Before my date with Redell, I went over all the material I had, hoping
to find some clue to the space visitors’ planet. It was possible, of
course, that there was more than one planet involved.
Project “Saucer” had discussed the possibilities in it! report of April
27, 1949. I read over this section again:
Since flying saucers first hit the headlines almost two years ago,
there has been wide speculation that the aerial phenomena might
actually be some form of penetration from another planet.
Actually, astronomers are largely in agreement that only one member of
the solar system beside Earth is capable of supporting life. That is
Mars. Even Mars, however, appears to be relatively desolate and
inhospitable, so that a Martian race would be more occupied with
survival than we are on Earth.
On Mars, there exists an excessively slow loss of atmosphere, oxygen
and water, against which intelligent beings, if they do exist there,
may have protected themselves by scientific control of physical
conditions. This might have been done, scientists speculate, by the
construction of homes and cities underground where the atmospheric
pressure would be greater and thus temperature extremes reduced. The
other possibilities exist, of course, that evolution may have developed
a being who can withstand the rigors of the Martian climate, or that
the race—if it ever did exist—has perished.
In other words, the existence of intelligent life on Mars, where the
rare atmosphere is nearly devoid of oxygen and water and where the
nights are much colder than our Arctic winters, is not impossible but
is completely unproven.
The possibility of intelligent life also existing on the planet Venus
is not considered completely unreasonable by astronomers. The
atmosphere of Venus apparently consists mostly of carbon dioxide with
deep clouds of formaldehyde droplets, and there seems to be little or
no water. Yet, scientists concede that living organisms might develop
in chemical environments which are strange to us. Venus, however, has
two handicaps. Her mass and gravity are nearly as large as the Earth
(Mars is smaller) and her cloudy atmosphere would discourage astronomy,
hence space travel.
The last argument, I thought, did not have too much weight. We were
planning to escape the earth’s gravity; Martians could do the same,
with their planet. As for the cloudy atmosphere, they could have
developed some system of radio or radar investigation of the universe.
The Navy research units, I knew, were probing the far-off Crab nebula
in the Milky Way with special radio devices. This same method, or
something far superior, could have been developed on Venus, or other
planets surrounded by constant clouds.
After the discussion of solar-system planets, the Project “Saucer”
report went on to other star systems:
Outside the solar system other stars—22 in number—have satellite
planets. Our sun has nine. One of these, the Earth, is ideal for
existence of intelligent life. On two others there is a possibility of
life.
Therefore, astronomers believe reasonable the thesis that there could
be at least one ideally habitable planet for each of the 22 other
eligible stars.
After publication of our findings in _True_, several astronomers said
that many planets may be inhabited. One of these was Dr. Carl F. von
Weizacker, noted University of Chicago physicist. On January 10, 1950,
Dr. von Weizacker stated: “Billions upon billions of stars found in the
heavens may each have their own planets revolving about them. It is
possible that these planets would have plant and animal life on them
similar to the earth’s.”
After narrowing the eligible stars down to twenty-two the Project
“Saucer” report goes on:
The theory is also employed that man represents the average in
advancement and development. Therefore, one-half the other habitable
planets would be behind man in development, and the other half ahead.
It is also assumed that any visiting race could be expected to be far
in advance of man. Thus, the chance of space travelers existing at
planets attached to neighboring stars is very much greater than the
chance of space-traveling Martians. The one can be viewed as almost a
certainty (if you accept the thesis that the number of inhabited
planets is equal to those that are suitable for life and that
intelligent life is not peculiar to the Earth) .”
The most likely star was Wolf 359—eight light-years away. I thought for
a minute about traveling that vast distance. It was almost appalling,
considered in terms of man’s life span. Of course, dwellers on other
planets might live much longer.
If the speed of light was not an absolute limit, almost any space
journey would then be possible. Since there would be no resistance in
outer space, it would be simply a matter of using rocket power in the
first stages to accelerate to the maximum speed desired. In the latter
phase, the rocket’s drive would have to be reversed, to decelerate for
the landing.
The night before my appointment with Redell, I was checking a case
report when the phone rang. It was John Steele.
“Are you still working on the saucers?” he asked. “If you are, I have a
suggestion—something that might be a real lead.”
“I could use a lead right now,” I told him.
