called her lawyer.
It was three in the morning in New South Wales when Charley Pine finally turned off the television. Roger Hedrick had not called her or come to her room; in fact, no one had. She saw the airplane bringing the Russian delegation arrive just after midnight, a four-engine Tupo-lev. Lights remained on in the hangar area for another two hours. Finally most of the lights were extinguished.
Charley waited another twenty minutes, then opened her window. Just as she thought. Four feet away was a large downspout. The roof of the porch on the main floor of the house was fifteen or so feet below.
She climbed up onto the windowsill, took one last look around, then leaped for the downspout.
She almost missed it, striking her head on the pipe and slipping several feet before she managed to jam her foot between the pipe and the wall, stopping her descent.
Down she went, straining every muscle, holding on for dear life. Safely on the roof, she felt her lip, spit out something black. Blood. She had bitten her lip. Her right foot was hurting too, so she rubbed it.
Charley Pine tiptoed across the roof and lay full-length so she could look over the edge and see if anyone was on the porch.
One man, smoking a cigarette.
He was forty feet away, facing the other way, listening to music coming through a French door that was open a few inches. Someone was playing a piano. Bach.
From time to time the smoker turned and looked across the lawn. From his position he could see the hangar
