‘What?’ he asked, as if choking on a bone.
‘You heard me,’ Wilson said. ‘As you clearly know, we’re not the only ones with flying saucers, though ours are certainly the most advanced. The US and Canada are both involved in similar construction projects and have already had plenty of test flights. The Harold Dahl and Kenneth Arnold sightings of June 1947, over the Cascades, were actually of crude US-Canadian saucers being constructed in secret in the wilds of Canada. Your saucers, General Samford, not ours. But no matter how long you take or how much you spend, your saucers can never be that advanced without further knowledge of my technology. I, too, have certain needs, General, so I’m willing to trade.’
‘I don’t – ’
‘Why would you do that?’ Fuller interjected, his gaze ever watchful and direct. ‘I mean, that would be inviting our technology to catch up with yours, and then...’ He shrugged and grinned. ‘We’d be evenly matched. Then we’d come in and get you.’
Wilson was unperturbed. ‘Not quite true, Mr Fuller. In return for what I need, I’ll trade certain secrets of my technology, but I’ll be doing it a little at a time and only when I’ve already surpassed what I’m offering to you. Though this will benefit you greatly, you’ll always remain behind us, which ensures that we’ll retain the technological advantages we have at this time.’
‘A balance of power,’ Samford said.
‘You might call it that,’ Wilson replied.
‘A seesaw arrangement, right? A tricky manoeuvre.’
‘That’s right, Mr Fuller.’
‘And just what are we supposed to hand over for all this?’ Samford asked, still sounding choked.
‘I’m in constant need of various mass-produced components and equipment, as well as food and other supplies. We shipped a tremendous amount of it in throughout the war years, but it’s finally beginning to run out and our saucers are not yet large enough to bring in the bulk we need. You’ll do that for us.’
General Samford was red-faced, clenching and unclenching his fists, but Fuller seemed merely intrigued. ‘If we do that for you,’ he pointed out, ‘we’ll find out exactly where you are.’
‘I don’t care,’ Wilson said. ‘That information won’t help you. You can’t get conventional aircraft anywhere near us and your saucers have a long way to go before they can be used to combat us, either with troops or with weapons.’
‘So if we can’t get in with conventional aircraft, how will we get the supplies to you?’
‘We’re located at the base of a deep, hidden gorge in Neu Schwabenland, or Queen Maud Land, which isn’t accessible by conventional aircraft. You’ll be given a location at the other side of that mountain range. There we’ve already hacked storage spaces out of the base of the mountain and will soon have them manned all year round. You’ll drop the supplies, and we’ll then pick them up and transport them back here in our saucers. As and when required.’
‘But eventually,’ Fuller said with a smile not reflected in his cold, steady gaze, ‘with the technological information you’ll be feeding us in return, bit by bit, our technology, if never quite matching yours, will be enough to give us saucers capable of flying down into your hidden base.’
‘By which time,’ Wilson replied, ‘we’ll have developed some highly advanced form of defence to keep out unwanted saucers - infrasound barriers or heat shields. We’re already working on those.’
‘You may not succeed,’ General Samford said hopefully, ‘in which case we could eventually get at you.’
‘That’s a chance I’m willing to take,’ Wilson said. ‘And I don’t take chances lightly.’ Samford and Fuller glanced at one another, the former outraged, the latter cynically amused.
‘What if we reject your proposal?’ Samford said. ‘Seems to me, we can just leave you in the Antarctic and forget your existence. A few saucers flying here and there aren’t going to give us much trouble. Most folks already think the saucers are piloted by Little Green Men or only witnessed by cranks. What can you do to us?’
‘Remember the Mantell crash?’ Nebe asked, breaking his icy silence. ‘The first US Air Force officer to die chasing a UFO?’
‘Yes,’ Samford said, ‘I remember. He either died chasing a Rawin weather balloon or because of a lack of oxygen when he foolishly climbed too high.’
‘It’s a well-known fact,’ Nebe said softly, chillingly, ‘that Mantell’s last words were about something metallic and tremendous in size. That was our saucer.’
