PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  DOCTOR: What happened next, Beth? The men have helped you out of the car and the door of the holding bay has been closed, so what happened next?

  (Note: When Dr Sagan went into the past tense, so did the patient.) PATIENT: I became very frightened again. Started shaking badly. I was looking at the small alien creatures, at their hideous, mostly metallic faces, and I guess that got to me. Then one of them, an alien, passed his hand, his metallic claw, over my face – he was holding something in it – and I felt heat going into my head and then I felt a lot calmer.

  DOCTOR: You weren’t frightened anymore?

  PATIENT: I went kind of limp. I felt sort of dreamy, not real, removed from it all. It became like a dream.

  DOCTOR: Yet you were still awake?

  PATIENT: Yes. Awake. But as if I was dreaming. Dreaming though awake.

  DOCTOR: Were there any distinct sounds in the hangar? Any signs of movement? PATIENT: Yes. Shortly after the door closed – I mean, when the ramp was drawn up again to form part of the circular wall – I felt the floor vibrating – not shaking, just vibrating – and then I heard a sort of background humming.

  DOCTOR: Humming? The sound of low-powered engines?

  PATIENT: No. A kind of bass humming – I can’t really explain it – but not a mechanical sound. More like an electrical sound – very faint, yet distinct.

  DOCTOR: Any sensation of movement?

  PATIENT: A kind of floating sensation. But I wasn’t too sure. I still felt a bit lightheaded. Though it could have been some kind of movement.

  DOCTOR: Such as flight?

  PATIENT: Could have been.

  DOCTOR: And then? DOCTOR: What happened next, Beth? PATIENT: I can’t remember. I think I blacked out... Yes, I see corridors – curving corridors – with portholes along one wall and steel doors, all closed, in the other wall. Some doors were open – not many, but some. Then I caught a glimpse of what looked like a huge machine shop: jibs and cranes, catwalks, ladders, machinery, lots of men - I assume they were men, but they were a long way away - in grey coveralls. Then... Oh, please God!

  DOCTOR: I’m still here, Beth, right by your side. You have nothing to fear. What did you see? PATIENT: Another room. I was in a different room. Circular, dome-shaped ceiling, white-painted metal walls, men and women in white coats working at long tables between glass tanks that were covered in frost and... Oh, please God, no!

  DOCTOR: It’s all right, Beth. You have nothing to fear. What you saw was in the frosted-glass tanks. What did you see?

  PATIENT: Bodies. Naked human bodies. Either sleeping or dead. With wires running out of their heads and attached to the inside of the glass tanks.

  DOCTOR: Wires? PATIENT: Cables. Electric cables, I think. They were attached to the inside of the tanks and other wires, or cables, were on the outside and ran from the glass tanks up to machines showing zigzagging lines on what looked like TV screens.

  DOCTOR: EEG machines?

  PATIENT: Pardon?

  DOCTOR: Have you ever seen in hospitals, or perhaps on television, machines that record brain waves or heartbeats, indicating if a patient is alive or dead?

  PATIENT: Yes.

  DOCTOR: Were the machines you saw like those?

  PATIENT: Yes. DOCTOR: So the naked people, either sleeping, unconscious, or dead, were in frosted-glass tanks wired to machines that may have been recording their brain-waves or heartbeats.

  PATIENT: Yes. The machines seemed like that. But the people in white coats, the living people, they’re...

  DOCTOR: Yes, Beth?

  (The patient does not respond.)

  DOCTOR: What are they doing, Beth? PATIENT: Joining things together. Welding things. Fitting wires into sockets and soldering metallic joints and operating computer consoles and... joining things together.

  DOCTOR: What things?

  (The patient does not respond.)

  DOCTOR: What things, Beth? PATIENT: Severed heads. Amputated limbs. Internal organs... Oh, God, a human heart, still beating! Joining them to other human body parts and metal prosthetics... I can’t look! I won’t look!

  DOCTOR: Don’t look, Beth. You don’t have to look. Look away. What happened next, Beth?

  (The patient does not respond.)

  DOCTOR: It’s all right, Beth, you have passed through that room. You no longer have anything to fear. What happened next, Beth? PATIENT: Can’t remember. Darkness. Things gliding through darkness. Silence and darkness and breathing and the sound of my heartbeat. I’m floating. Can’t see. I am where nothing is.

  DOCTOR: Did you have a blackout, Beth?

  PATIENT: Yes, a blackout. I think so. I feel that I had a blackout. Then I awakened in...

  DOCTOR: Yes, Beth?

  (The patient does not respond.)

  DOCTOR: You had a blackout, Beth, and then recovered. What’s happening now, Beth?

  PATIENT: I’m somewhere else. Another room. Curved white walls, but I don’t think they’re metallic.

