Ceil was already on board. He could see her up in the cockpit, going through her checklist. The C—47 still carried its original insignia. The only external concession to its real mission was the corporate mallet and the legend Thor Air Cargo tucked away on the tail.
Max climbed in through the cargo door and closed it. The interior was filled with packing cases. He threaded his way through to the cockpit. Ceil, talking to the tower, raised a hand to acknowledge his presence. Max took the copilot’s seat.
The engines were turning slowly.
“What’s the big rush on the telephones?” he asked. Usually he would have expected a shipment like this to go by land.
“Somebody screwed up. Production is waiting. So I get the assignment. Most of my business comes from picking up the pieces when people get things wrong.” She grinned. “I’ll never lack for work.”
She taxied out onto the north runway. A few clouds floated in a gray sky. Snow tonight, Max thought. He liked the feel of the C—47. It was a durable and exceptionally stable aircraft. If you were going to haul cargo through hostile skies, this would be the plane you’d want to have.
“On our way,” she said. She gunned the engines, and the C—47 rolled down the tarmac and lifted into the early afternoon.
Max had discovered more than a year earlier that romance with Ceil wasn’t going to happen. Once that had been got out of the way, he found her easy to talk to. She was a good listener, and he trusted her discretion absolutely. “What scares me,” he said, “is that all this is becoming so public. The whole country now thinks that we think there might be a UFO up there. It makes us look like kooks.”
“What do you think?”
“That it’ll turn out to be something else.”
“Then why are you going to all this expense?”
Max thought about it. “On the off chance—”
Her laughter stopped him. “See? You are kooks. Anyhow, I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll be fine if you really do have a UFO.” It was cold in the cabin, and she turned up the heat. “If it’s there, Max, I want to ride in it.” She looked at him, and he laughed and gave her a thumbs-up.
She climbed to fourteen thousand feet and turned north. Life was good in the cockpit of the C—47, where the sun was shining and everything was peaceful. “Who would own it?” she asked.
“I guess it would belong to the Sioux.”
“The Sioux?”
“It’s on their land.” The thought of the Sioux winding up with the world’s most advanced spacecraft amused him. “I wonder what the Bureau of Indian Affairs would say to that.”
“You can bet your foot,” she said, “that the Sioux wouldn’t be allowed to keep it.”
They picked up the Maple River near Hope and followed it north. When they were over Pleasant Valley, the phone rang. Ceil picked it up, listened, and handed it to Max.
It was April. She sounded out of breath. “It’s one-sixty-one, Max,” she said.
“Just like the boat?” He squeezed the phone and caught Ceil’s eye. “You’re sure?”
“Yes, Max. I’m sure.” She made no effort to suppress her delight.
“Congratulations,” said Max. Ceil was watching him curiously.
“You, too. Listen, we should go back up.”
“Actually, I’m more or less there now. I’m on my way to Winnipeg. I’ll be back this evening, and we can fly up tonight. Okay?”
“Sure. That’s fine. Call me when you get here.”
Max said he would. “Have you thought about the press conference tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve thought about it.”
“Seems to me we have no reason to keep it quiet anymore.”
“What?” asked Ceil, forming the word with her lips.
Max could almost hear the wheels go round in April’s head. “I’d feel better,” she said, “if we waited until we have the thing dug up.”
“You probably won’t have that luxury.”
“I take it,” Ceil said moments later, “you have a UFO.”
“No, the news is not that good. But it is good.” He explained.
She looked at him, and her eyes grew round and warm. “I’m happy for you, Max,” she said.
Johnson’s Ridge was coming up. Max looked down on the flanking hills, smooth and white in the afternoon sun, and the saddle, low and flat and emptying off abruptly into space.
“You’ve got a lot of people down there,” said Ceil.
Too many, as a matter of fact. There were people everywhere, and the parking lot overflowed with vehicles. “I guess we’ve got some sightseers,” he said.
Ceil banked and started a long, slow turn. “It’s probably just the beginning,” she said. “You might want to start thinking about crowd control and security.” She extracted a pair of field glasses from a utility compartment and raised them to look at the ridge. “I don’t think your people are getting much work done.”
Max reached for the phone, but she touched his wrist. “Why don’t we do it in person?” she said. “I’d like to see it for myself, anyhow.”
She put the glasses down and pushed the wheel forward. The plane began to descend. “You aren’t going to land down there, are you?” Max asked. “There’s an airport a few miles east.”
She pointed down. “Is that the road?”
The two-lane from Fort Moxie looked like stop-and-go traffic. “That’s it.”
“We don’t have time to negotiate that. Look, Max, I’d love to see a UFO up close. You’ve seen the ground. Any reservations?”
The top of the escarpment was about two thousand yards long. It was flat, treeless as long as she stayed away from the perimeters, marked with occasional patches of snow. “You’ve got a pretty good crosswind,” he said.
She looked down, and her expression indicated no sweat. “It’s less than twenty knots. No problem for Betsy.”
“Whatever,” he said.
She laughed. “Don’t worry, Max. If anyone complains, I’ll tell them you protested all the way down.”
Ten minutes later she set the big plane on the ground without jostling the coffee. Everyone turned to watch as they taxied close in to the site. Lasker was waiting when Max opened the door.
“I should have known it was you,” he said. Before he could say anything else he saw Ceil, and he got that same goofy expression that seemed to afflict every man she got close to.
“Ceil,” Max said, “this is Tom Lasker. Our straw boss.”
They shook hands.
Tourists and sightseers were everywhere. They engaged workers in conversation, blocked bridges, and generally got in the way. Many were standing on the edge of the excavation, others were dangerously close to the precipice. “We need to do something,” Max said.
Lasker sighed. “I had some people trying to keep them away. But they’re aggressive, and there are just too many to control. Anyway, nobody up here has any real authority.”
Max watched an unending stream of cars approaching across the top of the plateau. “Okay,” he said, “we’ll ask the police to establish some controls on the access road. Maybe limit the number of tourists they allow up here at any one time.”
“They don’t want to do that.”
“They’re going to have to. Before somebody gets killed. We’ll need to make up ID cards for our people.”
“What do we do in the meantime? We’re almost at dead stop here.”
Max took a deep breath. “Send everyone home early.” He looked at the swarms of people. “Who’s the chief of police?”
“Emil Doutable.”
“Do you know him?”
“Yeah. We don’t run in the same social circles, but I know him.”
“Call him. Explain what’s happening and ask for help. Tell them we’ve been forced out of the excavation, and ask him to send some people to clear the area.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“Meantime,” Max said to Ceil, “I guess you’d like to see the whatsis?”