O'Reilly couldn't sit still. He bounded from his chair and paced the small office. The president kept his gaze riveted on the speaker of the telephone, waiting.
18
Rip leaned his head over the edge of the hole. The floor of the cavern was at least twenty feet below. Right in the middle was the beam generator. Wow, it was big.
He felt for the hand grenades. They were there. He pulled the Velcro loose that held the pocket closed and reached for one.
French exploded in his earphones. At first he thought someone below had seen him; then he realized that the people outside in space suits had probably seen Charley.
He raised his head, just in time to see the saucer settling below his horizon.
No grenade! Dropping one on the beam generator wouldn't get Egg back. Better stick with the plan.
He lowered his head, trying to see what was on the opposite side of the cavern. And did. It was rock.
More French assaulted his ears. They were certainly excited. They had to have the saucer if they ever expected to see trees and grass again in their lives. He had emphasized that point to Charley, who had merely nodded.
She had brains and guts — more than he did, he thought— so he let it go at that. She could handle it.
He backed up, stood carefully and hopped around the edge of the hole ninety degrees, then got down on his hands and knees and crawled in for another look.
This time he saw the glass panels and the control console beyond. And there was no one there!
Rip moved and took another look. Finally he was satisfied that he had seen the entire layout and the cavern and control room were indeed empty.
He went back and picked up the rifle, checking that the safety was on.
Hoo boy.
The gravity was only one-sixth as strong as earth's. Charley had told him that. So a twenty-foot fall would be equivalent to a three-and-a-half-foot drop.
Standing erect, holding the rifle in both hands, Rip shuffled to the edge of the hole, took a deep breath and jumped.
Charley Pine brought the saucer into a hover fifty feet beyond the six people standing in front of the base air lock. She pointed the saucer right at the air lock door.
One of the figures was rotund, wearing a space suit that looked to be under severe stress around the middle. Egg! There was a person immediately beside him on the right and left. Both held what appeared to be pistols in their hands.
Charley reached up to her helmet and keyed the mike.
'Is that you, Uncle Egg?' she asked in English.
The heavyset figure reached for his helmet. 'It's me, Charley.'
'Ah, Mademoiselle Pine, welcome back to the moon.' That was a feminine voice in French. Julie Artois.
'English, please,' Charley said.
'We must talk, Ms. Pine,' Julie said, shifting languages.
'You people stay right where you are. Don't move.'
She looked at her watch. She wanted to give Rip at least fifteen minutes to get inside before she landed. She looked carefully around, at the parked forklift for off-loading space-planes, at the small lunar ATV, at the rocks behind, anywhere that might conceal a man. And saw no one.
Which didn't mean no one was there.
Rip fell when he hit the cavern floor. He had tried to catch himself by bending his knees, but he misjudged it and bounced in slow motion. Then he toppled sideways and was unable to right himself. He landed the second time on his shoulder, bounced again and this time used a hand to cushion the impact. He managed to hang on to the rifle. His motion was heavily restricted by the pressure the suit put on his limbs. He struggled to stand erect, then stood looking into the control room.
It was empty of people, thank heavens! Any semidanger-ous villain who witnessed his ignominious arrival would have died laughing.
The air lock to the control room was tempting, but he ignored it. He stepped over to the beam generator and inspected it carefully.
That was when he heard Charley and Egg speaking.
At least Egg wasn't dead or injured. That simplified the problem, he told himself. He wouldn't have to cram Egg into a space suit and carry him to the saucer.
Egg Cantrell thought the saucer looked ominous hovering stationary and motionless above the lava bed. The sun behind them gleamed off the dark surface and made it difficult to see through the canopy. Impossible, really.
Julie was on his right with her pistol in her hand, Fry Two on his left. These other people he didn't know. Pierre hadn't come out.
He felt terrible, hung over from the drugs they had given him to keep him sedated, and guilty because he had gotten Rip and Charley into this fix. Here they were, face-to-face with these murderous megalomaniacs.
Someone, Egg well knew, was going to die soon. He closed his eyes and prayed that it wouldn't be Charley or his nephew Rip.
'What's going on?' O'Reilly asked impatiently. He found the radio silence difficult to endure. He directed the question to the translator, a young woman from an Ivy League university who didn't look the least impressed with her august company. She was chewing gum and occasionally running her fingers through her hair. She didn't answer O'Reilly's question, merely stared blankly at him. He resumed his nervous pacing.
The president sat behind his desk with his fingers laced across his tummy and his eyes closed. He couldn't fool O'Reilly — the chief of staff had seen him like this numerous times when he was digging deep for tact or patience. One of the drawbacks to public life, in O'Reilly's opinion, was the fact that politicians spent much of their time seeking votes from the ill-informed and the uninformed. Those unable to deal gracefully with fools never got into office or were soon voted out. In fact, the president had once confided to O'Reilly that he owed his political success to his ability to spend hours surrounded by idiots without biting one. O'Reilly was made of different stuff, a fact of which he was well aware. Still…
'It
The painting didn't answer.
Rip Cantrell examined the beam generator closely. The panels on the base of the unit fastened with wing nuts; he quickly opened them and took a look. The major components he recognized. There was no doubt that this unit had been designed based on saucer technology.
The power cables that led into the unit were as thick as Rip's wrist and were clearly marked: positive and negative. They were attached with clamps, which were held on with nuts. He tried to turn one of the nuts with his fingers. Nope.
There must be a toolbox around here somewhere!
He scanned the cavern — and saw it, placed against the wall.
He had it open in seconds. Found a wrench that looked about the right size.
His earphones were silent. Ominously silent. As Rip worked on the nuts he nervously eyed the door to the control room, another air lock door.
The job took two minutes. It was simple, really. He undid both clamps and reversed the wires, then tightened the nuts and replaced the panel.
He replaced the wrench in the toolbox, closed it and went into the air lock.
