PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  As the dome was being sealed, the four fifteen-foot diameter, unmanned probes also emerged from the mother ship to surround the Kugelblitz II and prepare for takeoff.

  Being already in the air, the five craft did not follow the usual two-stage pattern of flying saucer take-offs: a tentative, vertical rise of between fifty and a hundred feet, then a spectacular, remarkably quick blast-off, either vertically or at a sharp angle. Instead, they hovered beside the mother ship until the gravity shield had come on, then abruptly shot off to the west, heading for Florida.

  Protected by the Kugelblitz II’s gravity shield, those inside had no need to keep themselves strapped to their chairs. There was absolutely no sign or feeling of movement. However, as the journey from the Sargasso Sea to the Florida Keys took only a few minutes, neither Wilson nor Whitaker thought it worthwhile unbuckling his safety belt. Indeed, so fast was the saucer flying that at first, when the passengers looked straight ahead, they saw no more than what appeared to be a rapidly whipping, frantically spiralling tunnel of shimmering white light streaked with silvery-blue, a vertiginous well of brightness that gave no indication of which direction they were flying in: up, down, or straight ahead. It was, of course, the latter. Flying at a speed well beyond the sound barrier, Mach 1, over fifty miles high, on the very edge of space, they appeared to be suddenly blasted through the very sky itself, a giant envelope tearing open to reveal a vast azure sea that convulsed and turned purple, and then, just as abruptly, actually being the same sky, filled up with the dazzling radiance of a gigantic sun, even as the moon and stars also came out, clearly visible in the middle of the day, now present, with the sun, in an atmosphere so thin that even dust particles could not exist.

  Seconds later, the Kugelblitz II and its four probes all slowed down to hovering speed, then hovered directly over Bimini, which could be seen as glowing dots on the radar screen and as it actually was on the TV monitor wired to a high-powered aerial camera. What the TV monitor showed, in fact, was a photomosaic of the western end of the Bermuda Triangle, the Gulf Stream flowing northward between Florida and the Great Bahama Bank, and, in the middle of the picture, Bimini itself, here in monochrome, but in actuality a ravishing tapestry of green and blue streaked with socalled ‘white’ water, containing sulphur, strontium and lithium, which often made it glow eerily.

  ‘Send the probes down,’ Wilson ordered into his throat microphone.

  Within seconds, the four unmanned ‘probe’ saucers had flown out horizontally in the four directions of the compass, stopped abruptly, hovered briefly, then shot down towards the sea off Bimini, moving so fast that they looked like no more than tiny lights, then disappearing completely as they plunged into the water and descended, still fully operational, to the sea-bed. There, under robotic control and with the use of their CAMS, they would explore and collect samples of rock, stone, soil, plants and plankton from what might be the remains of the cyclopean walls, truncated pyramids, carved pillars, causeways and stone circles of a lost civilisation, possibly Atlantis. While Wilson was not yet ready to embrace this theory, his encyclopaedic knowledge of ancient history impelled him to explore the possibilities and see what could be learnt from them. This was the job of the four small ‘probe’ saucers that were almost certainly, right now, extending their crab-like metallic claws to start picking up items from the sea-bed between Bimini and Andros.

  ‘So,’ he said when the probes had disappeared into the sea, ‘let’s head for Cocoa Beach.’

  When the relevant instructions had been transmitted, the saucer ascended vertically about fifty feet, then shot off in a blur of speed towards Miami. With its gravitational shield also functioning as an inertial shield, the mass of the UFO with regard to gravity was reduced to a minute fraction of its former value, permitting exceptional buoyancy in the atmosphere, extremely high accelerations (so fast, indeed, that the human eye could not see the saucer’s take-off and would imagine that it had abruptly disappeared) and the capability of coming to a remarkably fast stop or going into abrupt, right-angle turns without harming those inside, they also being protected by the gravity shield.