Samford glanced at Fuller, then at Wilson. ‘I don’t believe you’re that far advanced,’ he said. ‘I think Mantell died from a lack of oxygen, maybe chasing Venus, so I’m calling your bluff.’
‘You reject my proposal?’ Wilson asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll give you proof, General Samford. I’ll give you, the Pentagon and the White House the kind of proof you won’t readily forget. Later this month my flying saucers will surround Washington DC. Some will be piloted; others will be small, remotecontrolled devices of the kind called “Foo-fighters” during the war. For your entertainment, we’ll even fly around the White House. We’ll cause chaos on every radar screen in the area. If your aircraft try pursuing us, we’ll play cat-and-mouse with them. Should that not make you change your mind, we’ll repeat the performance a week later. I think, General Samford, that your superiors, including the President, will think differently after this demonstration.’
‘I’ll believe that when I see it,’ Samford said. ‘Now go to hell, Wilson.’
Wilson merely smiled and then returned with Nebe to the limousine. As he was slipping into the rear seat, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw Samford in angry consultation with Fuller. Fuller was shaking his head, as if saying, ‘No,’ but Samford was obviously overruling him. As Wilson closed his door, Samford shouted at the armed soldiers. Instantly, they readied their weapons and raced forward to surround the limousine.
‘Too late,’ Nebe said.
Suddenly, a great pyramid of dazzling light beamed down over the advancing soldiers. A bass humming sound, shaking even the limousine, was accompanied by a fierce, swirling wind that bent the trees on either side of the road and bowled the advancing soldiers over. Their weapons fell from their hands as they were swept across the road, bellowing with fear and pain as what seemed like a tornado slammed them into one another or against the trees.
Wilson caught a glimpse of General Samford crouching low, holding his peaked cap on with one hand, shading his eyes with the other, squinting up at that dazzling, descending, pyramidal light as Fuller tugged him back to their own car, just outside the roaring whirlpool of wind, now filled with flying leaves, blades of grass, pebbles and dust.
‘Let’s go!’ Nebe snapped.
The driver of the limousine reversed away from the tornado created by the descending saucer and then headed back across the field. There, a second saucer, thirty foot in diameter, had descended and was resting on its four hydraulic legs, gleaming silvery in moonlight. The driver stopped about twenty yards from the parked saucer, letting Wilson and Nebe climb out, then he reversed again and bounced back across the field to the road.
The first saucer was now visible, hovering high in the sky, its base spinning and emitting that great pyramidal light, creating the hurricane-like wind that was slamming the soldiers against the trees or causing them to roll between them, across the grass verge beyond the road.
The limousine raced away as the dazzling light blinked out, abruptly returning the night to darkness. The saucer ascended vertically, rapidly, until it was just a pinprick of light positioned high in the sky, a single star amongst many. Eventually, the swirling wind settled down, letting the bruised, dazed soldiers stand upright again. They all looked up in awe as the second saucer, containing Wilson and Nebe, also ascended vertically, hovered briefly in the sky, then shot off at unreal speed, heading south before blinking out.
‘We have a problem,’ Fuller said.
Chapter Elev
en The telephone call came during supper. Nichola, now four years of age, still blonde and cuter than ever, was no longer in her high chair, but sitting instead with Dwight and Beth at the table, having cookies and milk while her parents contented themselves with coffee. It was the month of July in 1952. Though it was pretty late in the evening, the sun hadn’t sunk yet and the velvet sky was streaked with pink where the stars didn’t show. When the telephone rang, Beth stared at it but made no move to pick it up.
‘Okay,’ Dwight said, feeling guilty and tense when he saw the look on her face. ‘It’s for me, right? I’ll get it.’ Though Beth was sitting beside the phone, he got up and walked around the table to pick it up, which placed him practically against her shoulder and made her lean away from him. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Cap’n Randall.’
‘Hate to call at this time of night,’ Bob Jackson said, ‘but you have to come over here. They want you right now.’
‘Over where? To the ATIC?’
‘Yeah, right. That’s where I’m calling from. They want you immediately.’ ‘Who the hell are they?’
