You were still a child, but you may remember that by 1938 I was gaining some renown as a physicist. I had recently written two papers on early Germanic astronomy which had been very well received, and to those papers I owed the visit which came on May 2.
On my doorstep stood two party officials, the junior of whom I did not recognise and the senior of whom you would not wish to know I had such close dealings with.
The two men invited themselves inside and showed me three photographs, each featuring a section of what looked like an engraved metal sheet. The first image was described to me as a “star map”. Its five markings were arranged in an unfamiliar manner; certainly no nearby constellation.
The next photograph showed a line of distinct dot-like markings, the third of which was underlined. The underlined third marking had another smaller marking extremely nearby. Unmistakably, this was a linear representation of our solar system.
The third photograph repeated the same planetary diagram with Earth and our moon curiously surrounded by a thin box. The area above the diagram contained twenty-four lines, perfectly aligned in three columns of eight. Without hesitation I shared my belief that that we were looking at a scale, with each line representing one twenty-fourth of the distance from Earth to our moon.
The men asked how I could be so sure about this and what I thought it might mean. I looked again at the so-called star map and shared my belief that the five engraved markings represented terrestrial locations.
This was the point at which the senior party official told me to gather my clothes and belongings.
On the way to Austria, the officials told me everything. I attempted to keep a straight face while listening to their descriptions of the alien craft. I asked no questions. When one of them then asked what I would need to continue the work of mapping the locations, I regrettably requested Mattheus Scholl.
You will surely remember Father’s regular visits from Mattheus, who I knew as a fine cartographer and who I wanted by my side to help me through whatever I was about to find myself caught up in. Mattheus joined me on the evening of May 4. He thought I was insane and did not thank me for getting him involved, but he worked hard in the knowledge that success was our only way home.
One of the markings on the location map stood out in the same way that Earth did on the planetary legend — by way of being underlined — so we took that marking as a “home point” and assumed it to represent our discovery point of the craft: Lake Toplitz.
Armed with the relative distances and Earth-to-moon scale, we had little difficulty calculating the absolute distances from Lake Toplitz to each of the four other locations. Identifying the locations was another matter. Needless to say, modern technology would make this task immeasurably easier today than it was then.
Given that the craft had been found submerged in a lake, we focused our search on bodies of water. After several false starts and dead-ends, I found that Lake Namtso in Tibet was precisely the correct distance from Lake Toplitz when the “star map” was oriented at a particular angle. At this angle, another point appeared to fall on the Antarctic coast with the others more isolated in the Southern Ocean.
Ever diligent, Mattheus meticulously remeasured the distances and sourced the most detailed maps he could find. In the middle of the third night, he shook me awake.
Mattheus excitedly told me that when the map was oriented with one point on Namtso, the two points which looked to fall in the endless ocean actually fell on two of our planet’s most isolated islands. He insisted that he had already double-checked and triple-checked everything.
The islands in question — Kerguelen and Bouvet — were so small and isolated that their falling perfectly in the right places quite simply could not be dismissed as coincidence. We told our superiors at first light.
After remarkably short discussions, it was decided that expeditions would be sent to the four locations: Namtso, Bouvet, Kerguelen and Antarctica.
For a brief note of background: The Ahnenerbe was established in July 1935. Its early expeditions looked at things like rock carvings in Italy and folk music in Finland. With the serious DFG funding that came in 1938, its sights were extended to Antarctica. This raised fewer eyebrows than I expected.
Though I was treated extremely well during my time in the party compound, the next thirty-two months were uncomfortable and inconvenient. For Mattheus, with a family at home, they were unbearable. Never a day passed without some expression of the hatred he felt for me, the man who had involved him in something he was beginning to realise he could never escape.
I did the work of evaluating weapon designs, in absolute isolation and to keep myself sane. Mattheus, meanwhile, shut off.
Enough digression, brother. Though it must be said: there is a certain catharsis in expressing that which has been contained inside for so long.
The first sphere was discovered on the Antarctic coast in January of 1939, during an expedition launched under false pretences which even the captain bought into. The four rings found in the Toplitz craft, which testing had shown to display bizarre magnetic properties, were taken on board. Eyewitness testimony from the few men sent to recover the sphere as covertly as possible told of an incredible sight as the sphere rose from the water near the cruiser and settled in one of the rings, held at arms length by a member of the search party. The ring then locked around the sphere, where it would remain until all four spheres were reunited almost two years later.
The Bouvet sphere was recovered without difficulty in February of 1939, during the Antarctic expedition’s journey home. I feel now as I did then that the recovery team’s success in covertly using the rings to attract these first two spheres without being seen by the rest of the crew is worthy of more praise than it received.
