On New Year's Day, 1948, a similar rocket-shaped object was sighted at Jackson, Mississippi. It was first seen by a former Air Force pilot and his pa.s.senger, and later by witnesses on the ground. Before the pilot could begin to close in, the odd wingless ship pulled away.

Speeding up from 200 to 500 m.p.h., it swiftly disappeared.

Besides these two cases, already on record, I had the tips Purdy had given me. One wingless ship was supposed to have been seen three or four days before the Chiles-Whitted sighting; like the thing they reported, the unidentified craft was a double-decked "s.p.a.ce ship" but moving at even higher speed. At first I ran into a stone wall trying to check this story. Then I found a lead conforming that this was a foreign report. It finally proved to be from The Hague.

The tip had been right. This double-decked, wingless ship had been sighted on July 20, 1948--four days before the Eastern case. Witnesses had reported it at a high alt.i.tude, moving at fantastic speed.

While working on this report, I verified another tip. We had heard a rumor of a s.p.a.ce-ship sighting at Clark Field, in the Philippine Islands. Although I didn't learn the date, I found that there was such a record.

(In the final Project "Saucer" report, the attempt to explain away this sighting was painfully evident. a.n.a.lyzing this case, Number 206, the Air Force said: "If the facts are correct, there is no astronomical explanation. A few points favor the daytime meteor hypothesis--snow-white color, speed faster than a jet, the roar, similarity to sky-writing and the time of day. But the tactics, if really performed, oppose it strenuously: the maneuvers in and out of cloud banks, turns of 180 degrees or more, Possibly these were illusions, caused by seeing the object intermittently through clouds.

The impression of a fuselage with windows could even more easily have been a sign of imagination."

(With this conjecture, Project "Saucer" listed the sighting as officially answered. The Hague s.p.a.ce-ship case was unexplained.)

{p. 73}

In following up the Jackson and Bethel reports, I talked with two officials in the Civil Aeronautics Administration. One of these was Charley Planck, who handled public relations. I found that the pilots concerned had good records; C.A.A. men who knew them discounted the hoax theory.

"Charley, there's a rumor that airline pilots have been ordered not to talk," I told Planck. "You know anything about it?"

"You mean ordered by the Air Force or the companies?" he said.

"The Air Force and the C.A.A."

"If the C.A.A.'s in on it, it's a top-level deal," said Charley. "I think it's more likely the companies--with or without a nudge from the Air Force."

While we were talking, an official from another agency came in.

Because the lead he gave me was off the record, I'll call him Steve Barrett. I knew Steve fairly well. We were both pilots with service training; our paths had crossed during the war, and I saw him now and then at airports around Washington.

When the saucer scare first broke, Steve had been disgusted. "d.a.m.n fools trying to get publicity," he snorted. "The way Americans fall for a gag! Even the Air Force has got the jitters."

So I was a little surprised to find he now thought the disks were real.

"What sold you?" I asked.

"The radar reports," said Steve. "I know of half a dozen cases where they've tracked the things. One was in j.a.pan. The thing was climbing so fast no one believed the radarmen at first. Then they got some more reports. One was up in Canada. There was a case in New Mexico, and I think a Navy destroyer tracked a saucer up in the North Atlantic."

"What did they find out?" said Charley Planck.

Steve shrugged. "I don't know all the answers. Whatever they are, the things can go like h.e.l.l."

I had a hunch he was holding back. I waited until he had finished with Charley, and then went, down the hall with him.

{p. 74}

"You think the saucers are guided missiles?" I said. "If I thought so, I wouldn't be talking," he said flatly, "That's not a dig at you. But I was cleared last year for some secret electronics work, and it might be used in some way with guided missiles."

"I didn't know that, Steve."

"It's O.K.," he said. "I don't mind talking, because can't believe the saucers are guided missiles. Maybe few of the things sighted out in the Southwest have beer our test rockets, but that doesn't explain the radar reports in Canada and j.a.pan."

"I'd already heard about a radar case in Labrador," I told Steve. He looked at me quickly.

"Where'd you pick that up;"

"True pa.s.sed it on to me," I said.

"They've had some trouble tracking the things, they maneuver so fast,"

said Steve. "It sounds crazy, but I've been told they hit more than ten thousand miles an hour."

"You believe it.?"

"Well, it's not impossible. Those saucers were tracked about fifty miles up, where there's not much resistance."

The elevator door opened. Steve waited until we were outside of the Commerce Building.

"There's one other thing that gets me," he said. "Unless the radar boys are way off, some of those saucers are enormous. I just can't see a guided missile five hundred feet in diameter." He stopped for a moment. "I suppose this will sound screwy to you--"

"You think they're interplanetary," I said.

Steve was quickly on the defensive. "I haven't bought it yet, but it's not as crazy as it sounds."

Without mentioning names, I told him about the aircraft designer and the airline pilots.

"They're in good company," said Steve. "You know the Air Inst.i.tute?"

"Sure--the Air Force school down at Montgomery."

"Six months ago, I was talking with an officer who'd been instructing there." Steve looked at me, deadly serious. "He told me they are now teaching that the saucers are probably s.p.a.ce ships."

{p. 75}

CHAPTER IX

THREE DAYS after my meeting with Steve Barrett, I was on a Mainliner 300, starting, a new phase of the saucer investigation. By the time I returned, I hoped to know the truth about Project "Saucer."

As the ship droned westward, fourteen thousand feet above the Alleghenies, I thought of what Steve had told me. I believed, that he had told me about the radar tracking. And I was fairly sure he believed the Air Inst.i.tute story. But I wasn't so certain the story itself was true.

It would hardly be a gag; Steve wasn't easily taken in. It was more likely that one Inst.i.tute officer, or perhaps several, believed the saucers were s.p.a.ce craft and aired their personal opinions. The Inst.i.tute wasn't likely to give an official answer to something that Project "Saucer" still declared unsolved.

If it were possible to get an inside look at Project "Saucer"

operations, I could soon tell whether it was an actual investigation or a deliberate cover-up for something else. Whichever it was, the wall of official. secrecy still hid it.

As a formality, I had called the Pentagon again and asked to talk with some of the Project officers. As I expected, I was turned down. The only alternative was to dig out the story by talking with pilots and others who had been. quizzed by Project teams. I had several leads, and True had arranged some interviews for me.

My first stop was Chicago, where I met an airline official and two commercial pilots. I saw the pilots first. Since they both talked in confidence, I will not use their right names. One, a Midwesterner I already knew, I'll call Pete Farrell; the other, a wartime instructor, Art Green.

Pete was about thirty-one, stocky, blue-eyed, with a pleasant, intelligent face. Art Green was a little older, a lean, sunburned, restless man with an emphatic voice. Pete had served with the Air Force during the war; he