“I can’t give you the source, but it’s one I consider reliable,” said
Steele. “This man says the disks are British developments.”
This was a new one. I hadn’t considered the British. Steele talked for
over half an hour, expanding the idea. The saucers, his informant said,
were rotating disks with cambered surfaces—originally a Nazi device.
Near the end of the war, the British had seized all the models, along
with the German technicians and scientists who had worked on the
project.
The first British types had been developed secretly in England,
according to this account. But the first tests showed a dangerous lack
of control; the disks streaked up to high altitudes, hurtling without
direction. Some had been seen over the Atlantic, some in Turkey, Spain,
and other parts of Europe.
The British then had shifted operations to Australia, where a
guided-missile test range had been set up. (This part, I knew, could be
true; there was such a range.) After improving their remote-control
system, which used both radio and radar, they had built disks up to a
hundred feet in diameter. These were launched out over the Pacific, the
first ones straight eastward over open sea. British destroyers were
stationed at 100-mile and later 500-mile intervals, to track the
missiles by radar and correct their courses. At a set time, when their
fuel was almost exhausted, the disks came down vertically and landed in
the ocean. Since part of the device was sealed, the disks would float;
then a special launching ship would hoist them abroad, refuel them, and
launch them back toward a remote base in Australia, where they were
landed by remote control.
Since then, Steele said, the disks’ range and speed had been greatly
increased. The first tests of the new disks was in the spring of 1947,
his informant had told him. The British had rushed the project, because
of Soviet Russia’s menacing attitude. Their only defense in England,
the British knew, would be some powerful guided missile that could
destroy Soviet bases after the first attack.
In order to check the range and speeds accurately, it was necessary to
have observers in the Western Hemisphere—the disks were now traversing
the Pacific. The ideal test range, the British decided, was one
extending over Canada, where the disks could be tracked and even
landed.
If the account was right, said Steele, a base had been set up in the
desolate Hudson Bay country. Special radar-tracking stations had also
been established, to guide the missiles toward Australia and vessels at
sea. These stations also helped to bring in missiles from Australia.
Some of the disk missiles were supposed to have been launched from a
British island in the South Pacific; others came all the way from
Australia. Still others were believed to have been launched by a mother
ship stationed between the Galapagos Islands and Pitcairn.
It was these new disks that had been seen in the United States, Alaska,
Canada, and Latin America, Steele’s informant had told him. At first,
the sightings were due to imperfect controls; the disks sometimes
failed to keep their altitude, partly because of conflicting radio and
radar beams from the countries below. Responding to some of these mixed
signals, Steele said, the disks had been known to reverse course, hover
or descend over radar and radio stations, or circle around at high
speeds until their own control system picked them up again.
For this reason, the British had arranged a simple detonator system,
operated either by remote control or automatically under certain
conditions. In this way, no disk would crash over land, with the danger
of hitting a populated area. If it descended below a certain altitude,
the disk would automatically speed up its rotation, then explode at a
high altitude. When radar trackers saw that a disk was off course and
could not be realigned, the nearest station then sent a special signal
to activate the detonator system. This was always done, Steele had been
told, when a disk headed toward Siberia; there had previously been a
few cases when Australian-launched disks had got away from controllers
and appeared over Europe.
I listened to Steele’s account with mixed astonishment and suspicion.
It sounded like a pipe dream; but if it was, it had been carefully
thought out, especially the details that followed.
At first, Steele said, American defense officials had been completely
baffled by the disk reports. Then the British, learning about the
sightings, had hastily explained to top-level American officials. An
agreement had been worked out. We were to have the benefit of their
research and testing and working models, in return for helping to
conceal the secret. We were also to aid in tracking and controlling the
missiles when they passed over this country.
“And I gather we paid in other ways,” Steele said. “My source says this
played a big part in increasing our aid to Britain, including certain
atomic secrets.”
That could make sense. Sharing such a secret would be worth all the
money and supplies we had poured into England. If America and Great
Britain both had a superior long-range missile, it would be the biggest
factor I knew for holding off war. But the long ranges involved in
Steele’s explanation made the thing incredible.
“How are they powered? What fuel do they use?” I asked him.
“That’s the one thing I couldn’t get,” said Steele. “This man told me
it was the most carefully guarded secret of all. They’ve tapped a new
source of power.”
