Saucer: The Conquest

kidnapped, two men are injured or dead, and you've had plenty of time to decide on your story. Get on with it or let me go. I've got better things to do than stand here in this filthy old hangar in the middle of the night surrounded by thugs.'

'I was here in 1947 when they brought it on a train. Was working for the government evaluating Nazi rocket research. I was young then, just a kid. They only let us in the saucer for a day, one lousy day, before the cowards in Washington ordered us back to Florida and the saucer sealed and stored. I stole a computer out of it.'

Egg laughed, a harsh bark. 'You expect me to believe that? 1947 was fifty-seven years ago. Man, you are at least thirty years too young!'

Chadwick turned to face Egg and grinned wolfishly. 'You've been looking at the database on that computer you took out of the Sahara saucer for at least a year. You know what's on it. Don't tell me I'm too young.'

Egg stared at the man before him.

Chadwick took a step closer. 'And don't tell me you weren't tempted. I knoio you were. How do you suppose people lived through a voyage across interstellar space?' He laughed long and loud with his head back as the French thugs stood and watched, then answered his own question. 'They injected themselves with a drug that stopped the aging process, of course. It took years, but I finally got the manufacturing process right. I've been taking it for thirty years.' His voice rose in pitch and volume. 'I'm seventy-nine years old,' he shouted, and slapped the saucer in glee.

'All these years I tried to sell technology from that computer. The American government listed me as an international fugitive — they even sent men to kill me. Don't deny it__I know it's true. So I couldn't just walk into a drug company and say, 'Hello, my name is Newton Chadwick and I have discovered a youth serum.' Oh, no! I couldn't walk into Boeing or Grumman or Aerospatiale and say, 'I'm John Doe and I have discovered how to reverse the polarity of gravity.' I couldn't walk into the University of Heidelberg and say, 'I'm Albert Einstein's bastard son and I have discovered the Grand Unified Theory, the theory that combines relativity, quantum mechanics and gravity, the theory of everything, the theory that explains the entire physical world.' Oh, nooooooo!'

His howl filled the hangar, startling a bird from its roost among the rafters.

Chadwick paused to breathe deeply and calm himself as the bird squawked and flapped its wings above their heads. Finally, in a normal, conversational voice, he leaned toward Egg Cantrell and said, 'So I went to Pierre Artois, who was dreaming of building a base on the moon, and showed him what I knew. He believed me. He had faith. He understood! No one else ever had! But Pierre did.' He paused, nodding, and added, 'Yes, he did.' He stared into Egg's eyes. 'You believe me too, don't you?'

'If the government had this saucer squirreled away, how'd you get to it?'

'With money. Someone always wants money. The amazing thing is how little it takes to get what you want.'

Chadwick nodded, turned back to the saucer and put his hands upon it. 'So,' he said. 'So, that's where we are.'

'And that is?' Egg asked.

'You have flown a saucer,' Newton Chadwick said as he caressed the saucer's cold, black skin, smearing the dust. 'I haven't. You and I and several of these men are going to fly this saucer to the moon.'

'I don't know where you got your information, Chadwick, but you are wrong. I haven't flown a saucer — I've flown in one. I've flown in airliners too, but I never flew one. Surely even a man as full of it as you are can understand the distinction.'

Chadwick faced Egg again. 'I sent these incompetents to get your nephew, Rip, but they brought you back instead. You'll have to do. You and I are going to the moon in this saucer or you're going to hell — real soon.'

Egg took a deep breath. 'Sounds as if you want to go to hell with me.'

'The moon, Mr. Cantrell. We are going to the moon.'

It was the evening of the following day in Paris when Pierre Artois made his announcement. He broadcast it over an open frequency, where it was heard and recorded by the world's news organizations and immediately rebroadcast worldwide on television and radio.

On the moon, Artois announced, he had the ultimate weapon, an antigravity beam generator, which he would use for the betterment of all mankind. World peace was not going to arrive someday; it was here now, and he intended to enforce it. Henceforth the governments of the world would serve only at his pleasure, following policies of which he approved. Weapons of war were obsolete and would be destroyed. All nations would live in peace, their differences arbitrated by a commission that he appointed. Criminals and enemies of mankind would be dealt with summarily.

As evidence of their good faith, all the governments of the world must, within forty-eight hours, renounce their sovereignty and swear allegiance to the new world order, which Artois and his lieutenants would enforce.

As his proclamation circled the globe electronically, governments around the world met to confer. In Paris the premier had some choice words for the minister of space, whose incompetence had allowed this Artois maniac to transport himself, his henchmen and his weapon to the moon at the expense, primarily, of French taxpayers. The minister submitted his immediate resignation and stalked out of the premier's office. The premier found that the minister's departure did not improve the situation a detectable amount, but it made the premier feel better.

After an emergency meeting of the House of Commons, the British prime minister stood resolutely in front of television cameras and defiantly told Pierre Artois to 'bugger off.' Ten minutes later the Tower of London rose swiftly from its foundations in a cloud of stone and brick that was lifted almost a thousand feet in the air; then the fragments rained down on the city of London and the Thames. Fifteen minutes after that one wing of Buckingham Palace was destroyed in a similar manner.

While these spectacular feats of demolition were playing on television, the American president huddled in the Oval Office with O'Reilly, the secretary of state, the director of the CIA, the national security adviser, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

'What can we do to thwart this maniac?' the president demanded. He looked at the uniformed generals, scanning each face.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, an army four-star, pulled at his tie. 'Uh, in the short term, nothing, sir. Given enough time, we can mount a nuclear warhead on a rocket and shoot it at the lunar base. If Artois doesn't destroy it with his beam weapon before it gets there, it should do the trick nicely.'

'How long would that take?'

The chairman's eyebrows rose while he considered. 'Oh, six months or so, I would imagine.'

'Six months?'

'Maybe more.'

In the disappointed silence that followed that comment, the secretary of state said, 'Actually a world government isn't such a bad idea.'

O'Reilly looked at her in stupified amazement.

She continued, 'Someday we'll have a world government, with or without Pierre Artois. Why not start now? Artois won't last forever. In fact, one suspects he won't last long.' She rubbed her hands and continued enthusiastically, 'We can tackle global warming, third world starvation, universal medical care, the equitable redistribution of the world's wealth—'

'Holy moly!' O'Reilly said, interrupting. 'You're suggesting we rescind the Declaration of Independence and tear up the United States Constitution. If I may indulge in understatement, I don't think the electorate is quite ready for that bold step, Madam Secretary.'

'I don't think that Artois intends to give the American electorate a choice in the matter,' the lady retorted tartly.

'And you want to take advantage of that happy fact. You remind me of a bystander watching a robbery who decides to help himself after the clerk is tied up.'

'That's outrageous,' the secretary shot back.

While she and O'Reilly squabbled the telephone rang. The president picked it up, listened a moment, grunted, then put the instrument back on its cradle. After silencing the pugilists, he announced, 'Artois has just zapped one of the space shuttles at Cape Canaveral. It rose five hundred feet in the air and fell back to earth. NASA thinks they may be able to salvage some of the smaller parts.'

'We should probably evacuate the White House,' the national security adviser advised. 'Artois will undoubtedly target it too.'