Saucer: The Conquest

maneuvered himself into the pilot's seat and donned a seat belt to hold him there.

Charley considered her answer before she spoke. 'This ship is nicer, more people friendly. The saucer was more of a pickup truck, designed to haul people and cargo back and forth from orbit to a planet. The saucer had no cooking, sleeping or toilet facilities. Very Spartan.'

'Ah, the creature comforts. These days one expects them.'

They discussed the differences for a few minutes, then the conversation petered out.

Finally Artois said, 'And Madame Courbet, your stateroom companion, are you getting along with her?'

'She's very nice.'

'Yes,' he agreed. 'Nice. Indeed.'

Artois sat for a few more minutes, then unstrapped and pushed himself out of the pilot's seat with a gentle nudge. As he floated aft for the hatch he said, 'I hope you have a good voyage.'

'You too,' said Charley Pine. She glanced back to make sure he actually left the compartment.

What was that all about} she wondered.

A few minutes later Joe Bob Hooker caromed into the cockpit. 'Just like a goddamn cue ball,' he said to Charley. He held himself suspended behind the seats and stared through the windscreen.

'Oh, my God! Would you look at that?' He shifted so he could look out the pilot's side window. 'If that don't beat all! Who'd a believed it, I ask you that. Who'd a thought it?'

'So is this worth twenty-five mil?'

'Can't take it with you, kid. No, sir.' Hooker crept forward so that he could look back over the tiny left wing at earth. Finally, when he had had enough, he slid backward and stabilized in a position where he could look at her. 'It was more than that, actually, with the exchange rate and all. And the Frenchies made me pay a half million for my flight suit. They don't know it, but I'm taking it with me when I get home.'

'Hell, yes.'

'I'm from Texas,' he continued. 'Little crossroads in west Texas nobody ever heard of. Grew up without a pot to piss in. Went to Dallas right after high school and looked for something to get into. Figured cars were the deal. Everybody's always going to need a ride. Everything else comes and goes, but everybody will always need wheels. Started with a used car lot and learned the business. Bought another. Finally got into new cars. Sold my soul to the banks, but finally made it pay. Own a string of dealerships now. Can sell you any brand on the planet that's legal to sell in the U. S. of A.'

'Already have a car,' Charley said.

'They wear out. That's the good thing about 'em.'

'So you're married?' Charley asked, for something to say.

'Third marriage,' Joe Bob said with a sigh. 'Cute little thing from Highland Park. Tan and toned up tight. 'Bout your age, I figure, a year older than my oldest daughter. I was the biggest bankroll available when she ditched her first husband. Loves to spend money and do the Junior League thing. She thought I was crazy to sign up for this flight, but what the hell, she's fixed for life if I don't come back, so she said yes. Get her a young stud-bucket the afternoon they tell her the good news.'

'I see.'

'Well, you should. You got the best seat in the house.'

With that he squirmed around and launched himself aft.

When she finished her watch, Charley Pine crashed in her sleeping bag. She awoke refreshed and alert.

After another four-hour watch, during which Pierre Artois and two of the engineer passengers did a show for French television from the rear of the cockpit, she decided she could do with a bath. This task turned out to be a challenge in the weightless environment. One stripped and entered a tiny bathing chamber. A push of a button sprayed a minute quantity of water, about a pint, upon the bather from four dozen jets. When the dousing stopped, the bather scrubbed him or herself with a soapy rag. A touch of a button gave another few seconds of rinse water, which was then suctioned out of the chamber to be boiled and recycled.

Charley managed to wet her hair, which would have to do. No wonder most of the men wore their hair very short.

Water was precious. Jeanne d'Arc was carrying several hundred gallons to the lunar base for use there. It would have to be continuously purified and reused. Still, inevitably, some was lost. Charley knew that the French were drilling into the lunar surface searching for ice formed when meteors struck, or even older ice that crystallized after the moon was torn from proto-earth by a meteor billions of years ago. If they found a significant amount of ice, the lunar base had a bright future. If they didn't, it would never be more than a research outpost, one that would only be manned from time to time when political and financial realities allowed.

Artois believed the ice was there. Indeed, he had publicly guaranteed it to the French people. If it couldn't be found he was going to be embarrassed and French taxpayers were going to get the shaft — which is what taxpayers had been getting since the dawn of time, so they sort of expected it.

After she wriggled into her clean flight suit, Charley went exploring again, working her way aft and glancing into every compartment. Most of the other crew members were asleep, including Claudine Courbet. The adrenaline high that had carried everyone through launch and the first twenty-four hours in space had finally worn off.

Charley carefully inspected the ship's batteries, looking for acid leaks. All the ship's power right now was coming from batteries and solar panels. Electrical power was one of the absolute requirements for space travel; without it the rocket engines couldn't be restarted, and the ship would fly forever on a voyage into eternity.

Even the chef was asleep. Charley sampled some bread, cheese and wine, hummed a few bars of something romantic, then moved on.

Floating along the passageways was very cool, she thought. This small vessel of steel and aluminum reminded her of a seed pod. Filled with air and water, it carried its tiny blobs of protoplasm from one small island in space to another.

The coolest way to shoot the passageways was with the minimum motion of hands and feet, she decided, sort of like a seal slipping through an ice tunnel under the Arctic. Just push off with a flip of the wrist to start moving, then sweeten the trajectory when necessary with a touch of the bulkhead or deck or ceiling.

There was no one in the cargo bay. Charley flippered along the narrow passageways, checking tie-downs. When she found herself in front of the large container that Claudine and the male technician had been looking into, she paused. The container wore a key-actuated padlock.

She pursed her lips, then began examining the other containers more closely. None was locked. In fact, five minutes of inspecting revealed that there was only one padlock in the bay. Perhaps on the ship.

She went back to look again.

Now she was curious. Why would anyone lock a cargo container? It made no sense. Everything in the compartment was on the manifest.

Or was it?

She idly reached for the lock and gave an experimental tug. It opened in her hand. She stared at it dumbly for several seconds before she realized that it hadn't been locked. Whoever put it on hadn't squeezed it hard enough, so the lock failed to catch.

She took it off and began opening the six latches. Bracing herself, she lifted the container door.

And found herself staring at a symbol spray-painted in red onto a steel container.

She looked for five or six seconds, then shut the hatch, closed all the latches and installed the padlock.

Should she lock it, or leave it as she found it?

She decided that leaving it as she found it was the better choice. She glided on out of the compartment and shut the hatch behind her.

Charley had seen the cargo manifest, actually looked through it, a week or so ago. She didn't recall anything on the manifest that was radioactive. Nor should there be. Power at the lunar base was supplied by generators, batteries and solar panels. In fact, several solar arrays were in the cargo bay.

Isotopes? For running down drill holes in the search for water?

In the small compartment they shared, Claudine Courbet was zipped into her hammock fast asleep. She had tied the arms of her flight suit around one of the hammock hooks, so the legs and body were floating in midair, swaying to and fro as the moving air stirred them.

Charley Pine eyed the sleeping woman, then felt the flight suit. Something hard in one pocket. She reached in