Saucer

With the saucer at rest on its gear amid the wreckage of the atrium roof, Rip Cantrell made his way to the hatch and opened it. 'Come on, Charley. It's time to go.'

She crawled over twisted beams, trying to avoid the shards of glass that threatened everywhere. She turned, called to the now-silent woman under the desk. 'Bernice, this is your chance. Do you want to go with us?' 'No.'

Bernice was staying with the money. Charley shrugged and crawled on.

Rip was very agitated. Any second Hedrick's goons were going to come up the staircase shooting like wild men. 'Want to tell me how you got this thing to fly up here?' 'Later. In, in, in! Let's get the hell outta here!'

The second Tomahawk couldn't locate its discrete target to guide upon, so its computer opted to impact at the GPS coordinates programmed in before launch. It hit within three feet of the place the first missile impacted.

The force of this blast was not impeded by the hangar walls, so the nearest Gulfstream V, Hedrick's, soaked up some of the warhead's shrapnel. Fuel began running from holes in the wing.

As Charley climbed into the saucer, a tremendous force slammed into her right shoulder.

Her shoulder and arm went numb, and she dropped the assault rifle she had been carrying. She tried to fall back through the hatch, but Rip was pushing hard on her bottom. Against her will, she was propelled into the saucer and sprawled on her face.

Rigby kicked her viciously in the ribs, bringing forth a grunt.

Rip crawled over her, going for Rigby.

Rigby screamed. No words, just a high-pitched, keening wail came out of the bleeding hole in the swollen, bloody mess that was his face.

He kicked at her again, this time getting Rip. On the next kick, Rip got hold of a leg and held on. Rigby went down, still screaming.

Charley rolled over, trying with her left hand to get the pistol out of the right-hand pocket of her flight jacket. She was having trouble breathing against the pain in her side.

Rigby had the strength of ten men. It was all Rip could do to hang on to his leg as he kicked and smashed Rip about the head and shoulders with his fists.

Charley finally dug the damned pistol out, tried to use her right hand on the safety. Numb. She fumbled with the safety with her left. Got it off.

Pointed the thing at Rigby and fired.

The shock of the bullet hitting Rigby was like a cattle prod on a bull. He went nuts, still screaming at the top of his lungs. He kicked so wildly that Rip lost his grip on his leg

Completely insane, Rigby went for Charley. She shot him again and again as fast as she could pull the trigger.

He got his hands around her throat.

He was strangling her when she saw another bomb clinging to the underside of the pilot's seat. The realization of what it was sunk in despite the physical agony she was feeling. She still had the pistol in her left hand. She fired it twice more into Rigby's body before it stopped working — empty!

With blood pouring from his mouth, Rigby was starting to topple over when Rip grabbed him by the hair and jammed a screwdriver into the side of his neck.

The screaming stopped. Rigby fell over.

Charley reached up, grabbed the bomb, and jerked it loose.

'Get us airborne, Rip. We'll put Rigby through the hatch.'

With her left hand she stuffed the bomb into Rigby's shirt, then helped Rip pull him toward the hatch.

'You fly,' Rip shouted. 'I'll crash us.'

She clambered up into the pilot's seat. Using her left hand, she raised the collective. The saucer rose from the roof. Now gear up.

'Still using just her left hand, she moved the stick sideways and took the saucer out over the lawn.

Rip dragged Rigby to the hatch and pushed him through.

The body fell halfway to the ground, about thirty feet, and stopped in midair.

Looking through the hatch, Rip shouted, 'He's trapped in the antigravity field.'

Hedrick and the Europeans were crowded around the window in the library when the saucer came into view with Rigby suspended in midair beneath it.

'That's your man, Rigby, isn't it?' one of the Europeans demanded of Hedrick. 'Look at his face!'

Hedrick pushed the button on the radio control.

Behind him there was an explosion. He turned. A cloud of plaster dust filled the far end of the room. As it thinned somewhat, he could see the safe. The door was off its hinges and smoke was pouring out.

God damn that Charley Pine!

Pieraut looked thoughtfully at Hedrick's radio-control unit. If he and his delegation had departed in the saucer, Hedrick would have murdered the lot of them. Pieraut reached into his pocket for his own radio-control device. He flipped the switch to arm it, then pushed the firing button.

Yoi come fly this,' Charley shouted, getting down from the pilot's seat. Having managed to close the hatch, Rip got into the seat in her stead. He put on the computer headband.

We want to light the rockets and go.

Behind him he heard a rumble of the rocket engines lighting off.

Pieraut was looking out the window at the accelerating saucer when he pushed the button on his device. Rigby's body, which was still trapped in the antigravity field, disappeared in a ball of fire.

The saucer sped away as the roar from the engines shook the library window glass, cracked it, then caused it to collapse.

Staring through the hole where the window had been, the audience in the library watched the saucer disappear in the haze, still low in the sky.

As they stood watching, two fireballs rose from the planes on the parking mat in front of the hangar. Mr. Ito of the Japanese delegation and the gentleman from Beijing had both detonated their bombs.

Up in his bedroom, Krasnoyarsk was futilely pushing the button on his radio-control device. The battery in the device would not cause the green test light to come on. He pried open the radio controller.

The battery was Russian.

Krasnoyarsk cursed, then threw the controller against a wall, shattering it.

After the saucer had traveled a distance of about fifteen miles, Rip Cantrell laid it into a turn. He still had not touched the controls. With the headband on, he was telling the computer what he wanted the saucer to do, and it was flying the ship. When the saucer was straight and level, pointing back at Hedrick's station, Rip let the machine accelerate through Mach 1. Charley was in one of the forward-facing seats. The G's pushed both of them back into their seats and held them imprisoned there.

The saucer was passing through Mach 6 when it went over Hedrick's mansion at two hundred feet.

The shock wave from the saucer blew out every window in the building and pushed the top story of the house down into the structure. The walls bulged, then blew out. The whole house collapsed.

The nose of the saucer rose until the ship was going straight up atop a pillar of fire.

Chapter Nineteen

It was one o'clock on a rainy, foggy summer morning when Rip Cantrell brought the saucer in over the