‘Members of the Technical Intelligence Division, Air Matériel Command. They want
to talk to you about what we’ve been doing since Project Sign was dissolved and replaced with Project Grudge.’ Even though now well prepared for the unexpected, Dwight was astounded at this. ‘Now? At this time?’
‘Yeah. They got me out of bed. They appear to have a very urgent need for some detailed case histories. They’ve also come to discuss your complaints about how they’ve been treating us.’
‘Shit!’
‘No shit, baby.’
‘Okay,’ Dwight said, ‘I’m coming.’ He dropped the phone and and stared at Beth, trying to hold her gaze, though he couldn’t help shrugging forlornly. ‘Top brass. I swear, Beth, I wasn’t expecting this. Apparently they want to interview me - right now, in the ATIC. They’re waiting over there for me.’
‘Right now? This evening?’
‘Unbelieveable, right?’
Nichola was breaking up a couple of cookies and spreading the crumbs out on the table.
‘Why don’t you tell them to go to hell? Tell them you have a right to your own life, even if in the Air Force.’
‘I can’t, Beth. It’s top brass.’
‘That doesn’t give them the right. Lord knows, they’re working you into the ground already; you have a right to your own time.’
‘It must be something special, Beth.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ she replied. ‘Something special. Every time we try to plan something, get together, something special comes up. This marriage won’t last the course, Dwight.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘No, it’s not. You work night and day for those people and get no thanks for it. They’ve even consistently denied you promotion, which is practically punishment. So what’s the point, Dwight?’
Not knowing what to say, Dwight glanced down at his daughter. She was licking her index finger and drawing funny faces in the crumbs from the cookies, her brow wrinkled in deep thought. She was also whispering words he couldn’t hear and perhaps wouldn’t understand.
‘Promotion’s not the point,’ Dwight said. ‘I do this because it’s my job and that’s all there is to it.’
‘Promotion may not be the point, but punishment is. They’ve consistently denied you promotion and you know why that is. It’s the UFOs, Dwight. They don’t approve of what you’re doing. It’s a pure PR exercise and someone had to be landed with it. You got the job, but they don’t want you to succeed and so they’re making it hard on you. God, Dwight, you’re a fool!’
Dwight knew it was true. He just didn’t know the reasons. On the one hand, the UFOs were treated as a threat to national security, on the other the reporting of them was discouraged. It just didn’t make sense. No more than it made sense to establish a UFO programme and then block every move its members made. Beth was right - it was a goddamned PR exercise... and maybe he was the fall guy. He might find out tonight. After kissing Nichola on the head, making her giggle and squirm, he went to the closet and pulled out his light jacket. He was wearing civilian clothes, his home clothes, and didn’t intend changing into his uniform at this time of night. Let the bastards see that at least. Putting his jacket on, he went to the door, opened it, but then turned back to Beth.
‘I used to count on your support,’ he told her, ‘but these days I only get flak. What happened, Beth?’
‘You traded me in for your work.’
He stared steadily at her, feeling hurt, then stepped out onto the porch, letting the door snap shut behind him. The pink sky was turning darker, letting the stars come out, and he stood there for a moment, gazing across the airstrip, taking comfort from the aircraft hangars and the many parked planes silhouetted in the twilight. Seeing them, he was reminded of how much simpler life had been when he’d been flying the B-29s over India, China and the Pacific during World War II. Now the US was fighting a war in Korea. Dwight sometimes wished he could take part in it, instead of remaining here to chase UFOs and dodge flak that came from his superiors and Beth instead of the enemy. Sighing, still feeling wounded and hurt, he started down the steps to the yard.
The door opened and snapped shut behind him, then he heard Beth call out to him. When he turned back, she hurried down the steps to cup his face in her hands.
‘Oh, honey,’ she said, shaking her head in a woeful manner and letting her thumbs slide down to his lips, ‘I’m so sorry. I really am. It’s not you, sweetheart – it’s what they’re doing to us. To us. The three of us. We’re a family, a good family, a team, and they could tear us apart. That’s what frightens me, Dwight.’
