Charley, on the other hand, was thinking hard about the task before her. Flying the saucer with its antigravity rings up the cliffs, finding the place Solo wanted in the starlight, keeping everyone from falling off the rounded top of the ship. My God, if they fell off …
Solo sensed her concern. If we fall, we fall.
She heard his voice in her head and sensed the wisdom, even if she didn’t like the message. Keeping this flying plate level was going to take all the flying skills she possessed. Sure, the computer would help, but she had to tell the computer what to do. If she screwed this up … well, the fall wouldn’t take so long. Then she and Rip and Egg and Solo would begin the next adventure, whatever that would be.
That’s right.
Your mind reading is very tiresome, she thought.
There was no reply.
Egg Cantrell was the most frightened. He glued himself to the saucer — he had Solo sprawled flat right on the crest — and held on for dear life. His rounded middle seemed to push him away from the saucer, making him feel like a basketball that was balanced just so and could at the slightest nudge begin to roll.
Charley sensed his fear. She was in front of him, sitting up, where she could see. “We’ll be okay, Uncle Egg. Hang on to Solo.”
“I can’t hang on to anybody,” Egg informed her, trying to keep his voice calm. Even as he said the words, he felt the saucer lift off. Something like an elevator, yet smooth and effortless. He closed his eyes and tried to get a grip with his hands and feet, even though there was nothing but the glass-smooth surface of the saucer to hold on to.
“If it was raining, we’d be in big trouble,” Rip remarked. He was the eternal optimist, Egg thought, with the confidence of youth. Yeah, things could always be worse. That’s one of life’s profound lessons.
Egg could feel the cold air flowing over him. Charley was moving the saucer forward, but climbing. He could feel the saucer pressing against his body, lifting, rising, higher and higher. He risked a look around. The cliffs were visible in the starlight, which made the snow on the canyon rims glow. He couldn’t see much detail. He could see that the saucer was moving, however, and the aspect of the cliffs was changing. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to fight the cold.
The flight seemed to take hours. Charley kept the speed under control. Once the saucer flew over a ledge of a cliff — the sides of the canyon rose like a giant’s stairsteps — and the thing began to tilt. Egg felt the panic rising in his throat. He clung to the ship, which somehow came back level.
Well done, Charley. It was that damn Solo. The guy had steel balls. Egg pressed a cheek against the saucer’s skin and kept his eyes shut.
After a while Solo gave Charley directions. Left some. Higher. Along that ledge.
“Use your flashlight, Rip,” Charley ordered.
“Maybe the saucer’s landing light would be better.”
“Too bright. No use advertising. Just the flashlight.”
Finally Egg felt the saucer stop. A total lack of motion. Or so it seemed. He opened his eyes and looked in the direction his head was pointing. He was looking along the upper edge of the Grand Canyon. A sliver of moon was up now, and the entire sweep of the great tear in the earth was spread before him. Yet the saucer was stationary, solid as one of the canyon’s cliffs. He raised his head.
Ahead of the saucer was a ledge below the rim of a mesa. Upon it he could just make out what appeared to be a stone wall, built by human hands. With windows. Charley was standing, and so was Rip. They picked up Solo, one on each arm, and led him down toward the front of the machine. Then they stepped across the narrow gap onto the ledge.
Rip hopped back onto the saucer and began off-loading gear. He passed items to Charley, one by one, and she tossed them back away from the edge. A bag of food, sleeping bags, a few other odds and ends.
This took several minutes, with Rip skipping around fearlessly while Egg held tight to the ship.
“Come on, Uncle,” he said at last, standing on the apex of the saucer with his hand out. “It’s time to get off.”
Egg was frozen with fear. His muscles refused to work. Yet Rip’s outstretched hand was irresistible. He forced his cold muscles to obey. He tried to rise, stretched out his hand and slipped.
He felt himself sliding down the slope of the saucer toward the edge. He grabbed with both hands and kept sliding.
As Egg slid along, Rip ran after him. Egg went over the edge and Rip was right behind him, launching himself at his uncle.
Fly the saucer, Charley.
Falling into the dark abyss, Egg Cantrell felt his nephew Rip grab his hands. In a way, it was comforting. He knew then that they would die together.
Standing on the edge of the ledge, Charley Pine told the saucer what to do. Her commands reversed the antigravity field. Instead of repelling the earth, now it attracted it. It didn’t fall; it accelerated downward faster than the falling men. Three hundred feet below them, it arrested its fall at Charley’s command and slid under them, still going downward.
Egg and Rip landed on the top. Rip had both of Egg’s hands in his. The impact knocked the wind from both of them. The saucer slowed and stopped. The Gs mashed the two men into the surface of the ship, imprisoning them like bugs against a windshield. Then the saucer began to rise.
“Hold on, Uncle!”
“Holy pickles, Rip. I — my God, I thought we were dead!”
The saucer lifted them back to the ledge. Charley ran across and helped Rip drag Egg to the ledge and push him across.
Egg fell heavily to the ledge and held the rock with both hands. He was spent.
Nicely done, Ms. Pine.
Rip gathered Charley into his arms and kissed her.
Johnny Murkowsky was trying to seduce the flight attendant, a tall, leggy brunette with come-hither eyes and a nice figure, when he got the call from his Space Command spy on his satellite phone. The Boeing 747 was somewhere over the vast Pacific eastbound.
“The saucer came down and went into Lake Powell,” Johnny Murk’s spy reported. “The FAA’s radars reported that it then crossed over Glen Canyon Dam and headed down the Colorado River, apparently. Best guess is it’s somewhere in the Grand Canyon.”
“Has the White House been notified?” Johnny Murk queried.
“Sure. But there is a starship coming in from deep space. It’ll be here in a couple of days, and the head dogs are all worked up about that. They don’t give a hoot about the saucer.”
“Keep me advised.”
“Listen, Mr. Murkowsky. Just telling you all this could cost me my job. I want a job after I retire, and I want your promise.”
“You got it. If I get to that saucer before the damned Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. If I don’t…”
“Did anybody ever tell you you’re an asshole?”
“Three or four people a day. And they are right. But, asshole or not, I pay my debts. Now if you want that job, keep telling me what is going down. I want to know where that saucer is every damn minute. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
The connection broke.
Johnny Murk and Harrison Douglas put their heads together; then Murk went forward and told the chief pilot to land at Grand Canyon Airport, on the South Rim. The captain protested. He had enough fuel to get there, just, if the winds held, but there were customs and immigration laws and all that. Johnny Murk made some large monetary promises. Those didn’t impress the pilots, who had licenses to worry about.
Johnny Murk whipped out his checkbook and wrote checks for a million dollars each for every person in the crew, all five. The pilots examined their checks, looked at each other, folded the checks and pocketed them, then reprogrammed their flight computers and pushed the appropriate buttons. Grand Canyon Airport, here we come!