Free Saucer by Stephen Coonts Page A

kid?”
    “Just trying to be nice, Major, get acquainted. Let bygones go by the by.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “How does it work?”
    “Amazingly enough, it burns hydrogen. Cracks water into hydrogen and oxygen in some sort of electrolysis process.”
    “Ever see anything like that?” Rip asked casually.
    “It’s an extraordinary engineering triumph.”
    “What holds it up when the hydrogen engines aren’t going?”
    “That’s the mind-boggling part. It uses a force field of some type to modulate the earth’s gravitational field.”
    “Does Charley know that?” Rip asked with a glance at the female pilot, who was sitting at least fifty feet away, well out of earshot.
    “She was there when we discussed all this.”
    “I see.”
    Mike Stiborek frowned, glanced at Charley Pine, then studiously ignored her.
    “Think the reactor is intact?” Rip asked.
    Stiborek laughed. “You do the dumb kid act very well. Have I told you anything you don’t know?”
    “What about the reactor?”
    “We brought a small radiation detector with us, and as near as we can tell, the reactor is still a sealed unit.” Stiborek shrugged. “Can you believe it? A flying saucer?”
    “Whoever flew it here, why did they leave it?”
    Stiborek took his time before he answered. “I don’t know, kid. I really don’t. I don’t think the answer is in the saucer. It looks like it was parked there yesterday.”
    “But it wasn’t,” Rip replied. “I dug away most of that rock myself. That’s real sandstone.” He took a small piece from a pocket and passed it to Stiborek, who gave it a cursory glance and rubbed it between his fingers.
    When Stiborek passed it back, Rip pocketed the stone, then asked, “Could Charley fly it?”
    Stiborek laughed. “Now, I never even thought about that. That woman can fly anything. But, no. There isn’t a chance that saucer is airworthy. Or spaceworthy. Whatever. Not a chance in a zillion.”
    “Why?”
    “My God, man. Everything deteriorates over time. Metal crystallizes, dissimilar metals react to each other, corrosion eats on everything… Entropy in a closed system increases over time—that’s the second law of thermodynamics. Time has taken a toll on that ship, even if the toll isn’t readily apparent to our eyes.”
    “If it could fly, I mean. Could Charley fly it?”
    “Kid—what’s your name? Cantrell? Well, Cantrell, if elephants had wings, car windshields would be made of bulletproof glass and it would be dangerous to walk around outside. ‘If’ is the biggest word in the English language.”
    “Okay.”
    “All those systems in working order, after a hundred and thirty thousand years? Whoever made that thing was good, I’ll grant you, but not that good.”
    “One hundred forty thousand.”
    “Give or take. What’s ten thousand years among friends?” Stiborek picked up a small rock and tossed it a few feet. After a bit he added, “The reactor is the critical unit.”
    Rip looked puzzled. “You said you guys checked the reactor. Isn’t that a radiation counter there?” Rip pointed to a small battery-operated device lying on the sand near Stiborek’s feet.
    “I made a cursory check,” Stiborek acknowledged, “with a battery-operated unit that is used only to ensure personnel safety. We found only background radiation. Which proves nothing.”
    “At least—” Rip began.
    “Insulation—that ship probably has several hundred thousand miles of wire in it. If the insulation has come off a wire in just one place, you got a short, maybe a fire.”
    “The insulation looked okay to me,” Rip murmured. “In the places I could see.”
    “Kid, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Let’s look at one more example, just one. If you try to fire off that reactor and something critical breaks, that ship will melt down. If there is no explosion—and there might be—the whole ship will dissolve into a puddle of molten-hot radioactive goo. You won’t care