Next came Lake Namtso. Shaffer’s long-planned expedition to Tibet was already well underway, having left Europe in April of 1938. After some political complications his party entered Tibet in December, by which time its number had swelled with a carefully selected recovery team. Shaffer and his men, carrying out perfectly legitimate exercises in earthly sciences, moved southwest from Lhasa in March of 1939. The splinter group, however, continued 150 miles north to Namtso. Needless to say, the sphere rose out of the water and gently landed on the ring. Shaffer’s team recovered vast samples of animal and plant life, making it simple enough for the recovery team to conceal the sphere among their own samples before reuniting with the main group.
Kerguelen did not go without a hitch. The war was underway by the first attempted recovery in November of 1939, which occurred during a pre-planned landing on Kerguelen. Nothing was discovered and we knew that a new dedicated mission could not be suggested without raising too many eyebrows and involving too many crewmen. Fortunately, a small recovery team sent aboard Rogge’s Atlantis in late 1940 managed to recover the sphere without incident. No satisfactory answer was ever given as to why the first team failed the year prior.
Now, brother, even if time has played tricks with my mind regarding the dates and sequences so far, rest assured that the memory of what came next is as fresh as ever.
Along with the few senior officials I alluded to previously, I was there for the opening of the spheres.
The only visible marking inside the craft, which was now heavily guarded near the lake’s shore, were four small circular ridges on the otherwise smooth floor. I and three others each placed a sphere on a ridge.
Immediately, with a sphere on each ridge, the craft’s only opening — a sliding panel which had always been ajar but required no small effort to fit through — slammed shut like a door in the wind.
My mind was confusion; my heart was fear.
A torch defeated the unearthly darkness in time for me to see the magnetic rings relax and fall to the bottom of their respective spheres, accompanied by a chorus of loud hissing sounds not unlike those of a disturbed rattlesnake.
The alien spheres were opened then and there.
D minus 46
&
nbsp; McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Dan sat silently as Emma and Clark read. Emma was much further into the letter than Clark, so Dan focused on her face to gauge her reaction.
As ever, she was difficult to read.
“Have you looked into this Mattheus Scholl guy?” Clark suddenly asked, looking up at Dan.
Emma, utterly focused, didn’t react in any way.
“Not yet,” Dan said, speaking quietly. “Just keep reading.”
D minus 45
To make a long story short, brother, we found a metallic plaque in each sphere, similar to those which had been left in the craft to lead us to the spheres in the first place.
No more than six men saw all four plaques. Unfortunately, I was not among them.
It happened like this: immediately after the spheres were opened, I was handed the first plaque. It contained a representation of our solar system on the right and what I assumed to be the Messengers’ home system on the left.
One section of the second plaque contained what was almost certainly a timescale for the Messengers’ return. I saw this plaque for mere seconds — no more than that — but long enough to see that the message established one year as a core unit. That alone is of little help, I admit, but it at least tells us that the timescale is not millennial or greater. The rest of the plaque, for all I saw, appeared simply to identify Earth as the target of their attempted communications.
As I tried to draw conclusions from the timescale, I suddenly heard a hushed but frantic concern in the air. I looked up to see the other men huddled around the final two plaques. Those plaques, along with the one in my hand and the first, were then taken away.
To confirm what I know: the first plaque showed an unfamiliar solar system while the second showed a timescale for the Messengers’ return.
The third and fourth? I cannot be sure. But within days, Mattheus claimed to have found out from someone else that one or both contained images of the Messengers themselves. Mattheus became certain that the plaques were being suppressed because the representations of the Messengers’ physical appearance had been deemed injurious to the Reich. These ideas soon consumed him.
I must confess to dismissing his theory out of hand. But with what I know now regarding earthly artefacts which were indeed destroyed for daring to present god-like figures with physical features which contradicted the party’s racial mythos, I am not so sure.
The last I will mention of Mattheus is that he was eliminated in the days that followed. He considered the suppression of the Messenger’s physical forms a grave offence against science, decency, and a thousand other things. When he refused to be quiet, he was silenced.
This is the entirety of what I know about the discovery at Lake Toplitz.
So why am I telling you?
Like me, you will almost certainly be in the ground before the return comes. I pass you the burden of this truth for one reason: to ensure that our enemies do not prosper in the meantime.
As I have told you, the alien craft at Toplitz was sunk and destroyed. The empty Namtso, Bouvet, and New Swabia spheres were looted from Altaussee, apparently without raising suspicion. The third and fourth plaques, to the best of my knowledge, were decisively destroyed by the leadership; I believe the spheres were stored to be studied, but that the risk of the wrong eyes seeing the suppressed plaques was deemed too great.
The looted spheres, devoid of context, present no threat to anyone.
My sole and great concern is the Kerguelen sphere, which was jettisoned in haste, intact, and with the two surviving plaques inside. If that sphere is ever recovered, whether by the Argentines, British, Americans, or anyone else, I fear that the global order we have worked so hard to establish will collapse overnight. If you see merit in trying to prevent such a night from coming, I implore you to focus your efforts on the Kerguelen sphere. I implore you to focus on the Argentine coast.
