Saucer: The Conquest by Stephen Coonts Page A

again at the space suits arranged on hangers against one wall. When the roof opened, this window would be the pressure barrier—hence the space suits. If the glass cracked or air leaked past it, the people in this compartment would need space suits to survive. The air lock in the passageway was designed to prevent a sudden depressurization of the entire lunar base.
    Claudine bit her lip, then went over to supervise the technicians unpacking the reactor, which was easy to manhandle in the weak lunar gravity.
    A laser? Could it be?
    Charley tried desperately to remember everything she knew about lasers. The light beams were most effective at short distances. They were degraded by moisture in the atmosphere. Firing a beam through a cloud was impractical. The earth, at which this device seemed to be aimed, was swaddled in a heavy atmosphere laden with moisture; clouds obscured huge portions of the earth on a regular basis.
    Claudine was glancing at her from time to time. Charley studied the control console, looking for any clue. And failed to find any.
    The pressure door to the equipment bay was standing open, so she went through it, out under the dome.
    The telescope was mounted on a conventional stand. The larger device was mounted on a massive support structure that sat atop a round titanium base at least twelve feet in diameter, which looked as if it could support a tremendous weight. But why? Even if the device were made of pure steel, it couldn’t weigh over a few hundred pounds here on the moon.
    Obviously the engineer who designed it thought it would thrust downward against the lunar rock, and the base was designed to transfer the load, much like a bridge support.
    A gun? To shoot a projectile at targets on earth?
    She glanced around, looking for anything that might be ammo for such a gun—and saw Courbet walking toward her. The technicians who had unloaded the reactor were leaving. They disappeared through the air lock, taking the dolly with them.
    “Is this base really strong enough?” Charley asked.
    Faced with a technical question, Claudine found her confidence. “Oh, yes. Actually it is twice as strong as it needs to be. And the base is twice as large—the underlying rock may have a hidden fault.”
    “Of course,” Charley said carelessly. Then it hit her. For every reaction there is an equal but opposite reaction. This thing was going to push hard against the rock that supported it. If it wasn’t a gun, it was something that affected the lunar gravitational field.
    She reached for the plastic cover, which was merely draped over the device, and jerked it off. A system of gears sat above the base, apparently to aim the device. Above the gears were metal rings arranged around a cone, the largest at the base and the smallest at the tip. Heavy cables led to them.
    It was an antigravity beam generator!
    Egg Cantrell had publicized the antigravity technology from the saucer just two months ago, with misgivings. The weapons potential of the technology was obvious. Egg knew that every advance in human knowledge could be misused, yet he believed the possible benefits outweighed the risk. Risk-benefit decisions are part of life; they have been routinely made by man ever since cavemen weighed the benefits of eating cooked meat against the risk of getting burned.
    Were French scientists this far ahead of everyone else?
    “Where did this technology come from?” Charley barked at the French engineer. “Where did you people get it?”
    A look of surprise froze Claudine’s face. ‘You… you…” she stammered, “you didn’t know! You’re not authorized to be in here.”
    “Has the French government gone off its nut?”
    Fear registered on Claudine’s face.
    “So you’re going to plug in the reactor, charge the capacitor, roll back the roof and zap the evil bastards for the greater glory of France.”
    “Nations are obsolete,” Claudine explained with all the fervor of a true believer. “Pierre is going to