Gorman grinned. "They had it just about wrapped up--until they talked to George Sanderson. He's the weather observer. He was tracking the balloon with a theodolite, and he showed them his records. The time and alt.i.tudes didn't fit, and the wind direction was wrong. The balloon was drifting in the opposite direction. Both the tower men backed him up. So that killed the weather-balloon idea."

The next step by Project "Saucer" investigators had been to look for some unidentified aircraft. This failed, too. Obviously, it was only routine; the outline of a conventional

{p. 94}

plane would certainly have been seen by Gorman and the men in the tower.

An astronomical check by Professor Hynek ruled out stars, fireb.a.l.l.s, and comets--a vain hope, to begin with. The only other conventional answer, as the Project report later stated, was hallucination. In view of all the testimony, hallucination had to he ruled out. Finally, the investigators admitted they had no solution.

The first Project "Saucer" report, on April 27, 1949, left the Gorman "mystery light" unidentified.

In the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post of May 7, 1949, Sidney Shallett a.n.a.lyzed the Gorman case, in the second of his articles on flying saucers.

Shallet suggested this solution: that Gorman had chased one of the Navy's giant cosmic-ray research balloons. Each of these huge balloons is lighted, so that night-flying planes will not collide with the gas bag or the instrument case suspended below. Shallett concluded that Gorman was suffering from a combination of vertigo and confusion with the light on the balloon.

As already mentioned, these huge Navy balloons are filled with only a small amount of helium before their release at Minneapolis. They then rise swiftly to very high alt.i.tudes, unless a leak develops. In Shallett's words, "These balloons travel high and fast. . . ."

Fargo is about two hundred miles from Minneapolis. Normally, a cosmic-ray research balloon would have reached a very high alt.i.tude by the time it had drifted this far. The only possible answer to its low-alt.i.tude sighting would be a serious leak.

If a leaking balloon had come down to one thousand feet at Fargo, it would either have remained at that height or kept on descending. The mystery light was observed at this alt.i.tude moving at high speed. If a Cub's outline was visible against the lighted football field, the ma.s.sive shape of even a partly deflated balloon would have stood out like an elephant. Even before release, the partially inflated gas bags are almost a hundred feet tall. The crowd at the football game would certainly have seen such a monstrous shape above the glare of the floodlights, for the plastic balloons gleam brightly

{p. 95}

in any light rays. The two C.A.A. men, watching with binoculars, could not possibly have missed it.

For the cosmic-balloon answer to be correct, this leaking gas bag would have had to rise swiftly to seventeen thousand feet--after a loss of helium had forced it down to one thousand. As a balloon pilot, I know this is impossible. The Project "Saucer" report said unequivocally: "The object could outturn and outspeed the F-51, and was able to attain a much steeper climb and to maintain a constant rate of climb far in excess of the Air Force fighter."

A leaking balloon? More and more, I became convinced that Secretary Forrestal had persuaded some editors that it was their patriotic duty to conceal the answer, whatever it was.

That thought had begun to worry me, because of my part in this investigation. Perhaps John Steele had been right, and we shouldn't be trying to dig out the answer. But I had already told Purdy, and he had agreed, that if national security was involved, we would drop the thing completely.

By the time I had proved the balloon answer wrong, I was badly puzzled. The idea of a disembodied light was the hardest thing to swallow that I'd come across so far.

And yet there were the other light reports--the strange sighting at Fairfield Suisan Field, the weird green lights at Las Vegas and Albuquerque. And there was the encounter that Lieutenant H. G. Combs had had one night above Andrews Field, near Washington, D. C.

This incident had occurred on November 18, 1948, six weeks after Gorman's experience. Combs, flying with another lieutenant named Jackson, was about to land his T-6, at 9:45 P.M., when a strange object loomed up near him. It looked like a grayish globe, and it gave off an odd, fuzzy light.