Just as in 1941 when we could not launch a dedicated mission to Kerguelen to recover the sphere without raising suspicion, I have been unable to recover it from the ocean.
You may be familiar with the stories of U-530 and U-977, both of which surrendered in Argentina in the summer of 1945. What the official records omit is that a third U-boat arrived in the second week of August, landing at Necochea after dumping the Kerguelen sphere due east of Miramar.
My sources for this information are utterly infallible.
The plan had been for the sphere and the two surviving plaques to reach Necochea and be transported safely inland. This changed when the crew received word that U-530, having already surrendered at Mar del Plata, had been swiftly transferred to the Americans. An understandable decision was made to dump the sphere rather than deliver it to the hands of the enemy.
I must leave for the airport very soon, but there are a few more points to be made.
The alien craft was annihilated in Lake Toplitz in the spring of 1945. Our detonations were more powerful than necessary. The discovery of the forged British currency dumped in the lake further reaffirms my confidence that there are no remnants of the craft; if there were, they would have been found.
When Toplitz is mentioned today, the one in one thousand men who know anything whatsoever about the lake will immediately think of either that forged currency or the gold that was supposedly dumped. I see no reason to discredit the persistent rumours of secret gold, for they serve a purpose in distracting from the truth that must remain hidden: that Lake Toplitz was the site of the most important discovery in all of human history.
Such rumours, perhaps, should even be encouraged. Talk of searches for the Grail and the Ark certainly was, for such ideas occupied conspiratorial minds which may otherwise have turned to matters closer to the truth. Officials likewise went to great lengths to talk up fantastical stories of the Führer’s escape to Argentina and of secret Antarctic bases, both of which have acted as barriers against serious discussion of what actually happened in the far south.
I have noticed the Americans increasingly utilising such practices as we did, dressing up their lies as secrets so as to placate those who are desperate to believe in cover-ups and conspiracies.
What I can say with total confidence is that no one in the American establishment knows anything. Their attempts to search for and communicate with extraterrestrial races follow no real pattern and make no sense in relation to what we found. There has been something of a surge in activity over the last two decades — with the Pioneer Plaques, the Arecibo signal, and the Voyager golden records — but as I said: these haphazard attempts do not suggest any knowledge of the Toplitz Messengers.
To ensure this remains the case I urge you to lobby against future attempts to communicate. Call SETI a waste of resources; if no one listens, say it is foolhardy and dangerous. I have had reasonable success with both approaches.
I have also so far succeeded in preventing any serious searching around Miramar by claiming that U-boats containing dangerous cargo were scuttled nearby.
One safeguard is that the Kerguelen sphere cannot easily be opened by brute force. Indeed, we were completely unable to forcefully reopen any spheres during extensive testing. The ring required to open the sphere was loaded aboard U-530, which, as you already know, fell into American hands. I have no reason to assume they believed the ring to be anything of importance, just as the looters at Altausee had no idea that they were carrying their stolen gold in alien containers.
It is also worth blocking concerted attempts to dive or scan at Toplitz, where talk persists of a well-funded Israeli search for gold. Though I have repeatedly stated my confidence that nothing of the craft remains, I have no desire for this to be tested. If any major developments are ever suggested, particularly anything related to drainage, stop them. Push for an exclusion zone; accidentally leak a toxic chemical; do whatever it takes.
If an opportunity ever arises to search for the sphere without raising suspicion or involving too many people, seize it like your li
fe depends on it. Utilising magnetism in any search you undertake, though no guarantee of success, would certainly not harm your chances. The most detailed information I have is that the Kerguelen sphere was dumped within Argentine waters, due east of Miramar.
If you search and succeed, I implore you to destroy the sphere immediately.
One final thought regarding the Americans: I do not know if the rumours of a new space agency have reached you, but any developments on that front should be followed with great care. In the little time I have left, I hope to shape the agency’s future.
Should the agency indeed come to pass, I urge you to stay close to whoever takes charge. As unlikely as it may sound, I have spoken twice with Richard Walker in an effort to persuade him to put himself forward. If your reaction to this is the disgust I expect, try to keep an open mind. Walker is already notorious for attacking any and all perceived threats to absolute American sovereignty. Such single-mindedness, if directed appropriately, could be of tremendous assistance.
I have quietly shared with him my beliefs that any discovery of extraterrestrial life would threaten the sovereignty he so prizes and that he could greatly reduce the chances of such a discovery by controlling the proposed new agency. He seems receptive to the idea.
I truly must leave for the airport now. Rest assured that this letter will fall under no eyes and touch no hands between mine and yours.
I do not regret keeping this from you, but I do regret keeping myself. It would be too easy to apologise for not returning your calls and it would be too difficult to explain my reasons. Just know that I have been a sick man for a long time, brother, and both the responsibility of this secret and the burden of this life are great weights off my mind.
Not Alone Page 26