  Now on programmed autopilot, the saucer knew where it had go. Upon approaching the mainland, it suddenly stopped, made an abrupt turn, and then shot off in a northerly direction, automatically following the topography of the land by means of a control system that bounced radar-like signals off the ground and back to the saucer for instant computer analysis and constantly changing flight directions. Because of this, as well as the weakening and strengthening of the gravitational pull of Earth when the saucer dropped low enough, the saucer appeared to be bobbing repeatedly as it sped on its horizontal flight path towards Cocoa Beach.

  It stopped abruptly and precisely over the prearranged meeting place in a field in a protected area just outside Patrick Air Force Base, two miles from the village of Greater Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral, the swamp-land from which dozens of Atlas, Thor, Titan and Snark missiles, as well as America’s first Earth satellite, Explorer 1, had been launched.

  As the Kugelblitz II hovered high above the normal civilian and Air Force flight paths, waiting for the fall of darkness, Wilson and Whitaker partook of a light meal – the usual fruit-and-nut cereal, with a glass of dry, white wine – while discussing the many changes that had taken place down there on the east coast of Florida, where Whitaker had also trained and flown as a budding astronaut, before being abducted by Wilson.

  ‘When I first went there,’ Whitaker said, ‘about seven years ago, Cocoa Beach consisted of a couple of dozen families strewn amongst the sand dunes and palmettos. Strangers rarely turned up and the villagers did little other than fish for their food and swim for their leisure. Now it’s called Greater Cocoa Beach, which includes the original village and its environs, and it has a population of approximately ten thousand souls, including astronauts, aircraft pilots, scientists, rocket engineers, ballistics experts, and a local community obsessed with making money out of the space race. Some amazing things are happening down there.’

  ‘Only amazing relative to the accomplishments of the rest of the West,’ Wilson noted. ‘Only amazing because of what we let them do. But we’re now so many years ahead of them, they’ll never catch up with us.’

  ‘Jack Fuller thinks differently,’ Whitaker said. ‘And that man’s no fool.’

  ‘He’s not a scientist, either, Flight Captain. That’s his major weakness. His others are vanity, material greed and excessive patriotism, all of which can be used against him, if and when necessary. We’ve no cause for concern there.’

  Feeling nervous, as he always did when outside the Antarctic colony, this being part of the chemical ‘indoctrination’ process undergone upon his arrival, Whitaker checked his wristwatch. ‘Maybe we should have arranged the meeting somewhere in Cape Canaveral,’ he said. ‘It’s now a restricted military zone of about fifteen thousand acres, including a lot of uncleared jungle. We might have been more secure there.’

  ‘Or we might have been eaten by a puma,’ Wilson retorted, knowing that those animals still roamed wild there. ‘Besides, these days the Cape is crawling with tourists – even around the restricted zone, which they try to spy upon with binoculars and cameras. Also, most of the military personnel in that zone still don’t know about us, so they could prove to be troublesome.’

  ‘What about the personnel of Patrick AFB?’

  ‘The US-Canadian saucers are tested there,’ Wilson explained, ‘and kept hidden in hangars in a heavily guarded, top secret area – pretty much like Wright-Patterson’s legendary Hangar 18. For this reason we trade with them and deal only with those on the base who’ve been told about us.’

  ‘Like that CIA agent, Jack Fuller.’

  Wilson smiled bleakly. ‘Jack Fuller trades all over the place – where we go, he goes. So, yes, like Jack Fuller.’ Glancing through the curved viewing window at the other side of the flight deck console, he saw that the sun now looked like blood pouring along the great bowl of
the silvery horizon. ‘The sun’s setting, so they should be there by now. Complete the descent.’

  Instantly, the Kugelblitz II started vibrating, wobbled a little, then, with its circular ‘wings’ rotating and their flashing lights forming a kaleidoscope, it steadied and descended vertically, first through the civilian and military flight paths, its radar constantly checking for approaching aircraft, then through the clouds, and finally all the way down to the circle of lights that marked the LZ, the landing zone, in the middle of a broad field that was encircled by electrified barbed-wire fences and further guarded by a large contingent of well-armed US Marines, spread equidistant around the perimeter.

  Mere feet above the ground, whipping up dust, loose soil and leaves, the flying saucer bobbed a little and swayed gently as its hydraulic legs emerged obliquely from its convex base to dig into the ground. The bass humming sound faded away, the flashing lights blinked out in sequence, and then the saucer came to rest and was still.

