“Charley?” Egg asked. “What do you think?”
“Better put on a tie and jacket, Uncle Egg. We’ll hold the fort and watch you on the tube.”
So Egg suited up, got into his pickup and drove away.
Charley poured herself another cup of coffee and began opening random letters to Solo. After reading two or three, she passed them to Rip with the comment, “Someone should answer these.”
“Let’s each pick one to answer,” Rip suggested. “Then I need to refuel the saucer and clean it out, just in case we have to boogie again.”
Charley took back a letter from a girl who said she was twelve years old. She wanted to know how Solo liked living on earth, and if he was looking forward to going home.
With paper and a pen, Charley sat for a moment composing her thoughts, then wrote:
Dear Sophie,
I am writing to you in answer to your letter to Adam Solo, who died yesterday. I got to know him well in the few days we spent together, so I think I know how he might have answered you.
He was marooned here on earth many centuries ago. I think he not only came to appreciate the people of earth and their accomplishments, I think he grew to love them. He was naturally optimistic. Life, he thought, was a grand adventure, and he certainly lived it that way. I hope you will too.
Sincerely,
Charlotte Pine
Charley was still answering letters an hour later when Rip scampered into the kitchen and turned on Egg’s counter television and flipped the channel to the one he wanted.
There was Uncle Egg. The caption below his visage read ARTHUR CANTRELL.
The local host was wise enough to stay out of the picture and merely let Egg tell it, which he did. About Adam Solo coming to the farm, about the president and the Big Pharma moguls, about Canada and Australia and the Grand Canyon.
Uncle Egg described the battle of the canyon in detail. He gave Charley and Rip all the credit. He explained about burying Adam Solo, who fell to his death after being shot again by Johnny Murkowsky, in a cauldron of molten lava in the Kilauea volcano on the island of Hawaii.
When Egg ran out of things to say — the interview took forty-five minutes — the off-camera questioner prodded him on his thoughts about the aliens’ visit tomorrow to Washington. Egg begged off. “I am not the one to comment on that,” he said. “The event will speak for itself.”
That was about it.
Rip flipped channels and found that the networks had shared the feed from the Missouri small-town station. Fox was running the entire interview a second time.
Rip turned the television off and sat staring at his toes.
“What are you thinking, Ripper?”
“I think the comfortable little world you and I grew up in is gone forever,” he said slowly. “I am not sure whether that’s good or bad. I’m going to miss it, though.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Charley shot back.
The doorbell rang. Rip glanced out the kitchen window. “It’s a television crew.” He snatched up the Winchester, checked that there was a round in the chamber and went to open the front door.
“Mr. Cantrell,” the female reporter said as a male with a camera on his shoulder stood so he could get them both in the picture, “we’re with WXYZ-TV. I wonder if you would be so good as to show us your saucer?”
Rip glanced over his shoulder at Charley, who was standing behind him in the kitchen doorway. She shrugged.
“Sure,” he said without enthusiasm. “It’s in the hangar. Follow me.” He led them down the hill on the path he had trod since he was a boy.
The president was hastily summoned from a cabinet meeting by P. J. O’Reilly to watch the Arthur Cantrell interview on television. The president motioned Petty Officer Third Class Hennessey to sit beside him, and together they watched Uncle Egg.
“So Solo’s dead,” the president murmured.
“And Johnny Murkowsky and Harrison Douglas,” O’Reilly said. He passed the president a message from the Department of the Interior. One stolen National Guard helicopter had been found damaged and abandoned at the Grand Canyon Airport. The totally destroyed carcass of the other was on top of a mesa in the canyon. There were six bodies on the ground near the shattered chopper, four more in the canyon and three on a nearby rim. Many of the bodies were flattened “like road-killed possums.” Lots of weapons lying around. Preliminary indications were most of the men were thugs from a Philadelphia Mafia family. Murkowsky had been flattened, and Douglas was dead of apparent massive internal injuries.
The president handed the message back and concentrated on Egg Cantrell’s image. Listened. Watched his face. Wondered what he was leaving out.
When the interview was over, this network went back to a graphic feed from NASA that showed the current location of the starship in orbit. It was currently leaving the Indian peninsula, ninety-six miles above the surface of the planet. The president sat watching the blinking symbol as it moved, almost as if he were mesmerized. Finally O’Reilly turned off the television with the remote.
“These aliens might be a bit unhappy tomorrow if they think they are going to rescue their castaway, Solo, from the cannibals,” O’Reilly said pointedly.
“Bad news rides a fast horse,” Hennessey observed. “Bet they know as much as we do right now. They’ll have until tomorrow to digest it. I doubt if it will be a problem. The United States government didn’t kill Solo — criminals did.”
The nation’s chief magistrate shook his head, as if he were clearing his thoughts. “So how are we coming on the welcoming ceremony tomorrow?” he asked O’Reilly.
“We’re doing an honor guard walk-though. The kids and teachers and scientists won’t be here until later this evening. The television networks are setting up cameras and lights. Beyoncé has volunteered to sing the national anthem … for free.”
The president made a noise. “She’d probably be underdressed for this,” he said sourly. “This isn’t the Super Bowl. No singers.”
“Do you want the honor guard to have loaded weapons, just in case?”
“Holy catfish, O’Reilly! Are you nuts? These people just crossed interstellar space, for God’s sake. They didn’t come all this way to gun down people on the White House lawn in front of every camera on earth!”
“You hope they are people.”
“You’re damn right I hope. I don’t care if they turn out to be giant green beetles, we’re going to do it my way! I’m the president!”
“Yes, Your Magnificence.”
“What?” asked the surprised Hennessey.
“Forget it,” the president said and shooed O’Reilly away. When the door closed behind the chief of staff, the president explained to Hennessey. “He thinks he should be president and I should be running an Ace Hardware selling nuts and bolts.”
“Oh.”
“My dad was in hardware. Wish I’d taken his advice and helped him with the store instead of getting into politics. Oh, well, all that’s water under the bridge now.”
“I see…”
“Have any suggestions?” the president asked the Oklahoma sailor.
“Maybe you should ask the Cantrells and Charley Pine to fly their saucer here in the morning. Seems like a good opportunity to return these saucers to their rightful owners. Get rid of them once and for all.”
The president thought that the best advice he had heard in years.
He snagged the telephone on the desk and spoke to the White House operator. “Get me Arthur Cantrell’s residence, Toad Summit, Missouri.” The telephone operators in the White House were justly famous for getting anybody anywhere on the line when the president wanted to chat.
The president hung up and waited for the operators to work their magic. Thought about getting rid of all these saucers. Of life getting back to political backstabbing, scurrilous lies and shady deals. Of nothing more on the morning plate than Islamic jihadists and the euro crisis, Chinese ambitions and nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran. Normal. The president longed for normal.