Saucer: The Conquest

marked NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. The door had a keypad that allowed access. Power cables penetrated the metal bulkhead in which the door was set along one wall, as well as ducts to pipe air in and bring it out. 'What's in there?' she asked her guide.

'More experiments. We must keep the room scrupulously clean.'

Charley didn't argue. And she didn't believe him.

So what was behind the door? Was that the destination of the reactor? Why in the world did Pierre Artois need a nuclear reactor on the moon? Electrical power was the only possible answer, but why so much?

'Why are you here?' she asked Salmon.

'I make it all work,' he replied casually.

'That is what you do. But why are you here?'

He stopped, turned and scrutinized her face. 'You are the first person who ever asked.'

'Oh.'

Salmon took a deep breath as he thought about the question. 'Most people have little dreams, with small goals. They lead small, unimportant lives. Pierre's dream is huge, and he has devoted himself to it body and soul. Do you understand?'

'I think so.'

Salmon was intense. 'Even if he ultimately fails, he has tried mightily. And the attempt has made him great.'

'Like Don Quixote, perhaps.'

Salmon didn't think much of that analogy. He merely grunted and resumed walking.

'And your dream?' Charley asked.

'Pierre's dream has made him great. And if we believe, he will make us great, too.'

The messiah on the moon, Charley thought, although she didn't say that to Henri Salmon. He had his dream and she had hers, which was to fly. My dream is big enough for me, she told herself.

In the mess hall Salmon bid her a curt good-bye and walked away. 'Interesting,' she muttered aloud. His jumpsuit bulged under his armpit. Henri Salmon was wearing a pistol. Whatever for, she wondered.

Her lack of sleep was catching up with her. She made her way to the women's dorm and leaped into her bed, which didn't collapse.

Charley Pine was sitting in the dining area after her long nap when Florentin found her. He sat down beside her with his tray. 'It was the heater in the main engine,' he reported. 'It froze up. I've reset the circuit breaker. Seems fine now.'

'Why did it freeze?' Charley asked between bites.

'That I don't know. I've inspected everything I can inspect, and I can't find anything wrong.'

'Could not duplicate the gripe,' Charley muttered in English, then smiled at Florentin. He was the expert on the spaceplane. If he couldn't find the glitch, no one else at the lunar base would either. Some problems a pilot simply has to live with. Fortunately they wouldn't need the main engine to get back to earth. The main burns would be longer, but the computer could arrive at the proper trajectory to account for that.

'How are they coming on getting the cargo unloaded?' she asked.

'Another twenty-four hours or so. Then, Salmon says, they will begin loading the science experiments for the trip back.'

'Terrific.'

'So how do you like the moon?'

'Reminds me of a cave.'

'Yes,' he said with a grin. 'We call it Cave Base. Do not say that to the press, though. Monsieur Artois is selling the glamour.'

'Speaking of glamour,' Charley said as Joe Bob Hooker came over carrying a tray and sat down with them. 'Hello, Mr. Hooker.'

'Call me Joe Bob. Well, whaddaya think?'

Florentin mumbled an excuse and took his tray to another table, where he sat with a collection of technicians.

'What this place needs is a golf course,' Charley said to Joe Bob, just to make conversation.

'My sentiments, exactly. I've brought a driver and a box of balls. Been outside hitting a few, figuring out just how far they go. Can't get a real good swing in a space suit, and Artois will have to keep that in mind. He had a designer lay out a course and asked for my opinion. He knows I have a ten handicap.'

Charley Pine's opinion of Pierre Artois' public relations skills soared. If he could keep the Joe Bobs of the world happy, there were no limits on what he could accomplish. Too bad the worker bees around here assiduously avoided the Texan.

As Hooker chattered about his golf experiences at deluxe courses around the world, Charley finished her meal. The lunar base personnel who entered the dining area avoided their table.

Money can buy the adventure, she thought, but it can't buy camaraderie. Joe Bob would always be a tourist. And he knew it. He eyed the technicians in their one-piece jumpsuits and concentrated on his food.

She made her excuses and left.

Life at the lunar base was regulated by the clock, almost as if the people were in a submerged submarine. Charley worked out in the gym, then spent the rest of the clock day sitting on an inflatable couch that didn't weigh five pounds in front of a television playing French and Italian movies. She watched people come and go from the cafeteria section of the room while scanning European newspapers that Jeanne d 'Arc had delivered. Around her, off-duty base personnel chattered among themselves. They had engaged her in conversation, then turned to subjects that interested them— problems with the base, professional challenges, gossip and games. Several computers sat on a table against a wall and were set up to play games. Chess sets were nearby and were always in use.

People were the same everywhere, Charley thought rue-lull}'. Even on the moon. People needed intellectual stimulation as well as physical exercise to stay healthy.

The adrenaline rush of the flight had worn off, leaving her depressed and lethargic. With no duties to engage her, she was bored. And blue. She wasn't yet ready to throw herself into computer games. Yeah, this was an adventure of a lifetime, but when it was over, then what?

Yawning and tired, she tossed away the newspapers and sat musing about Rip. Finally she gave up and headed for the women's bunkroom.

In the months that he had had the computer from Rip's saucer, Egg Cantrell had devoted much time and thought to try to learn how it worked. Yet he could not ignore the contents of the database. He had converted his office into a computer center so that he could transfer the contents of the saucer's computer to his own, where he could manipulate the data, attempting to organize it and make sense of it. At times he felt like a man sampling books in the Library of Congress, knowing that reading them all would be impossible. At first he had tried to be systematic. The problem was that all knowledge is interrelated, so no matter where he began, threads to other interesting things led away in all directions. Finally he realized that systematic exploration of the storehouse of information contained in the computer would take thousands of years, and he only had a fraction of one lifetime left. So he abandoned system and, when he wasn't working on the programs that made the computer think, he followed any interesting thread anywhere it led. If he crossed another pathway that looked more interesting, he followed that.

The real problem was that he couldn't read the language. Much of the information was in the form of text, which he spent several months trying to decipher. Finally he realized the task was beyond him. With the help of several academics he knew, he located a young linguistics scholar and gave her a huge sample of the text and the graphics that were embedded around it. That was several months ago. She was still searching for a key, a Rosetta stone, that would give her an opening.

In their last conversation she said, 'I am assuming that this language was the parent of all the eartNh's languages. That is a huge assumption and may prove to be wrong. There has been much theoretical work done on the so-called first language, and it's just that, theory. All that said, I guarantee you that I can crack it with a computer.'