CHAPTER XVI_The Flying Saucers are Real

That morning, at _True_, we made the final decisions on how to handle

the story. Using the evidence of the Mantell case, the Chiles-Whitted

report, Gorman’s mystery-light encounter, and other authentic cases,

along with the records of early sightings, we would state our main

conclusion: _that the flying saucers were interplanetary_.

In going over the mass of reports, Purdy and I both realized that a few

sightings did not fit the space-observer pattern. Most of these reports

came from the southwest states, where guided-missile experiments were

going on.

Purdy agreed with Paul Redell that any long-range tests would be made

over the sea or unpopulated areas, with every attempt at secrecy.

“They might make short-range tests down there in New Mexico and

Arizona-maybe over Texas,” he said. “But they’d never risk killing

people by shooting the things all over the country.”

“They’ve already set up a three-thousand-mile range for the longer

runs,” I added. “It runs from Florida into the South Atlantic. And the

Navy missiles at Point Mugu are launched out over the Pacific. Any

guided missiles coming down over settled areas would certainly be an

accident. Besides all that, no missile on earth can explain these major

cases.”

Purdy was emphatic about speculating on our guided-missile research.

“Suppose you analyzed these minor cases that look like missile tests.

You might accidentally give away something important, like their range

and speeds. Look what the Russians did with the A-bomb hints Washington

let out.”

It was finally decided that we would briefly mention the guided

missiles, along with the fact that the armed services had flatly denied

any link with the saucers.

“After all, interplanetary travel is the main story,” said Purdy. “And

the Mantell case alone proves we’ve been observed from space ships,

even without the old records.”

The question of the story’s impact worried both of us. public

acceptance of intelligent life on other planets would affect almost

every phase of our existence-business, defense planning, philosophy,

even religion. Of course, the immediate effect was more important.

Personally, I thought that most Americans could take even an official

announcement without too much trouble. But I could be wrong.

“The only yardstick—and that’s not much good—is that ‘little men’

story,” said Purdy. “A lot of people have got excited about it, but

they seem more interested than scared.”

The story of the “little men from Venus” had been circulating for some

time. In the usual version, two flying saucers had come down near our

southwest border. In the space craft were several oddly dressed men,

three feet high. All of them were dead; the cause was usually given as

inability to stand our atmosphere. The Air Force was said to have

hushed up the story, so that the public could be educated gradually to

the truth. Though it had all the earmarks of a well-thought-out hoax,

many newspapers had repeated the story. It had even been broadcast as

fact on several radio newscasts. But there had been no signs of public

alarm.

“It looks as if people have come a long way since that Orson Welles

scare,” I said to Purdy.

“But there isn’t any menace in this story,” he objected. “The crews

were reported dead, so everybody got the idea that spacemen couldn’t

live if they landed. What if a space ship should suddenly come down

over a big city—say New York—low enough for millions of people to see

it?”

“it might cause a stampede,” I said,

Purdy snorted. “it would be a miracle if it didn’t, unless people had

been fully prepared. if we do a straight fact piece, just giving the

evidence, it will start the ball rolling. People at least will be

thinking about it.”

Before I left for Washington, I told Purdy of my last visit to the

Pentagon. I had informed Air Force press relations officials of True’s

intention to publish the space-travel answer. There had been no attempt

to dissuade me. And I had been told once again that there was no

security involved; that Project “Saucer” had found nothing threatening

the safety of America.

At this time I had also asked if Project “Saucer” files were now

available. The Wright Field unit, I was told, still was a classified

project, both its files and its photographs secret. This had been the

first week in October.

When I asked if there was any other information on published cases, the

answer again was negative. The April 27th report, according to Press

Branch officials, was still an accurate statement of Air Force opinions

and policies. So far as they knew, no other explanations had be n found

for the unidentified saucers.

‘I in absolutely convinced now,” I told Purdy, “that here’s an official

policy to let the thing leak out. It explains why Forrestal announced

our Earth Satellite Vehicle program, years before we could even start

to build it. It also would explain those Project ‘Saucer’ hints in the

April report.”