  Silence reigned.

  Beyond the circle of upward-facing marker lamps in which the flying saucer had landed, nothing was visible except that broad, dark field and the starry sky above it. Neither the electrified barbed-wire fence nor the Marines positioned around the perimeter were visible. For a while the saucer just sat there like a massive, silverygrey mushroom, making no movement, producing no sound at all; eventually, however, the sound of a coughing engine broke the silence and a US Army jeep materialised out of the darkness to stop just outside the circle of marker lamps. The jeep’s ignition was turned off, then its lights were extinguished, thus plunging it back into the darkness just outside the illuminated LZ.

  In that darkness, Jack Fuller, wearing a light-grey suit with shirt and tie, clambered out of the jeep, followed by two Marines armed with 0.3-inch M1 semi-automatic rifles and carrying spare thirty-round detachable box magazines on their webbed belts. After staring thoughtfully at the flying saucer, Fuller nodded at the two soldiers, indicating that they should follow him at a reasonable distance. As they spread out behind him, he stepped between two of the marker lamps and walked slowly, carefully, towards the flying saucer.

  Even as he was approaching the nearest edge of that immense, silvery-grey discus, a bass humming sound emanated from it and the top of a large plate, which before had formed part of the apparently seamless outer surface, moved away from the lower body, opening just enough to let out a long, thin blade of subdued whitish light. The top of the plate kept moving away from the wall, swivelling on hinges along its bottom end, falling backwards all the way to the ground, until it formed a wide ramp, eerily illuminated by the pale light pouring out from the loading bay of the saucer.

  Three figures were silhouetted in that deliberately reduced lighting: a tall, slim man with two child-sized, oddly shaped creatures whose features could not immediately be defined. Only when Fuller had stopped near to where the ramp met the ground did he recognise the three figures as Wilson and two unfortunate Ache Indians, who had been surgically mutated to be fitted with metal prosthetics, including the replacement of the lower face and hands, thus turning them into robotic cyborgs, half man, half machine. What remained of their original faces was rendered even more visually dreadful by the fact that the only remotely human aspects to them were the oddly glassy eyes that turned this way and that, between the metal band of a studded stereotaxic skullcap and the metal nose of a prosthetic that had replaced the lower half of the face, including the mouth, jawbone and throat. Even Fuller, who took certain horrors for granted, shuddered when he saw those pitiful, yet terrifying, creatures.

  No wonder UFO contactees keep babbling about alien beings, he thought. What else could they possibly think, seeing creatures like these?

  The cyborgs stood well apart and a little distance behind Wilson as the latter walked away from the ramp, to stop directly in front of Fuller. Glancing at Fuller’s two armed Marines, he said, ‘You know that bringing these men here is a waste of time. If you displease me, or in any way turn against me, they won’t be able to help you.’

  Fuller glanced at the two child-sized cyborgs standing behind Wilson and saw that they were holding what appeared to be stun guns in their myoelectric metal hands.

  ‘Laser weapons?’ he asked.

  ‘What a bright boy you are, Fuller.’

  ‘I like to keep up to date. So what do you want this time, Wilson?’

  ‘Are you still here on behalf of President Eisenhower?’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he send someone who has more authority. Why does he always send you?’

  ‘Because, as you’ve doubtless noticed before, when dealing with the likes of generals Vandenberg and Samford, I’m a lot less antagonistic to you than men of a military mind-set.’

  ‘You’re antagonistic, all right. You just don’t show it as openly.’

  ‘That may be true, but the President still thinks it’s best to keep the military out of this as much as possible. Also, he believes that if the wrong person finds out that the top brass of the White House and Pentagon are negotiating secretly with the likes of you, public outrage could lead to the fall of the whole government, including himself. Me, on the other hand... Well, I’m small fry and can be made to carry the can if we’re found out. I’m not sure that’s true at all, but that’s what he believes.’

  ‘You’re not sure, but you know it’s possible.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And you’re willing to be sacrificed this way?’