Combs chased the weird object for over ten minutes, during which it appeared to evade every move he made. Once, its speed was nearly six hundred miles an hour, as closely as he could estimate. In a final attempt to identify it, Combs zoomed the T-6 up at a steep angle

{p. 96}

and flashed his landing lights on it. Before he could get a good look, the globe light whirled off to the east and vanished.

Since Combs's story had been in the newspapers, Project "Saucer"

evidently had felt in wise to give some explanation. When I read it, in the preliminary report, I was amazed. Here was the concluding sentence:

"The mystery was cleared up when the object was identified positively as a cl.u.s.ter of cosmic-ray research balloons."

Even one of the giant balloons would have been hard to take as the explanation. Combs was almost sure to have collided with it in his head-on pa.s.ses. But an entire cl.u.s.ter! I tried to picture the T-6 zooming and twisting through the night sky, with several huge balloons in its path. It would be a miracle if Combs got through without hitting one of them, even if each balloon was lighted. But he had seen only one light; so had Lieutenant Jackson. That would mean all the rest of the balloons were unlighted--an unbelievable coincidence.

It was not until months afterward that I found Project "Saucer" had withdrawn this "solution." In its final report, this case, Number 207, was listed in the "Unidentified" group. How the balloon-cl.u.s.ter explanation ever got into the first report is still a mystery.

When I talked with Gorman, I told him I was baffled by the idea of a light maneuvering through the skies with no airfoil to support it.

"I know," he said. "It got me, too, at first."

"You mean you know the answer?" I demanded.

"It's just my personal opinion," said Gorman. "But I'd rather not have it printed. You see, I got some ideas from all the questions those Project teams asked me. If my hunch turns out to be right, I might be talking about an official secret."

I tried to pry some hint out of him, but Gorman just smiled and shook his head.

"I can tell you this much," he said, "because it's been mentioned in print. There was thought behind every move the light made. It wasn't any radar-responder gadget making it veer away from my ship."

{p. 97}

"How do you know that?"

"Because it reacted differently at different times. If it had been a mechanical control, it would have turned or climbed the same way each time I got near it. Instead, it was as if some intelligent mind was directing every turn like a game of chess, and always one move ahead of me. Maybe you can figure out the rest."

That was all I could get out of him. It bothered me, because Combs's report indicated the same thing. I had a strong temptation to skip the s.p.a.ce-plans research and tell Redell what Gorman had told me. But Redell had an orderly mind, and he didn't like to be pushed.

Reluctantly, I gave up the idea. I had a feeling Redell knew the answer to the mystery lights, and it wasn't easy to put off the solution.

The letter that came from Art Green, while I was working on the s.p.a.ce plans, didn't make it easier:

Dear Keyhoe: Just heard about your Seattle visit. That Fairfield Suisan thing is on the level; several Air Force pilots have told me about it.

When you get to Fargo, ask Gorman what they found when they checked his ship with a Geiger counter. If he says it was negative, then he must be under orders. I happen to know better.

Yours, ART GREEN

{p. 98}

CHAPTER XI

MY FIRST STEP, in checking on our s.p.a.ce plans, was to look up official announcements. I found that on December 29, 1948, Defense Secretary James Forrestal had released this official statement:

"The Earth Satellite Vehicle Program, which is being carried out independently by each military service, has been a.s.signed to the Committee on Guided Missiles for co-ordination.

"To provide an integrated program, the Committee has recommended that current efforts be limited to studies and component design.

Well-defined areas of such research have been allocated to each of the three military departments."

Appropriation bills had already provided funds for s.p.a.ce exploration plans. The Air Force research was indicated by General Curtis E.

LeMay, who was then Deputy Chief of Air Staff for Research and Development. In outlining plans for an Air Engineering Design Center at Wright Field, General LeMay included these s.p.a.ce-exploration requisites:

"Flight and survival equipment for ultra-atmospheric operations, including s.p.a.ce vehicles, s.p.a.ce bases, and devices for use therein."