  DOCTOR: An interior room.

  PATIENT: Yes.

  DOCTOR: And?

  PATIENT: I’m looking up at the ceiling. Dome-shaped. It’s brightly lit, but I can’t see the lights. I think the lights are hidden.

  DOCTOR: And?

  PATIENT: I’m looking up at the ceiling?

  DOCTOR: You’re lying down?

  PATIENT: Yes. On something pretty hard. Not a mattress. Something cold and hard. I think it might be metallic. When I move, it feels cold and hard.

  DOCTOR: You’re lying on something cold and hard, which may be metallic, and you’re looking up at the dome-shaped ceiling.

  PATIENT: Yes. A dome-shaped ceiling. White, like the walls. Curved walls, like all the other walls. All curves. All domes.

  DOCTOR: And stretched out on your back on this cold, hard, metallic bed, looking up at the dome-shaped ceiling, you saw... PATIENT: Faces. A circle of faces, staring down at me. Light beaming down on me. Spotlights, I think, not too bright or big, but beaming down from behind the shoulders of the men staring down at me.

  DOCTOR: What kind of men?

  PATIENT: Normal men. One handsome and oddly ageless, with very smooth pale skin, but with little movement in his features. Grey hair... No, white hair. Silverywhite hair. I thought the silvery-white hair was strange, because his face seemed so young... though expressionless.

  DOCTOR: Young, but... What do you mean by ‘little movement in his features’? By ‘expressionless’? He looked human and otherwise perfectly normal? PATIENT: Yes. Kind of handsome... At least given his white hair and the lack of movement, or mobility, in his features. I think he might have had plastic surgery, though I couldn’t see scars or lines.

  DOCTOR: Were you strapped to the bed?

  PATIENT: Not a bed. A kind of table.

  DOCTOR: A surgical table?

  PATIENT: Yes, maybe that.

  DOCTOR: Let’s call it a bed. Were you strapped down?

  PATIENT: No.

  DOCTOR: Did you try to sit up?

  PATIENT: No... Yes, I tried once, but I just couldn’t move. When I tried to move, I felt that I was paralysed – and that brought back my fear.

  DOCTOR: Did any of the men surrounding you, looking down at you, actually speak to you?

  PATIENT: Yes, the one with the youthful face, white hair, maybe plastic surgery.

  DOCTOR: What did he say?

  (The patient does not respond.) DOCTOR: What did he say, Beth? PATIENT: Don’t worry. You’re not paralysed. You’re not hurt or damaged in any way. You will come to no harm.

  DOCTOR: He spoke English?

  PATIENT: Yes.

  DOCTOR: Accent?

  PATIENT: He was American – I’m sure he was American – but he also sounded kind of European, like those guys in the movies.

  DOCTOR: When he spoke to you, did you try to reply?

  PATIENT: Yes.

  DOCTOR: You could speak?

  PATIENT: Yes.

  DOCTOR: What did you say?

  PATIENT: I ask
ed him where I was.

  DOCTOR: And he said?

  PATIENT: Nothing.

  DOCTOR: Nothing? PATIENT: He just smiled and aimed something held in his hand, a remote control, at the opposite wall. He pressed a button and two steel panels slid apart to form a big window, letting me see what was outside.

  DOCTOR: What was outside?

  PATIENT: Stars!

  DOCTOR: Pardon?

  PATIENT: Stars! I saw nothing but stars. Then he pressed another button and the light dimmed and the stars disappeared, and then I saw...

  DOCTOR: Yes, Beth?

  (The patient does not respond.)

  DOCTOR: What did you see through the window, Beth?

  PATIENT: Earth.

  DOCTOR: Earth? PATIENT: Not earth – the Earth. Just as I’d seen it in those films sent back by the satellites. The globe of Earth. At least, I think it was the Earth. It looked like the Earth on the films and photos I’ve seen. I’m convinced it was Earth.

  DOCTOR: Did the man showing you this say anything at this point? Did he speak at all?

  PATIENT: Yes.

  DOCTOR: What did he say?

  (Note: At this point in the hypnotic trance session, the patient, who has no reported interest in, or knowledge of, acting, adapted a surprisingly convincing male voice.) PATIENT: Beautiful, isn’t it? But why look so surprised? The Soviets and Americans have both put men into space – and that’s exactly where you are, Mrs Randall... above Earth, in outer space, just like Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepherd, Major Titov and Lieutenant-Colonel John Glenn. Indeed, next month the Russians will be putting what they assume will be the first woman into space – but you’ve beaten her to it. Don’t you feel proud?

  (Note: At this point in the hypnotic trance, even Dr Sagan seems so startled that she can think of nothing to say for quite some time. For this reason there is a large gap on the tape before the question-and-answer session picks up again. When the patient next speaks, her voice has returned to normal.)

