Chadwick eased himself to the ground and leaned back against the tree.
'Should have married her,' he muttered. 'Wish I had.'
He closed his eyes. His breathing became regular, and he seemed to go to sleep.
Egg sat nearby and watched the treetops dance. The breeze must be stronger up there. Grasshoppers were singing, and before long a ruffed grouse came hesitantly from the brush to search for them. The bird ignored the men.
The similarity between his life and Chadwick's hit Egg hard. He too had never married, had submerged himself in work. Today he was acutely conscious of all the things he had paid too little attention to, such as family, friends, spring rains, summer thunderstorms — and women.
Maybe… There was an archaeologist at the university who had wanted to see the saucer computer. They had spent a day together at the farm. After she completed her article, she had called and asked him to dinner. He had refused. Now he remembered her smile, the way she held her head when she looked at him. Maybe he should call her up and accept that invitation.
The breeze was stronger now on his face; clouds were forming overhead. As a boy he had liked to lie in the grass looking at clouds. He hadn't done it since junior high.
After a while Egg glanced at Chadwick. He seemed to have sagged a little. His chin was on his chest, which had stopped moving. Egg checked Chadwick's pulse. There wasn't one. The breeze was still caressing his white hair.
Egg stood, sighed as he took a last look at the old man, then slowly made his way along the runway toward the hangar and the telephone.
20
'Where the devil is that saucer?' the president asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs after another look at his watch. They were standing on the reviewing platform that had been hurriedly erected in front of the huge hangar at Andrews Air Force Base, on the outskirts of Washington. Three days ago the president had specifically told Charley Pine eleven o'clock. She and Cantrell were twenty-two minutes late.
'Hard to say, Mr. President,' the general replied. 'We can't see the thing on radar — it's very stealthy. Every now and then the operators get a stray glint from a leading edge, but only on a sweep or two, and only occasionally.'
The president was in no mood for technical explanations. The French spaceplane had burned to cinders in an accident yesterday at the Bonneville Salt Flats — a fuel leak, according to the press release — and this morning the French ambassador had delivered a note to the state department demanding reimbursement.
'A billion and a half dollars for a used spaceplane?' the president exclaimed to the secretary of state. 'Don't be ridiculous.'
'They're very adamant,' she retorted.
'Tell 'em we'll deduct a couple hundred mil from the bill we're sending them for a new White House, an arch in St. Louis, the bridges in San Fran and that stadium those folks in California want.'
'You intend to bill France for a football stadium?'
'Damn right! Dirt, grass, skyboxes and everything, the whole works.'
That conversation had taken some of the shine off the president's bonhomie. He looked at his watch again, glanced over at the press mob, which was restrained by a rope and a dozen military police, and tried to look relaxed even though he was worried. Twenty-eight minutes after the hour now.
The air force said two objects had reentered the atmosphere over California, one yesterday and one the day before. When he received the report on the first one he knew it wasn't Pine — she couldn't have made the trip from the moon that quickly. It must have been the Roswell saucer, the one Pine had fought on the moon, the one stolen from Area 51. He had tried to call Pine on the radio and give her a warning, but she never acknowledged. Probably had the radio off.
After it came into the atmosphere, the Roswell saucer had been spotted over Missouri by people on the ground, over Illinois by an airliner going into O'Hare, and by several pilots flying over Canada. The Canadian military had been searching for it ever since without success.
The president wondered if he should have canceled this event. He had decided not to because it had already been announced and publicized.
As he kept checking his watch, he fretted.
If he had only known that Pine and Cantrell were late because they had overslept, he would have been infuriated.
A passing ship, a freighter out of Baltimore, woke them from their deep sleep. They heard the screw noises; then the saucer rocked slightly as the disturbed water reached the bottom. Charley Pine looked around, blinked, then looked at her watch. Omigawd! Half past eleven.
'Rip! Rip! Wake up. We're late.'
She stumbled over to the pilot's seat, wiping the sleep from her eyes. She donned the headset, pulled the power knob all the way out and lifted the antigravity control on the left side of the seat. The saucer didn't want to come out of the mud. She lifted the control a good bit, and finally the mud released its grip.
The heavy saucer rose slowly, lifting a column of water above it. Impatient, Charley shoved the stick forward while lifting the antigravity control. Instandy the spaceship began moving through the water, faster and faster as the saucer-shape began developing lift. She lifted the nose a tad and the ship planed upward toward the surface. The flying saucer accelerated nicely and shot out of the water in a ten-degree climb.
A fisherman in a nearby boat was nearly swamped in the mini-tsunami. He stared openmouthed as Charley lit the rocket engines and the saucer accelerated away in a long, sweeping turn to the north.
Aboard the freighter, a severely hungover sailor who witnessed the saucer's departure swore off booze. Never again, he vowed, as he squeezed his eyes shut against the glare of the rocket exhaust and belatedly clapped his hands over his ears.
Jean-Paul Lalouette was in pain. The stump of his left arm was turning gangrenous, he suspected. He and Chadwick had bandaged it as well as they could, and then gradually loosened the emergency tourniquet to restore blood flow, but the bleeding had been so bad they had had to tighten it again or he would have bled to death.
During the three-day journey to earth he had fought the pain and shock, and watched in horror as Newton Chadwick aged before his eyes. The whole flight from the moon had been a living nightmare. He was already suffering the tortures of hell and he wasn't even dead. Yet.
Chadwick had wanted to go to Missouri so he could kill Egg Cantrell when he arrived, as he would sooner or later. Lalouette thought that request sounded reasonable. He wanted the sweet taste of revenge himself. He dropped Chadwick at Cantrell's farm, refilled his water tanks and left. If the other saucer didn't show up for a week or two, he suspected he'd be dead when it arrived. His time was running out. He needed to intercept the saucer as soon as it came back to earth.
Charley Pine. He was going to kill her before he died.
Then he would be ready to go. Not until then, though.
Listening to the radio, Lalouette learned of the welcome-home event planned at Andrews.
He flew northeast into Canada, found a lake in the woods and refilled the saucer's tanks. And he lucked out. There was an empty fishing cabin on the shore of the lake, already battened down for winter. He parked the saucer under a canopy of trees near the cabin. He broke into the cabin, found a sheet that he tore up for a new bandage, prepared a meal from canned goods the owners left behind and spent a miserable thirty-six hours huddled by a fire, consumed with rage. Jean-Paul Lalouette wasn't an evil man. Yet he had been beaten by a
Now he was gliding down toward Andrews from the northwest. The entire city of Washington lay under him. He ignored it, watching the sky for fighters. The Americans might try to intercept him, shoot him down.