Saucer

Rip heard one of the onlookers say, 'Is it raining? Is that rain I hear?'

Hedrick glanced around at the speaker. Rip spoke to Hedrick: 'You get the saucer, how you gonna get it out of here?'

'I want you to meet Herr Zwerneman,' Hedrick said, 'Europe's finest test pilot.' Zwerneman stepped into the headlights. 'If you can fly the saucer, Cantrell, he can. He can fly anything with wings or rotor blades.'

'Some people will do anything for money, I guess,' Rip said, because he had to say something.

'That is so true Cantrell. Oh so true. I am one of them. I will do whatever it takes to get that saucer. I will buy it from you here and now, torture you, have your mother raped, whatever.'

'Leave my mother out of this.'

'Whatever it takes.'

His face hurt like hell.

'You said you'd buy it. How much?'

'One million dollars.'

'That's rich. You're going to sell it for a hundred and fifty billionl'

'There will be a markup, of course. I intend to make a profit as the middleman. One million dollars to you, that's your profit. Take it, or I will take one hundred and fifty billion dollars out of your hide.'

'My hide isn't worth that much.'

'Taggart!' Hedrick called the name like he was summoning a butler. Bill Taggart stepped into the headlights where Rip could see him.

'Tell him how much I paid you, Taggart.'

'He paid me a million, Rip. Cash. Paid me another hundred thousand to come with him tonight. Give him the saucer and you and I can both retire, never work another day in our lives.'

Rip looked at Hedrick, looked at Taggart, spit blood down the front of his shirt.

'You're a dirtbag, Taggart.'

'Be that as it may, a million dollars is a million dollars. And when you're dead, you're dead.'

'If I'm dead, Roger Hedrick will never get the saucer.'

'Enough of this,' Hedrick snapped. 'We've wasted enough time. You know I can't kill you. What I can do is kill your mother. If you don't answer my questions I'm going to send some men to get her now. Let's start with an easy one: Who flew the saucer out of my hangar in Australia?'

'What?'

Rip had taken several brutal punches, so at first he didn't understand.

'Who flew it from my hangar to the atrium to pick up you and Pine?'

'You really don't know?'

Hedrick took a deep breath. 'I am fast losing my patience with you, kid. For the last time, where is the saucer?'

Rip put his head down, wiped his bloody nose on his shoulder. He didn't see Tony's punch coming. It exploded against his cheekbone.

He wound up on his face with dirt in his mouth. He rolled over, tried to focus on Hedrick.

Hedrick was talking to Taggart and Zwerneman, who were one or two feet closer to the lake. They were standing facing Hedrick, then they were rising into the air. Bits of leaves and twigs and dirt rose with them.

Taggart screamed. Zwerneman shouted something in German, a curse probably.

Hedrick stepped back quickly, looked up at the rising men and the black shape above them, darker than the night.

'Oh, Jesus,' someone said and pointed with his flashlight. The flashlights and the glare of the automobile headlights reflected from the glistening wet belly of the saucer, suspended in the air above the rising men.

Taggart and Zwerneman rose halfway to the saucer, screaming, then were crushed.

'Oh, my God!' Hedrick shouted. He bent over Rip and screamed in his face, 'What happened?'

'The earth and the saucer repel each other. The saucer crushed them.'

Rip got his legs under him, got to his knees. The flattened bodies were suspended between the saucer and the ground, about twenty feet in the air, trapped in the repulsion zone of the antigravity field. Blood from the corpses was making the repulsion zone visible. It was almost as if the bodies were trapped on a glass laboratory slide.

'Where was it?'

'In the lake. You want to be next?'

Roger Hedrick grabbed him by one arm, jerked him. 'It'll have to be you and me, kid.'

The saucer moved toward them. The men nearby scattered like quail.

Rip kept the ship creeping closer and closer. Leaves, debris, and gravel rose skyward as it moved. As he felt himself getting light on his feet, he turned and dove with his hands outstretched, reaching for the bumper of the nearest car. He got his hands around it just as he felt his feet leave the ground. He was hanging upside down from the automobile's bumper, being pulled upward toward the saucer just as Taggart and the German test pilot had been.

Hedrick was hanging on to his waist.

'Who's in that thing?' Hedrick shouted. 'Tell them to stop! They're going to kill us too!'

Hedrick was off the ground, his feet pointing toward the saucer, his arms around Rip's waist.

'Make them fly it away, kid, or I'll take you with me.'

Rip was supporting his weight and Hedrick's, dangling from the bumper, hanging on to it for dear life. The edges of the bumper and the plastic tie that bound his wrist cut painfully into his flesh.

He felt Hedrick's grip slip.

Rip's fingers were supporting the weight of both men. The pain…

'There's nobody in the saucer, is there?' Hedrick hissed. 'It obeys you!'

Incredibly, in a fantastic exhibition of physical strength, Hedrick held on to Rip's waist with his left arm and lifted his right hand to Rip's shoulder. Then the left. He wrapped his legs around Rip's, then managed to get his hands around Rip's neck.

With his face inches from Rip's, Hedrick began strangling him. He was past the edge of reasoning.

'You'll kill us both,' Rip managed as Hedrick's hands closed like a vise around his windpipe.

'It's mine!' Hedrick grunted. 'Mine!' And he squeezed on Rip's neck with all his strength.

Rip used his knees. Kneed Hedrick in the stomach, in the groin, bucked and pummeled him with his knees as he fought to breathe.

Roger Hedrick screamed as he lost his grip.

Hedrick dug in his fingernails, raking away strips of Rip's skin and shredding his shirt as he fell upward toward the waiting saucer, still screaming…

Rip backed the saucer away before he too fell upward. As the saucer's antigravity field released him, he lost his grip on the car bumper and fell to earth with a thump.

One of the flattened bodies fell nearby in a shower of blood.

Two were still up there, crushed in the transition zone between earth and saucer. One of them was Hedrick.

Tony came over toward where Rip lay, but he kept his eyes on the now stationary saucer. He was ready to run.

'You win, kid,' Tony said. He raised his voice, 'Let's get outta here.'

'Are you nuts?' one of the onlookers demanded. 'That saucer is worth billions!'

'Don't be a fool!' Tony said bitterly. 'The moneyman is dead. Do you want to join him up there, squashed like a bug? And who would pay you ten cents for the saucer, if you could manage to get your hands on it and fly it out of here?'

Rip moved the saucer toward the nearest automobile. The front end of the car rose about three feet in the air. He stopped the saucer, left the car hanging as men dove into the remaining cars and backed up hurriedly. Finally he moved the saucer a few feet, enough to release the front of the suspended car from the saucer's grasp.