Charley Pine nodded and the saucer lifted off.
They swung around over the mesa and examined the carnage. Indeed, one helicopter had blown up. Bodies lay scattered about in the thin snow. Charley eased the saucer over every body she saw, squashing them in the saucer’s antigravity field, just in case someone was playing possum. She was feeling rather vengeful just then.
In the first shelf, a thousand feet below the rim, they found Adam Solo’s body. Charley had to proceed for several hundred yards before she found a flat place to park the saucer. All three of them hiked back to the body. Solo’s head was smashed, and shards of bone protruded from his clothing. He had obviously hit the scree fan and rolled for hundreds of yards.
The cliff above them seemed to rise into infinity. Behind them was the mesa with the small shelf that contained the old Anasazi cliff house. They could just see the front of it from here. The canyon was silent except for the whisper of the wind. The rock faces and flats were broken by stark sunlight and shadows; sunlight glistened on the snow on the rims. Above them in the cerulean blue two hawks soared.
Without a word, the three of them picked up Adam Solo and carried him in stages to the saucer. They shoved the body up through the hatch as gently as possible, then climbed aboard themselves.
“Do you want to give his body to the aliens?” Charley asked the two men.
“No,” Rip said. “A volcano, I think.”
“That’s right,” Egg muttered. “This planet was his adopted home. We’ll keep him here.”
They fueled the saucer in Lake Mead. An hour after the battle in the canyon, the saucer rose on a column of white-hot fire and the roar of the rocket engines washed over Las Vegas and the revelers who packed it. The exhaust plume gradually faded to a burning speck in the sky, then to a star, then winked out altogether. The echo of its engines also faded, more slowly, until finally the murmur was also gone.
In Las Vegas, the party resumed.
17
The flight back from the volcano on the island of Hawaii gave Charley Pine plenty of time to think. She again tapped into Solo’s memories that were embedded in the saucer’s computer. She saw Solo as an Indian, killing enemy wounded and the wounded of his own tribe who were too grievously hurt to travel. Too grievously hurt to survive. She saw him gun German airplanes in World War I, saw them fall in flames, and felt his emotions. She forgave him. Forgave him everything.
It was after midnight when she landed the saucer in front of Egg’s hangar in Missouri and Rip dropped through the hatch to open the hangar door. Inside, she set the saucer down and secured the power. She and Egg eased themselves through the hatch.
Rip closed the door, and the trio climbed the hill to Egg’s house. Turned on lights. Egg busied himself in the kitchen making a meal. Rip went upstairs, found another box of cartridges, filled the Winchester’s magazine and his pockets, grabbed an empty grocery bag and trekked off to Egg’s mailbox by the front gate. It was full. In the darkness of a Missouri night, listening to the night sounds, alert for anything, Rip emptied the mailbox into the sack and walked along the road through the woods back to the house.
In addition to all the usual mail, there were dozens of letters from children addressed to Adam Solo, in care of Arthur Cantrell. Rip and Charley read a few of them, then had to quit. Their emotions were too raw.
After a quiet, subdued meal, the three of them went to bed. Charley found she wanted and needed Rip badly. With his rifle propped against the dresser, they made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
P. J. O’Reilly briefed the president about the saucer going into orbit from Lake Mead. The National Guard in Phoenix had had two helicopters stolen the day before, and they were seen on the ramp of the Grand Canyon Airport when a chartered 747 dropped the pharmaceutical titans. The president told him to have the National Park Service look around the canyon when the sun came up.
Just before he went to bed, the president was told about the saucer arriving in Hawaii and soon departing. An aide woke him up later to inform him the saucer was back in Missouri at Egg Cantrell’s farm.
The president lay in the darkness thinking about things. He suspected the pharma moguls had been outmaneuvered and perhaps outfought by Rip Cantrell and Charley Pine. Now there was a pair to draw to. It seemed logical to the president that those two thought Douglas and Murkowsky were no longer threats or they wouldn’t be hiding in plain sight at the Cantrell farm. Along with Adam Solo. The self-proclaimed alien. The guy who stole the Roswell saucer after it was raised from the Atlantic, stole it right from under Harrison Douglas’ nose.
He reviewed the few moments he had spent with Adam Solo … what, ten days ago? It seemed like ten years. Yet he remembered that humorless face, the eyes that bored right into you, almost as if the guy were reading your thoughts. Solo … the guy who got the whole world fired up.
A pox on him!
Ah me.
When are these damned aliens going to arrive? The spring is getting wound tighter and tighter. That starship is circling the earth, almost every whacko, nutcase, screwball and nincompoop who doesn’t live near Washington is on his way here, the politicians are over the edge of sanity promising their constituents a Fountain of Youth pill … and the people most responsible for this state of affairs are probably in bed in Missouri sleeping like babies.
As it happened, he was right about the sleeping.
Late the next morning Uncle Egg, Rip and Charley awoke to the sound of rain on the windows. They snuggled a while in bed, then finally dressed and went downstairs. The smell of coffee and bacon frying assaulted them as they descended the stairs. Uncle Egg was busy, busy, busy, wearing an apron and wielding a spatula.
Rip leaned his rifle in a corner; then he and Charley dived into fried eggs and potatoes, bacon and sausage. There was no bread. Egg apologized. The bread had gone moldy and he had thrown it out for the squirrels and birds.
The television in the corner blared away. The White House had announced that the people in the starship had talked to them and were going to land tomorrow, the announcer said. The president, the first granddaughter, and all the members of her fourth-grade class, plus a delegation of scientists, would meet the intergalactic voyagers. Tomorrow, the announcer assured his audience, would be the most historic day in the history of the planet. Tomorrow.
Rip finished his breakfast and went over to the coffeepot for a refill.
“Too bad Adam Solo won’t be around to see it,” Rip said sadly.
Uncle Egg paused in his kitchen duties and watched the raindrops smear the kitchen window. After a moment, he shook his head and went back to scrubbing a frying pan. From where she sat at the counter Charley Pine could see that he was weeping.
“Hey, you two,” she said. “Adam Solo lived a long life, a life filled with living and love and adventure. Stop the moping: He would tell you that. He told you that someday he would see us on the other side. Let’s rejoice. All of us will come to our end eventually, and after that … well, he had faith. We should too.”
Egg swabbed at his eyes. Rip put his coffee cup on the counter and hugged Charley. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”
Egg dried his hands on a towel and said, “I’m thinking of going to town. Going to visit the local television station and tell them what happened in the Grand Canyon. Tell the world that Solo is dead.”
Rip nodded his concurrence. “Someone is going to find that shot-up chopper and those bodies on the mesa before long,” he mused. “Might be better getting our version out there before the FBI swoops down and arrests us.”