they talk one at a time, but he didn't anymore. Now he merely tuned in to snatches of each speech and got the gist of it. One voice hammered on public safety, someone fretted about paying people not to work, several were horrified at the cost to rebuild public buildings, and the attorney general remarked on the government's liability if anyone were injured or killed by flying debris. Evacuation would look bad to voters, everyone agreed. Tourists would flee Washington, the local economy would be devastated, government workers would refuse to commute into the city, essential government services would be disrupted, Social Security checks wouldn't go out on time, the homeless had noplace else to go…
'Now you understand why the French surrendered,' the secretary of state said smugly.
The president couldn't resist. 'We'll rebuild the capital in Kansas,' he told her. 'The climate there is better, and it's closer to Texas.' Then he shooed them out.
O'Reilly, the national security adviser, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs remained when the others had left. 'Have the director of homeland security make sure every government building in Washington is empty from moonrise to moonset tomorrow and every day after that,' the president said to O'Reilly. 'Things may get nasty if we don't whack those spaceplanes tomorrow night.'
'We'll have to evacuate the White House.'
The submarines are in position to launch cruise missiles now, sir,' the adviser said. 'But I suggest we wait for darkness to fall in France, then launch a coordinated strike. That will maximize the chances of catastrophically damaging the tar-
gets. And the incoming cruise missiles will be perfect cover for the B-2s. Under no circumstance should we risk having the French capture a B-2 crew.'
'What do you think?' the president asked the chairman.
'If they move the planes while the missiles are in the air, the missiles will miss. We have a better chance of hitting the birds with B-2s.'
'The spaceplanes could fly away while we are waiting,' the president objected. 'If they're ready to fly. Are they?'
'CIA doesn't know. But if we shoot cruise missiles and miss, I guarantee you that the pro-Artois French will shuffle those planes all over. The B-2s are already in the air. They'll refuel twice on the flight to France and twice coming home.'
The president went to the window. The moonlight was so bright the trees in the lawn cast shadows. He looked up. He could see the moon by leaning close to the glass. The seas, really dark areas caused by ancient lava flows, were quite stark.
When he was small someone told him about the man in the moon, frightening him. He had hid from the moon's sight, afraid of that man up there. Now a whole generation of kids might grow up afraid.
That egomaniac Artois!
He looked again at his watch. It was a few minutes past six a.m. in France. 'Okay,' he said. 'Wait until darkness in France.' The national security adviser and the general left the room.
O'Reilly turned on the television. The president wasn't paying much attention until the announcer said breathlessly, 'Earlier this evening a reporter for our Denver affiliate attempted to interview Charlotte Pine, the American pilot for the French space ministry, who stole the spaceplane that took Artois to the moon. Tonight she was a passenger in a private airplane that landed at a general aviation airport in sAuc.er: theconquest
Denver. She refused to be interviewed.' The network then played fifteen seconds of footage of Charley Pine snarling at the reporter.
So she was back, and in the United States!
'Have the FBI detain her and bring her here,' the president growled at O'Reilly.
He was back at the window, looking at the moon, when a military aide came into the room and handed him a slip of paper. A saucer or rocket had gone into orbit from Nevada.
The president's eyebrows rose toward his hairline. He knew about the saucer that the Air Force had stashed in Area 51, had learned about it the hard way last year. Surely no one had flown that artifact away. That thing had been guarded day and night and locked up tight since 1947!
More than likely this report was another false alarm. Boy, there had been plenty of those. People were edgy, defenseless and ready to stampede. Rumors swept from coast to coast as quickly as telephone switching equipment could handle long distance calls.
Tomorrow night. With the spaceplanes destroyed, Artois would have to reexamine his cards.
'Better check on this report,' the president said, and handed the slip of paper about the Area 51 saucer to O'Reilly. 'Sounds as if someone in Nevada panicked big time. And find that spaceplane that Pine flew back.'
Then he smiled one of those smiles the secretary of state hated.
After arriving at Rkagan National, Charley Pine and Rip Cantrell rented a car, loaded the space suits and air compressor in the trunk and went looking for a motel room.
They found one near the Potomac, south of the city on U.S., which had been the main drag south back in the dark ages pfore the interstates were built. The motel dated from that era, although it had been painted three or four times since.
Charely Pine washed her clothes in the sink of their room and hung them up to dry. Rip gave her a toothbrush and some other personal items that he had brought in a small tote bag from Missouri. When Charley put her clothes on the next morning they were still damp. She complained to Rip, who had just returned from the small diner next to the motel with coffee.
'You gotta be tough this day and age,' Rip said, and kissed her good morning.
'I am tough, but wet panties—' Charley shivered.
Charley already had the television on and had watched a replay of her vignette with the Denver reporter. As she and Rip sipped coffee, she flipped back to CNBC and turned the audio down.
'So do you still want to do it?' she asked Rip.
'Artois snatched Egg. If he hadn't, I'd vote to find a hole and crawl in. But we can't.'
'You're right. And I owe Pierre. If he wins, he's going to squash me like a bug.'
A half hour later, as they ate breakfast in the diner, the news broke that the three spaceplanes in France had just taken off, and had presumably gone into orbit on the first leg of their journey to the moon.
Charley and Rip sat frozen, watching the film clip of the spaceplanes taking off, a minute apart, on the television at the end of the counter.
'They have to get fuel at the orbiting tank,' Charley remarked thoughtfully. 'I didn't think there was enough there for three spaceplanes.'
'What if there isn't?' Rip asked, speaking softly so no one seated at the counter would hear them.
'One of the spaceplanes may have carried up excess fuel for the other two. The crew would pump the excess into the tank, then the receivers would take it out. Much easier than rigging hoses between orbiting bodies.'
They soon paid the tab and drove away in the rented car, with the space suits and accessories in the trunk. They stopped at a convenience store and purchased six bottles of water and three bags of jerky. Then they drove to the parking lot of the old RFK football stadium, which was empty. They parked, locked the car, and walked to Independence Avenue, where they found a bus stop and waited. When the local came along, they climbed aboard.
'Going to be a pretty day,' the bus driver said to Charley after she smiled at him.
Rip and Charley took a seat and rode into the heart of the city.
The news that the three spaceplanes in southern France had taken off from their base hit the president hard. He had let the military professionals talk him into waiting to attack, and now it was too late. He said three or four cuss words.
While he waited for his blood pressure to return to normal, he thought about the situation. Due to the fact that the moon was overhead during the middle of the night when public buildings in Washington — such as the Capitol, White House, Supreme Court Building, Pentagon and Treasury — were empty, the government didn't yet have to panic the electorate by evacuating those buildings during the day, in effect shutting down official Washington. During the day the government could continue with business as usual. For a week or so.
Across the street in Lafayette Park several thousand demonstrators were cavorting in front of television