“I think we’re being used as a trial balloon,” Purdy said thoughtfully.

“We’ve let them know what we’re doing. If they’d wanted to stop us, the

Air Force could easily have done it. All they’d have to do would be

call us in, give us the dope off the record, and tell us it was a

patriotic duty to keep still. Just the way they did about uranium and

atomic experiments during the war.”

He still did not have the name of the other magazine supposed to be

working on the saucers. But it seemed a reliable tip (it later proved

to be true), and from then on we worked under high pressure.

In writing the article, I used only the most authentic recent

sightings; all of the cases were in the Air Force reports. When it came

to the Mantell case, I stuck to published estimates of the strange

object’s size; a mysterious ship 250 to 300 feet in diameter was

startling enough. At first, I chose Mars to illustrate our space

explorations. But Mars had been associated with the Orson Welles

stampede. Most discussions of the planet had a menacing note, perhaps

because of its warlike name.

In the end, I switched to a planet of Wolf 359. The thought of those

eight light-years would have a comforting effect on any nervous

readers. The chance of any mass visitation would seem remote, if not

impossible. But it would still put across the space-travel story.

As finally revised, the article, written under my byline, stated the

following points as the conclusions reached by _True_:

1. For the past 175 years, the earth has been under systematic

close-range examination by living, intelligent observers from another

planet.

2. The intensity of this observation, and the frequency of the visits

to the earth’s atmosphere, have increased markedly during the past two

years.

3. The vehicles used for this observation and for interplanetary

transport by the explorers have been classed as follows: Type I, a

small, nonpilot-carrying disk-shaped craft equipped with some form of

television or impulse transmitter; Type II, a very large, metallic,

disk-shaped aircraft operating on the helicopter principle; Type III, a

dirigible-shaped, wingless aircraft that, in the Earth’s atmosphere,

operates in conformance with the Prandtl theory of lift.

4. The discernible patterns of observation and exploration shown by the

so-called flying disks varies in no important particular from

well-developed American plans for the exploration of space, expected to

come to fruition within the next fifty years. There is reason to

believe, however, that some other race of thinking beings is a matter

of two and a quarter centuries ahead of us.

Following these points, I added a brief comment on the possibility of

guided missiles, adding that the Air Force had convincingly denied this

as an explanation of any sightings. As Purdy had suggested, I carefully

omitted ten minor cases that I thought might be linked with

guided-missile research. If disclosing the facts about space travel

helped to divert attention from any secret tests, so much the better.

“_True_ accepts the official denial of any secret device,” I stated,

“because the weight of the evidence, especially the world-wide

sightings, does not support such a belief.”

Most readers, of course, would know that some guided-missile

experiments were going on, and that _True_ was fully aware of it. But

our main purpose would be achieved.

The fact that the earth had been observed by beings from another planet

would be fully presented. Some readers, of course, would reject even

the fact that the saucers existed. Others would cling to the idea that

they were of earthly origin. But the mass of evidence would make most

readers think. At the very least, it would plant one strong suggestion:

_that we, men and women of the earth, are not the only intelligent

species in the universe_. When the article was finished, it was tried

out on True’s staff, then on a picked group that had not known about

the investigation. One editor summed up the average opinion:

“It will cause a lot of discussion, but the way it’s written, it

shouldn’t start any panic.”

The January issue, in which the story ran, was due on the stands

shortly after Christmas. With my family, I had gone to Ottumwa, Iowa,

to spend the holidays with my mother and sister. While I was there, the

story broke unexpectedly on radio networks.

Frank Edwards, Mutual network newscaster, led off the radio comment. He

was followed by Walter Winchell, Lowell Thomas, Morgan Beatty, and most

of the other radio commentators. The wire services quickly picked it

up; some papers ran front-page stories.

The publicity was far more than I had expected. I phoned a reporter in

Washington whose beat includes the Pentagon.

“The Air Force is running around in circles,” he told me. “They knew

your story was due, but nobody thought it would raise such a fuss. I

think they’re scared of hysteria. They’re getting a barrage of wires

and telephone calls.”

That night, as I was packing to rush back east, he called with the