First Thrills - Lee Child [87]
They waddled out from under the saucer. Satisfied, he placed his hand on the hatch handle and held it there. Now, after ten seconds or so, he pulled down on one end of the handle and rotated it. The hatch opened above his head. Water began dripping out.
Not much, but some. The saucer had been lying in 250 feet of water; if the integrity of the hull had been broken, seawater under pressure would have filled the interior. This might be leakage from the ship’s tank, or merely condensation. Solo wiped a drip off the hatch lip, jammed his finger under the breathing mask, and tasted it. He was relieved—it wasn’t saltwater.
Now Solo inspected the yawning hole. He stuck the wand inside and studied the panel on his Geiger counter. “Background radiation,” he told Bryant, who had also donned breathing apparatus. The preacher rubbed his hands together vigorously, a gesture that Solo had noticed he used often.
Solo turned off the Geiger counter. He carefully wrapped the cord around the wand and stowed it in the plastic case, then shoved the case up into the dark belly of the saucer.
DeVries craned his neck, trying to see inside the saucer. “Like, when you going to climb into this thing?”
A smile crossed the face of Adam Solo. “Now,” he said. He raised himself through the hatchway into the belly of the ship.
Jim Bob Bryant crawled under the ship, then squirmed up through the entryway. He closed the hatch behind him.
The first mate slowly shook his head. “Glad it was them two and not me,” he said conversationally, although there was no one there to hear him. “My momma didn’t raise no fools. I wouldn’t have crawled into that thing for all the money on Wall Street.”
The first mate made his way to the bridge. Captain Johnson was still at the helm. “Well, did you ask him?” the captain demanded.
“Wants to make money, Bryant said.”
“I already know that,” the captain said sourly. “Oh, well. As long as we get paid . . .” After a moment the captain continued, “Solo’s weird. That accent of his—it isn’t much, but it’s there. I can’t place it. Sometimes I think it’s eastern European of one kind or another, then I think it isn’t.”
“All I know,” DeVries said, “is that accent isn’t from Brooklyn.”
The captain didn’t respond to that inanity. He said aloud, musing, “He’s kinda freaky, but nothin’ you can put your finger on. Still, bein’ around him gives me the willies.”
“They got money,” DeVries said simply. In his mind, money excused all peculiarities, an ingrained attitude he had acquired long ago because he didn’t have any.
“Imagine what that thing must have looked like flying.”
They fell silent as they stared at the craft, looked from right to left and back again, trying to take it all in, to understand, as the sea wind whispered and ocean spray occasionally spattered the windows.
DeVries finally broke the silence. “It’s heavy as hell. Like to never got it up. We almost lost it a dozen times.”
“Notice how the ship’s ridin’ ? Hope we make harbor before the sea kicks up.”
DeVries grunted. After a moment he said, with a touch of wonder in his voice, “A real, honest-to-God flying saucer . . . Never believed in ’em, y’know?”
“Yeah,” the captain agreed. “Thought it was all bull puckey. Even standing here looking at one of the darn things, I have my doubts.”
The only light inside the saucer came through the canopy, a dim glow from the salvage vessel’s masthead lights. It took several seconds for Solo’s eyes to adjust.
The room was large, almost eight feet high in the middle, tapering toward the edges. In the rear of the room was a hatch, one that apparently gave entry to the engineering spaces. Facing forward was a raised instrument panel and a pilot’s seat on a pedestal, one with what appeared to be control sticks on each side, in front of armrests. As Solo had told Bryant, the seats were sized for humans. The pilot could look forward and to each side about 120 degrees through a canopy made of an unknown material.
Solo used a small flashlight