“You’ve buried a lot of friends.”
More than I care to remember.
“What happened to the gambler?” she asked.
He didn’t make it. Billy and I each got a slug into him. Took him a long week to die. They buried him with his marked deck.
“We need to bring the saucer back and get you to a doctor.”
No.
She crawled through the low door and went back out onto the ledge above the kiva. A good woman, he reflected. He hoped Rip realized just how good. Maybe he did. That Rip … he was a lot like Billy Vance. Billy with the wicked smile and crooked teeth and terrific thirst for life. Billy Vance, dead of a gunshot wound to the gut at the age of nineteen, but game all the way.
Solo lay thinking about those days long ago, about the American West and the Indians he loved and longhorns and thunderstorms, blistering hot endless days on horseback, nights of exhausted sleep and the cow towns at the end of the trail. Thinking of the men. Companions for the trail of life. If only he could do it all again, see all those men and women he had known and loved through the centuries one more time, hear their laughter and voices …
He had been so blessed. Adam Solo knew that. That fool who stole the saucer long ago and marooned Solo on this savage planet had done him a great favor. The thought gave him peace.
“We need a panel of experts,” P. J. O’Reilly had told the president. “A panel of experts will give the public the assurance that you are talking to the right people, getting yourself fully informed.”
“Experts in what?” the president had asked skeptically.
“Oh, you know, whatever. Experts are experts, people with degrees from out of town. It’s a PR thing. Keep the Joe Six-Packs calmed down.”
The president groaned inwardly. He was certainly a master of listening to bullshit and making appropriate noises, but he doubted if he would get any light at all from any group O’Reilly could assemble. Another waste of time. Yet he was politician enough to appreciate that O’Reilly had a point. The art of politics is to appear to be leading, even when groping in the dark. Petty Officer Third Class Hennessey from Oklahoma had nodded sagely, so the president had reluctantly agreed to an audience with some “experts.”
Now, as he faced the hastily summoned group, he was tempted to make some excuse to dismiss them, but refrained. The White House photographer was snapping pictures, and the mouthpiece, the press secretary, was standing against the wall, ready to spin the event for the media in the White House Press Room.
O’Reilly introduced the delegation. There was a philosophy professor from Harvard, an astrogeophysicist from the University of Houston, a scientist from NASA and two women from the National Science Foundation who had been looking for intelligent life in the universe for some years now, at government expense, with no results to show for their efforts. The president was tempted to ask if the women had checked in Washington but held his tongue. There was also some guy who wrote bestseller science fiction, none of which the president had ever read. He was famous, though. Even the guy from Harvard smiled warmly at him. All were duly introduced, and all had something to say.
The president listened carefully.
The experts agreed, more or less. The aliens would be more technically advanced than we are and would have high moral and ethical principals. Very high. They would not be eaters of flesh. Would not be here to conquer and enslave. Would be very “progressive,” according to the Harvard philosopher. Since that was a loaded political term here on this little round rock, in this day and age, the presidential eyebrows rose a fraction of a millimeter. The chief executive glanced at Hennessey, whose face was deadpan.
“What about weapons?” the national security adviser asked. O’Reilly had let him attend this soiree, the president thought sourly.
Well, of course the aliens had weapons. The Sahara saucer and the Roswell saucer both had antimatter weapons; technological progress being what it is, no doubt the coming alien delegation had death rays of some sort to protect themselves from monsters and predators and dragons on whatever planet they happened to visit.
“Dragons?” said the national security adviser.
The president glanced at Petty Officer Hennessey, who had one eyebrow raised. The president had always admired people who could do that. He had tried for years but couldn’t.
“Who knows what forms of life other planets in the universe might contain?” the science-fiction writer asked rhetorically, warming to his subject. “They must be prepared. We must assume they are; ergo, superior weaponry.”
The universal nods of affirmation from all the experts silenced the national security adviser.
Ergo, indeed!
When O’Reilly finally ushered the experts out, the president asked the petty officer what he thought.
“These aliens are just sailors. Kind of like Christopher Columbus’ guys. They fly starships because it pays fairly well, but the brains are back on the home planet, wherever that is. These guys didn’t design and build the starship or figure out how to fly it. They will be just a bunch of average Joes. You’ll see.”
The president felt reassured. With Amanda there at the great event, he didn’t want anything to go wrong. His wife and daughter would never forgive him. Of course, there was the future of the human species to consider too: Aliens, First Contact, and all that.
The experts had agreed unanimously: The future of the humanity, indeed, the future of the whole planet and every species on it, hinged on how he, the president, handled this first meeting with the representatives of an advanced civilization with unknown but extraordinary capabilities. After all, voyaging between the stars … “Not to put any pressure on you, Mr. President, but facts are facts.”
Back in his office the president remarked to Hennessey, “Damn, this will be historic,” and glanced at the television, which was still showing that saucer sitting over the South Lawn with no visible means of support.
“Yes, sir,” the navy said.
Just a bunch of sailors driving a starship. Yeah. Hey, how are you? Did you have a nice trip?
Amanda wouldn’t be here for a few hours, so the president asked Petty Officer Third Class Hennessey, “Want another drink?”
“One more wouldn’t hurt,” the sailor admitted and held out his glass.
P. J. O’Reilly was shook after the experts left. He went to his office and had a snort from a Scotch bottle he kept in his desk. This time His Arrogance wasn’t up to the challenges that lay before him, O’Reilly thought. He looked kinda pasty and had that sailor with him all the time now. O’Reilly had caught those glances at Hennessey when some expert had said something rather startling, something almost profound but not quite.
None of them had anything profound to say, O’Reilly thought. Rather humdrum, actually. No doubt the experts were pontificating on the networks just now — telling the boobs watching worldwide what they had told the president — and this weekend, if the aliens hadn’t destroyed Washington and the planet, they would have op-ed pieces in all the big newspapers. An expert’s reputation must be constantly polished.
O’Reilly put his face in his hands and sat that way for a long moment. If this went bad, he was going to be dead sooner rather than later. The aliens might decide that all humans were equivalent to stink bugs and just step on them. Or they might want some humans to take aboard their ship as protein. Protein must be hard to come by on a starship. How many cows or hogs or chickens could one of those things carry, anyway?
Hollywood movies from the past sprang to mind. He remembered the one in which a gruesome alien sprang from someone’s stomach. It had taken a really sick mind to think of that! And the aliens as zombies! Then there was the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Predator: invisible ten-foot-tall sport hunters who crossed interstellar space to kill for the thrill of it.