‘There’s no need,’ he replied. ‘There’s no danger of that, Beth.’ He removed one of her hands from his cheek and pressed his lips to it, moved by a rush of emotion that brought tears to his eyes. ‘We’ll be okay. I promise.’
‘I worry,’ she insisted. ‘There’s more than one kind of danger. There’s the threat to this marriage – that’s one - but we’re okay if we know that. What we can’t fight, what I think we can’t defeat, is what happens to so many of those who do the work that you do. That’s what worries me most, Dwight.’
He knew what she meant and was troubled to be reminded of it. Too many Air Force officers involved in UFO investigations ended up with career problems, broken marriages and ill health. Too many were denied promotion, punished for cooked-up misdemeanours, or posted to inhospitable climes, often separated from their families. Too many for comfort. Beth had cause for anxiety.
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘You know that, honey. I’m just concerned for you.’
‘I love you, too, Beth, but I can’t help your concern.’
She sighed. ‘No, I guess not. I’ll just have to be stronger. We’re a family, right, Dwight?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘A real family.’
‘Then that’s all that matters.’ She embraced him and kissed him, clinging passionately to him, then let him go and wiped tears from her eyes. ‘You hurry on, now. Take no mind of me. I’ll be warming the bed, Dwight.’
‘That sounds nice.’ He turned away, wiping his own eyes, and hurried along the sidewalk, now deserted at this late hour, past the other houses of the officers quarters, heading for Wright Field, not looking forward to the meeting, but protected by Beth’s love.
Chapter Twelve The atmosphere in the ATIC operation’s room was decidedly tense. Three US Air Force generals were sitting around Dwight’s desk, all with thick wallet folders in front of them. Dwight’s friend, Captain Bob Jackson, had placed a second chair beside Dwight’s, behind the desk, and was sitting in it, facing the three generals. Seeing Dwight, he stood up and introduced him to generals Lamont, Conroy and Hackleman. After exchanging salutes, Dwight took the chair beside Bob, facing the generals over his own, paperlittered desk.
A brief, uncomfortable silence ensued, until General Hackleman, silvery-haired, deeply suntanned and lined, coughed int
o his clenched fist, clearing his throat, then said, ‘Sorry to call you out at this time of night, Cap’n, but this matter is urgent.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Dwight said.
‘It’s come to our attention that contrary to air force policy, as laid down for Project Grudge, you’ve been openly supporting the UFO hypothesis and insisting that you have evidence for the physical reality of the phenomenon.’
‘I think it’s important, sir. And I should remind you that Project Grudge was replaced in April by Project Blue Book, for which there’s a more positive policy.’
‘I know all that,’ General Lamont said testily, ‘but we still want to hear what evidence you’re basing your assumptions on.’
‘Analysis of the photos of UFOs, done in the specialist Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory, here at Wright Field, have confirmed the saucer-shaped configuration of the sighted UFOs.’
‘We know all that as well,’ Lamont interrupted rudely. ‘We’ve seen the photographic evidence. But what makes you think they’re real, solid objects?’
Dwight refused to be bullied. ‘With the saucer-shaped configuration and manoeuvring capabilities of the UFOs verified, what was needed was confirmation of what appeared to be their unusually large size and remarkable top speeds, as well as the fact that they appear to be able to hover, almost motionless, in the air. Regarding this, we received a report from Navy Commander R.B. McLaughlin, who’d worked throughout 1948 and 1949 with a team of engineers, technicians and scientists on a classified Skyhook balloon project, located in the Navy’s top-secret guided-missile test and development area in the White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico.’ Dwight took his time leafing through one of his wallet folders, before pulling out a report and speaking while glancing repeatedly at it. ‘According to that report, on April 24, 1949, at ten hundred hours in an absolutely clear Sunday morning, when McLaughlin and his team were preparing to launch one of their big Skyhook balloons - a hundred feet in diameter - the whole crew saw a UFO which, though high up, was clearly elliptical in shape and had a whitish-silver colour.’
PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series) Page 13