Saucer: The Conquest by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page A

from a covered dish to the mouth. The food was delicious and the covered spoon ingenious, and Charley said as much to the chef, who beamed.
    The cargo bay was the heart of the ship, its raison d’etre. One of its doors was ajar—it was usually locked—so Charlie opened it. Containers and large assemblies took up most of the sizable compartment. Every container or assembly had to be carefully suspended and braced so that it would not move when the rocket engines were running nor drift in weightlessness. There was little room in the cargo bay for people; the passageways through the cargo reminded Charlie of the passageways in submarines—except you floated effortlessly along this one, propelling yourself with an occasional gentle push, now and then touching something to prevent impacting the sides.
    She saw people near the rear of the compartment, where the heaviest items were placed. One of them was Claudine Courbet. With a flick of her wrist Charley started that way. As she neared the container Claudine and a man were working on, she saw that they had taken one of the container’s panels off to expose the contents. Both had their heads inside as Charley approached.
    There wasn’t much room, so Charley waited until someone noticed her. Claudine and the man were conversing, in muffled French that Charley couldn’t understand.
    Claudine finally backed out into the passage and saw the pilot. A look of surprise crossed her face. “What are you doing here?”
    “Visiting. And you?”
    The man also backed out and turned his back to the container, almost as if he didn’t want Charley to see inside.
    “I thought you were asleep,” Claudine said.
    “I was. Obviously now I am awake.”
    Claudine nodded her head at her coworker, then started toward Charley. “Come, let’s go to the salon where we can talk. Dinner will be ready soon.”
    “Fine,” said Charley Pine, and did a somersault to get her head pointed in the right direction. A pull with both hands sent her shooting along the passageway. Claudine followed her.
    • • •
    From her seat in the cockpit of Jeanne d’Arc, Charley Pine faced a sky full of stars. The moon was off to the right about fifty degrees. The spaceplane wasn’t heading for it, but for a point in space where the moon would be when the spaceplane arrived.
    She was alone in the cockpit, which was a very pleasant feeling. By regulation, one of the pilots had to be in the cockpit at all times. She and Lalouette took turns, four hours on, four hours off.
    She felt as if she had lived her entire life to get to this moment, flying through space with the earth at her back and the universe ahead. It was heady stuff. Cool, she thought. Super cool. A smile lingered on her lips.
    Once again her eye swept over the computer readouts presented on the cockpit multifunction displays (MFDs).
    Yes, the star locators were locked on their guide stars, the radar was indicating the precise distance to the moon, and the computers had solved the navigation problem and were continuously updating it. They presented the solution in the form of a crosshairs on the heads-up display (HUD), plotting velocity through space against time to go to the initial point, which was the point at which Jeanne d’Arc would begin its maneuvers to enter lunar orbit. Best of all, all three flight computers were in complete and total agreement.
    Absolute agreement among three individuals was only possible if those three were machines, she thought. “Not any three people alive,” she muttered.
    She checked ship’s systems, flicking through presentations on another MFD. Hull integrity, air pressure, atmospheric gas levels, fuel remaining on board, water pressure in the lines, temps in the galley, internal and external hull temps—yes, all were as they should be, well within normal parameters. It made her feel a bit superfluous sitting here monitoring all of this, and yet the spaceplane’s systems were not monitored continuously from