Life in the White House soon returned to “normal.” Congress resumed the eternal argument about the budget and addressed tax and immigration reform. The fall football wars once again became of serious interest to millions of Americans. Kids returned to classes all over the nation, and people began to think about the Thanksgiving holidays and fall hunting seasons.
A week after the shuttle left, the president called Petty Officer Third Class Hennessey into his office and poured him a drink from his private bourbon bottle.
“What are you going to do with your life, son?” he asked.
“Well, sir, I have only two years of college. I thought when my hitch is up in May I’d go back to school, work part-time and try to qualify for naval aviation.”
“You want to fly, do you?”
“Yes, sir. The F-35 is an awesome airplane. Maybe that will work out for me, maybe it won’t, but I want to try.”
The president took a sheet of paper from his desk and passed it over. “I thought it might be something like that,” he said. “Here’s a commission as an ensign in the United States Navy.”
Hennessey looked at the document in surprise. There was his name. Orvul Allen Hennessey. At least they got that right.
The president kept talking. “I spoke to the CNO. He said the navy can send you to college to get your degree while you draw full pay and allowances, and from the looks of your last physical, you qualify for flight training. Congratulations.”
Hennessey didn’t know what to say. Finally he managed, “Thank you, sir.”
“You have good sense,” the president said, “which is a rare commodity. Your country needs you. Thank you for your help these last few weeks.”
After Hennessey left, the president looked at the photo of Uncle Egg, Rip Cantrell and Charley Pine that sat framed on his desk. Looked, and smiled.
Back in Missouri, Professor Deborah Deehring and Uncle Egg let the dust settle while they really got to know each other. Uncle Egg downloaded the photos from Rip’s camera onto his computer and spent a few minutes a day looking at them.
Professor Hans Soldi called Deborah and asked for her help. He had a hair from an alien, he said, and was awaiting a complete DNA analysis. He thought it might prove that she was related to the people on earth. Maybe. To a statistical probability. He wanted Deborah to help him explore the relationship.
Deborah Deehring objected. Biology was not her field.
“Nor mine,” Soldi admitted, “but together we can learn it.”
She talked it over with Egg, who urged her to go with it. They liked each other a lot and decided to see each other every weekend, when she wasn’t tied up at the university or with Soldi.
“Are you going to look for more saucers?” she asked. “It seems impossible that the two that were found are the only ones on the planet.”
Uncle Egg wasn’t so sure. “The Roswell saucer crashed in an electrical storm. The crew of the Sahara saucer Rip found was unable to return to it for unknown reasons, but the saucer that delivered Solo to earth was flown away by a madman. Even if saucers came and went on some kind of regular basis, there are probably few that crashed or were abandoned that remain undiscovered.”
“But in one hundred forty thousand years, there might be.”
Uncle Egg begged off. “If I found one, without Rip and Charley to fly it, it wouldn’t be the same.”
“So what are you going to do, Arthur?”
“I’m going to live out the days God gives me and find interesting things to think about.”
She seemed pleased with that answer.
“And maybe,” Egg added, “in a year or two, if you are willing, we’ll get married.”
“Oh, Arthur! You are such a romantic!”
They left it there.
Still, about a week later, an Arizona sheriff’s deputy showed up with a summons for Rip and Charley. “We want to question them about some bodies that were found in the Grand Canyon,” he said.
“Don’t you people read newspapers or watch television?” Egg asked. “They aren’t here.”
“This is a serious matter, Mr. Cantrell. Where are they?”
Egg jammed a thumb toward the sky. “Up there. They left with the aliens on their starship.”
The deputy tore the summons in half, gave it to Egg and left.
Uncle Egg went inside and made himself a pot of coffee. As it dripped through, he found himself thinking about the antigravity devices on the saucer and on the alien starship, which had used a more advanced version of the gravity attraction and repulsion technology to propel itself around the universe.
How had that worked, anyway? What did they know about gravity that we don’t? Rip had built an antigravity device for an airplane, but he never understood the physics. The aliens had indeed discovered the Grand Unified Theory, the holy grail of physics, the theory that combined all the known forces of the universe. Egg had actually seen the symbols and had written them in his notebook. He hadn’t understood them when he wrote them. Perhaps with some research he could make sense of it.
When Uncle Egg had a hot cup of java in his hand, he turned on his computer and began researching the physics of gravity on the Internet. He read his notes again and began to think.
About the Author
Saucer: Savage Planet is Stephen Coonts’s twentieth novel. He has also coauthored nine novels, written a nonfiction work, and published five anthologies. Born and raised in West Virginia, Mr. Coonts is a graduate of West Virginia University and served as an attack pilot in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. After nine years, he left active duty to attend the University of Colorado School of Law. He was admitted to law practice in West Virginia and Colorado. His first novel, Flight of the Intruder, published in 1986, spent twenty-eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, allowing him to start a third career as a novelist. He and his wife reside in Colorado. Check out all his literary crimes at www.coonts.com and follow him on Facebook at Stephen Coonts — the Author.