“If he means atomic engines,” I said, “I don’t believe it. I don’t
think anyone is that far along.”
“No, no,” Steele said earnestly, “he said it wasn’t that. And the rest
of the story hangs together.”
Privately, I thought of two or three holes, but I let that go.
“If it’s British,” I said, “do you think we should even hint at it?”
“I don’t see any harm,” Steele answered. “The Russians undoubtedly know
the truth. They have agents everywhere. It might do a lot of good for
American-British relations. Anyway, it would offset any fear that the
saucers are Soviet weapons.”
“Then you’re not worried about that angle any more?”
Steele laughed. “No, but it had me going for a while. It was a big
relief to find out the disks are British.”
“What’s the disks’ ceiling?” I asked, abruptly.
“Oh—sixty thousand feet, at least,” said Steele. After a moment he
added quickly, “That’s just a guess—they probably operate much higher.
I didn’t think to ask.”
Before I hung up, he asked me what I thought, of the British
explanation.
“It’s certainly more plausible than the Soviet idea,” I said. I thanked
him for calling me, and put down the phone. I was tempted to point out
the flaws in his story. But I didn’t.
If he was sincere, it would be poor thanks for what he had told me. If
he was trying to plant a fake explanation, it wouldn’t hurt to let him
think I’d swallowed it. When I saw Redell, I told him about Steele.
“It does look like an attempt to steer you away from the interplanetary
answer,” Redell agreed, “though he may be passing on a tip he
believes.”
“You think there could be any truth in the British story?”
“Would the British risk a hundred-foot disk crashing in some American
city?” said Redell. “No remote control is perfect, and neither is a
detonator system. By some freak accident, a disk might come down in a
place like Chicago, and then blow up. I just can’t see the British—any
more than ourselves—letting huge unpiloted missiles go barging around
the world, flying along airways and over cities. Certainly, they could
have automatic devices to make them veer away from airliners—but what
if a circuit failed?”
“I go along with that,” I said.
“I don’t say the British don’t have some long-range missiles,” Redell
broke in. “Every big nation has a guided-missile project. But no guided
missile on earth can explain the Mantell case and the others we’ve
discussed.”
I showed him the material I had on the Nazi disk experiments. Redell
skimmed through it and nodded.
“I can tell you a little more,” he said. “Some top Nazi scientists were
convinced we were being observed by space visitors. They’d searched all
the old reports. Some sighting over Germany set them off about 1940.
That’s what I was told. I think that’s where they first got the idea of
trying out oval and circular airfoils.
“Up to then, nobody was interested. The rotation idea uses the same
principle as the helicopter, but nobody had even followed that through.
The Nazis went to work on the disks. They also began to rush
space-exploration plans—the orbiting satellite idea. I think they
realized these space ships were using some great source of power we
hadn’t discovered on earth. I believe that’s what they were after—that
power secret. If they’d succeeded, they’d have owned the world. As it
was, that space project caused them to leap ahead of everybody with
rockets.”
When I asked Redell how he thought the space ships were powered, he
shrugged.
“Probably cosmic rays hold the answer. Their power would be even
greater than atomic power. There’s another source I’ve heard mentioned,
but most people scoff at it. That’s the use of electromagnetic fields
in space. The earth has its magnetic field, of course, and so does the
sun. Probably all planets do.
“There’s a man named Fernand Roussel who wrote a book called _The
Unifying Principle of Physical Phenomena_, about 1943. He goes into the
electromagnetic-field theory. If he’s right, then there must be some
way to tap this force and go from one planet to another without using
any fuel. You’d use your first planet’s magnetic field to start you off
and then coast through space until you got into the field of the next
planet. At least, that’s how I understand it. But you’d be safer
sticking to atomic power. That’s been proved.”
Most of our conversations had been keyed to the technical side of the
flying-saucer problem. But before I left this time, I asked Redell how
the thought of space visitors affected him.
“Oh, at first I had a queer feeling about it,” he answered. “But once
you accept it, it’s like anything else. You get used to the idea.”
“One thing bothers me,” I said. “When I try to picture them, I keep
remembering the crazy-looking things in some of the comics. What do you
suppose they’re really like?”
“I’ve thought about it for months.” Redell slowly shook his head. “I
haven’t the slightest idea.”