Johnny Murk went back to the flight attendant. He was desperate, and she loved her million-dollar check. Lust and money had cemented many a romance since the earth began to spin. She poured two glasses of champagne, opened a can of caviar and got out some gourmet crackers. She and Johnny snuggled up on a couch in the First Class lounge.
The president’s granddaughter, Amanda, answered the telephone when the president called. “Oh, Grandpa,” she burbled, “is it true? Aliens are coming to the White House?”
“Appears so, kiddo. I was wondering if you’d like to be here, go out with me to meet them? Kinda say hi and inspect their spaceship and see what’s what and stuff?”
“Holy Bananas! Of course! I was about to call you. Mom is being such a drag, but I know you can persuade her. Is Charley Pine going to be there? When I grow up, I’m going to be just like her. She is so wonderful, so true blue, so real. So everything!”
“Well, I don’t know about Charley Pine. Haven’t heard from her in a while.” The president fervently wished he had his hands around Charley’s throat right then, but he had the tact not to say that to Amanda. “Never can tell,” he added.
“Will they have their kids with them?”
“Well, heck, I don’t know. We’ll have to meet them and see.”
“Oh, golly, you are the world’s greatest grandpa. I’ll put Mom on.”
So he had to talk to his daughter after all. She had informed him after the last election that she voted for the other guy. Every politician should have a daughter like this, he thought gloomily.
“Do you think it’s safe?” she asked. “Aliens?”
“Of course it’s safe! I wouldn’t be inviting Amanda if there were the slightest iota of danger. After all, Amanda flew with me in a saucer just last month.”
“Well…” One thing about his daughter, she was easily persuaded. Which was probably why she voted for that other bastard.
“I’m going to be right there holding her hand. She’ll love it! It’ll be historic as hell. She’ll be in every history book written for the next thousand years. People will name their kids after her.”
“Well…”
He could hear Amanda, demanding to go. She was wailing, “Oooh, Mommmm…”
His daughter caved.
“I’ll send a helicopter. Have her pack her nightie and toothbrush.”
He hung up, then called O’Reilly and told him to send a helo after Amanda. And to have the press mouthpiece announce that the president and First Granddaughter Amanda would greet the aliens when they arrived.
When he completed that conversation and had the telephone back on its cradle, he smiled benignly at Petty Officer Third Class Hennessey. Truly, the darn sailor was a genius.
“Want another drink?” he asked Hennessey.
“This is mighty fine bourbon, Mr. President,” the sailor from Oklahoma said, nodding. They taught you how to drink in the navy.
“Let’s hope the aliens don’t eat us all,” he said to Hennessey, raising his glass.
“Amen to that,” the sailor replied.
The four travelers stood on the ledge watching as the saucer ghosted away across the canyon. Black as it was, it soon disappeared into the gloom. Charley had programmed it to fly several hundred miles north into Utah on the antigravity rings before using the rockets to climb into orbit.
When the saucer disappeared, the cold seemed to seep ever deeper into their clothes. Adam Solo sagged. Egg and Charley helped him into the cliff house.
The first thing we need, Rip thought, is a fire. Searching the old Anasazi ruin, he found three pack-rat nests, which would make nice kindling. He still needed wood to burn. Part of the ancient cliff dwelling had collapsed, and the round poles that had held up floors were still there.
He dragged two inside and arranged them so the ends would catch in the fire, which was soon burning fairly well and giving off warmth. The room they were in had obviously been used for fires in times long past; the ceiling was blackened. A hole high in the wall acted as a chimney.
Rip found four cans of soup in the food bag, cut the tops open with his knife and put them beside the fire to heat up.
They arranged Solo on a sleeping bag by the fire. Egg used a spoon to feed him soup. With it down, he went to sleep.
The others ate their soup, sharing the spoon, and crawled into sleeping bags around the fire. All were asleep within minutes, except for Egg, who lay there in the firelight listening to the others’ deep-sleep breathing, thinking about falling toward certain death with Rip holding his hand. He was still coming down from the adrenaline high.
He had never before been so close to death. The fear washed over him again and again … and yet, thinking about it now, he had been ready.
I’ve had a good life, he told himself. To have a nephew like Rip, to have shared the saucer adventure, to have met all these extraordinary people, well, I’m truly blessed.
With that thought in his mind, he dropped off to sleep.
An exploration of the ledge in the early dawn the next morning showed how isolated the old cliff dwelling was. The Grand Canyon was spread out before them. The ledge they were on was perhaps fifty feet long and twenty feet deep at the widest point. Soot from ancient fires blackened the sloping stone over their heads and the walls of the stone house.
Rip found a water source, a place where water trickled from a soft formation. This morning the little stream was frozen due to the overnight temperatures, but later this morning it should flow again. So they had water. A dab of food to eat, water to drink and wood to burn. They could last a few days here. Until Solo’s people arrived, anyway. No doubt the National Park Service would get peeved if they ever figured out he had burned these old logs from the Anasazi ruin, but that was a problem for another day.
Looking to the right and left along the ledge, it was obvious there was no easy way to access the cliff dwelling. Rip estimated they were perhaps fifty feet below the top of this mesa, which Solo said was an island, separated from the South Rim by a thousand-foot-deep chasm. No doubt there were handholds in the cliff that would allow you access to the top, if you knew where they were and had absolutely no fear of heights.
The ancients had climbed here from below, along a trail now completely overgrown except for the last forty feet or so. Rip looked it over in the early morning light and thought he could descend it if he had to. Had to real bad. He figured Charley could too, but not Uncle Egg. Nor Solo in the condition he was in. So they had to stay put.
He rebuilt the fire with another pack rat’s nest and shoved the old logs deeper into the blaze. Soon the warmth filled the main room.
They would be safe enough here, for a little while, Rip reassured himself. However, Adam Solo had taken a turn for the worse.
He looked physically older, and his color wasn’t good. The bullet holes were still leaking. His wound would have killed any normal man; of course, Solo wasn’t normal. Still, this one might have been one too many. His pulse was steady yet weak. His breathing was okay, between fits of coughing, which brought up blood.
“You’ve been here before?” Egg asked after taking Solo’s pulse.
“In the thirteen hundreds. A family still lived here. I was starving. They took me in.”
“Starving?”