  ‘I love my country,’ Fuller said.

  ‘You’re a fool.’

  ‘So Fuller’s a fool. What the hell? Now what do you want?’

  For a moment it seemed that Wilson might actually display anger, but he simply stared steadily at Fuller, as if trying to read him. Obviously believing he had done so, he smiled bleakly and said, ‘As best I recall, when last you met my request for massproduced components and other items, it left me owing you something.’

  ‘True enough. So you’ve come to pay off your debt to the US government?’

  Again Wilson refused to rise to the bait by showing anger over Fuller’s bland mockery. Instead, he just said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what are you offering? Obviously not more scientific information. If so, I wouldn’t be here alone; you’d have asked for someone who could properly assess such information – not a scientific dumbhead like me. No, it must be to do with something else... Something to do with intelligence.’

  ‘You’re a fool, but you don’t lack common sense. That’s exactly it, Fuller.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  ‘I note that NASA has finally named the test pilots it’s selected for its first manned space project.’

  ‘Yeah, right: Project Mercury.’

  ‘I thought I should warn you not to let NASA become too complacent.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Almost certainly the Soviets will succeed, this September, in landing their Lunik 2 spacecraft on the moon.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Over the past two years I’ve been abducting a variety of Soviet scientists, engineers, academics and cosmonauts, to brainwash them with chemicals, take control of their minds with minute brain implants via stereotaxic skullcaps, and send them back to where they came from as my spies. Right now I have such spies in the Moscow headquarters of the Academy of Sciences, where the Lunik 2 flight was planned; in Moscow University, where the space experiments were carried out; at the cosmodrome living quarters in East Kazakhstan, where the cosmonauts are being trained; in the airfield at Baikonur, two hundred miles north of the Aral Sea, where the launch will take place; and at the radio tracking complex at Burokane, Armenia, where the flight and moon landing will be monitored. So, yes, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve already landed on the moon – albeit in secret – but now the Soviets are about to do the same, leaving the US well behind in the space race.’

  ‘That could be humiliating,’ Fuller confessed.

  ‘Which is e
xactly why the Soviets are working so hard to do it.’

  ‘That’s an important piece of intelligence, Wilson, but not exactly repayment for that last shipment of US supplies to your base in Antarctica.’

  Wilson’s smile was bleak. ‘No, I’m forced to agree with that. I do, however, bring you something else.’

  Fuller glanced at the two cyborgs standing behind Wilson in the eerie, subdued lighting emanating from the holding area of the 150-foot diameter flying saucer. Wondering what they were thinking, if anything, about what had happened to them, their surgical and mental mutation, he shivered involuntarily, then glanced beyond them, to the illuminated holding bay. The light coming out of the saucers was usually dazzling, even blinding, but this light was pale, almost yellow, and not all that bright, which meant that he could actually see more than usual – and what he saw was nothing. Clearly, the holding bay was only an entrance to the main, fixed body around which the massive rings revolved.

  Disappointed, he glanced back over his shoulder, first at the two armed Marine guards behind him, then beyond the wide circle of marker lamps. The light of the lamps, however, made it impossible to see as far as the barbed-wire perimeter, where the other Marines would be standing guard, preparing to fire at the saucer, if so signalled. Still, it was no comfort to Fuller to know that Wilson was right: that if he, Fuller, said the wrong thing or made the wrong move, he wouldn’t have a prayer. He’d be paralysed by a stun gun, dragged up into the saucer, and almost certainly never be seen again. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

  ‘So what’s the offer?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ll take this to the White House?’

  Fuller sighed. ‘Yes, Wilson, direct to the President. So what am I to tell him, other than what you’re already told me?’

  ‘As you probably know...’ Wilson began.

  ‘Don’t tell me what I already know.’

  ‘As you already know,’ Wilson repeated, almost gritting his teeth in the first sign of anger that he had ever displayed, ‘at the end of this year, in an unprecedented international agreement, a total of twelve countries, including Britain, America and the Soviet Union, will be signing a treaty stating that no country can claim any part of Antarctica as its own, and that the continent must be held as a common preserve for scientific research.’