and the main horse barn, both of which were lit only by security lights.
Moving ever so slowly, Charley crawled across the roof to the corner farthest away from the guard. Here a column held up the roof. As she looked the area over, she decided she would hang by her hands from the gutter and put her feet on the porch rail. The column would help. It would be behind her, breaking up her silhouette if the guard should look this way.
Just as she was about to swing a leg over, the guard left the French door where he had been listening and walked in her direction.
She held her breath. Now she could see that the guard carried some kind of weapon on a strap over his shoulder.
The guard stopped after he had traversed half the distance between them and stood looking at the hangar and barn. Beyond were low mountains under a clear night sky full of stars.
Charley Pine could just hear the piano, ever so faintly.
The guard took a last drag on his cigarette and flipped it away. Then he turned and walked slowly back toward the open French door.
Charley swung a leg over, then forced her body over the edge. Her hands and arms absorbed her weight. She lowered herself until her feet touched.
She released the gutter and bent over. With her hands on the railing, she pushed off with her feet and dropped between the bushes below and the porch foundation.
She crouched there, scarcely daring to breathe.
The guard must have had his back turned during the descent, which had taken no more than five or six seconds.
Staying bent at the waist, she slipped along the porch to the corner of the house, then peered through the bushes.
Perhaps it was a sixth sense; she felt someone was near. She knelt there, watching and listening. A minute passed, then another.
Now she heard steps, voices. She lay on the ground behind the bushes, looked out underneath.
Two guards with rifles over their shoulders, chatting, pointing flashlights this way and that, walked slowly toward her.
She closed her eyes and lowered her head, just in case.
When the sound had completely faded, she looked again. The yard was clear. Inching her head up, she looked under the porch railing. The porch guard was not in sight.
She slipped out of the bushes and ran toward the dark area to the right of the horse barn. When she got there, she flattened herself against the wall and listened.
Moving slowly, carefully, from one dark shadow to another, she worked her way around the barn and toward the hangar. Another pair of guards passed her near the hangar. She was lying in a slight depression then, in plain sight if the guards had just lowered their flashlights and looked. They didn't.
Heart pounding, Charley Pine ran the last few feet to the personnel door on the side of the hangar and tried the knob. It turned. She let go of the doorknob and looked around one more time. There was a small naked bulb above the door, perhaps forty watts. She reached up and unscrewed it until it went out.
Twelve minutes had passed since she left her room.
She twisted the doorknob and pulled gently. With the door open about an inch, she put her eye to the crack.
The hangar was big, at least a hundred and fifty feet square. There was only one light, a spot that shone down from the roof trusses directly above the saucer.
Charley Pine pulled the door open and stepped into the hangar. She pulled the door completely closed behind her.
In the far corner of the cavernous space was a desk with a small illuminated lamp on it. Someone was seated at the desk, someone reading.
She surveyed the equipment parked and stacked along the walls. Like most hangars, this one was also used to store wheeled equipment that didn't have another home. She got behind an
She turned her attention to the man at the desk. He seemed to be slumped over, reading a magazine that lay flat on the desk in front of him.
She had watched him for several minutes when she realized the man was asleep.
Lord, yes. The idiot has fallen asleep! Charley rose noiselessly. She was wearing tennis shoes, which might squeak on that painted concrete floor, so she took them off, tied the strings together, draped them around her neck.
The man at the desk was still slumped over, motionless.
She took a couple of deep breaths, squared her shoulders, then stepped out of the shadows. She walked directly to the saucer, bent down, and went under it toward the open hatch.
Charley stood in the hatchway, climbed up… Rigby was sitting in the chair by the pilot's seat. He had a shotgun in his lap, pointed right at her.
'I thought you'd never get here,' he said. He looked at his watch. 'Seventeen minutes.'
Charley Pine climbed into the saucer, tossed down her shoes. The shotgun was pointed right at her gut.
'That's close enough, baby,' Rigby said. 'I'd hate to have to shoot — '
She knocked the barrel aside with her left hand and kicked Rigby square in the face.
Rigby's head bounced off the pilot seat pedestal and he lost his grip on the shotgun, but he didn't go down or out. Charley planted her left foot and kicked again with her right, aiming for his larynx.
She missed. Got him on the shoulder.
Rigby grabbed at her foot. She kicked a third time, but without shoes she wasn't doing enough damage.
Rigby got her ankle that time, held on to it, dragged her to the floor.
He was pounding on her kidneys when Hedrick said, 'That's enough, Rigby. We have more rides to give tomorrow.' Hedrick's head was sticking up through the hatch.
'I think the bleedin' bitch broke my nose,' Rigby said through gritted teeth and thumped Charley in the kidney one more time.
'Tsk, tsk.' Hedrick clucked his tongue. 'And you gave me your word, Ms. Pine.'
Chapter Fifteen
After a large Australian breakfast, Rip Cantrell set forth from Bathurst in his borrowed car to see what he could of Hedrick's empire. As he drove west the coastal mountains soon petered out, giving way to low, rolling grasslands. Water appeared to be rather scarce, the flora looked semiarid. still, plenty of cattle and sheep could be seen from the paved, two-lane road grazing peacefully amid scattered trees, which seemed to grow best near creeks and low places.
The problem was going to be getting in. He suspected that tradesmen from Bathurst, the nearest town to Hedrick's station, must come and go regularly. That was worth looking into. As he drove he kept an eye out for tradesmen's vans. He saw a bakery truck go by on the way back to town, but traffic was sparse. Every now and then a truck, occasionally a car.
He was driving along a particularly long, dull, empty straight stretch when he saw a turnout ahead and a gate. The gate was a steel pole across the road, tended by at least three men. As he drove by he saw the Hedrick name on a sign.
Rip continued on, watched for other roads, other entrances, guards, anything. Ten miles later he was still going by Hedrick's land, he thought, having seen no boundary fences joining the fence alongside the road.
When the road topped a low ridge between watersheds, Rip pulled over and got out to stretch his legs.