  DOCTOR: So how did you react when you saw Earth and the stars outside the window?

  PATIENT: I was calm. I felt a bit remote. As if I’d been drugged. DOCTOR: Did the man showing you Earth and the stars say any more?

  PATIENT: Yes.

  DOCTOR: What did he say?

  PATIENT: He said...

  DOCTOR: Yes?

  PATIENT: We picked you up by mistake. It wasn’t you we wanted. We thought it was your husband in the car and instead we got you.

  DOCTOR: Anything else?

  (The patient does not respond.)

  DOCTOR: You’re safe, Beth. Nothing can harm you. Did he say anything else? PATIENT: Yes. He told me I shouldn’t worry. That they weren’t going to harm me. He said they were just going to check that I was okay and then take me home. He said that when I got back home, I wouldn’t recall what had happened to me, but that eventually I would be the means of warning Dwight that he was endangering himself, as well as Nichola and me, by investigating UFOs. He said that for some time I wouldn’t remember my experience, but that it would all come out eventually, at the appropriate time, which was his way of warning Dwight off.

  DOCTOR: And?

  PATIENT: Nothing else.

  DOCTOR: He said nothing else?

  PATIENT: No.

  DOCTOR: Not another word?

  (The patient does not respond.) DOCTOR: Did he say anything else? Anything, Beth? You can tell me. It’s all right. What else did he say?

  PATIENT: Nothing. He stepped aside. Another man, speaking German, held up a long, sharply pointed, silvery instrument... Awful! Terrifying! The others held my legs apart. The one with the awful instrument leaned over me, looking between my legs, and then... Oh, please, no! Please! Don’t! Oh, God, it hurts! Please stop it! Oh, God, please, God help me, please don’t, please stop him, I can’t... Oh, God, stop! No! No! No!

  DOCTOR: Relax, Beth. Relax. Relax, you are relaxed, you are safe, I am here, you are all right. Now tell me, Beth. It’s all right to tell me. What else did they do?

  PATIENT: No! No! No! No! No!

  DOCTOR: Yes, Beth, yes, it’s all right, I am here, Dwight is here, you’re not alone, you can tell us, you can talk to us, Beth. What else did they do? PATIENT: Oh, God, the pain! I can’t bear the pain. Sometimes pain and then a kind of pleasure that goes beyond pain. Things inside me – in there. Deep inside me. Oh, the pain! Then in my ears, up my nostrils, in... I can’t accept... I refuse to believe... But they did! They turned me onto my belly and put something in there... Pain! Please God, help me! First the back, then the front. Needles under my skin, metallic probes in every orifice, juices sucked out and liquids pumped in, and all the pain and even more pain and sometimes... Oh, God forgive me... pleasure! Yes, that as well. They tormented me with pleasure that went beyond the bearable and brought me... my racing heart... I can’t breathe!... to the point of... pain! Back to pain. Experimenting, trying to find out what was possible, from one extreme to the other, pain and pleasure combined... And all the time looking closely at me, studying me, as if I was nothing, a mere insect, something trapped on a glass slide under a microscope... Oh, God, help me, please let me go! Please don’t! No more! Please!

  DOCTOR: Forget it, Beth. It’s in the past. It’s been and gone. You are here now. You’re safe. You’re safe here with Dwight and me and can’t be harmed, you are here in the present. Think of the present without fear and tell me what they are doing, Beth. They have finished and the pain has all gone and I want to know how it ended. No more pain. You can tell me. What did they do when they were finished, Beth?

  PATIENT: Nothing. When they finished, they stepped aside. They took the samples they had taken out of me and then went away, leaving him – only him! DOCTOR: The one with the handsome, oddly ageless features, and silvery-white hair and lack of expression. The one who spoke English with a slight European accent. What did he say or do, Beth?

  PATIENT: I don’t want...

  DOCTOR: You are safe, Beth. We are here, you are protected. What did he say or do?

  PATIENT: He...

  DOCTOR: Yes, Beth? PATIENT: He started lowering what looked like one of the metal caps worn by aliens onto my head – it was like being in a dentist’s chair: the metallic cap was on a hinged arm – and he said he was going to erase my memory of this experience, but leave enough to be revived at a later date by others. Then he placed the metal cap on my head and somehow made it tighten around my skull. I was frightened. I’m frightened!

  DOCTOR: Stay calm, Beth, be calm. Just answer my question. Did this metal cap have wires running out of it, attached to some kind of equipment?

  PATIENT: Yes.

  DOCTOR: Have you ever heard of a stereotaxic skullcap?

  PATIENT: No.

  DOCTOR: All right, Beth. He lowered the wired metal cap onto your head and tightened it around your skull. What happened next?

  (The patient does not respond.)

  DOCTOR: What happened, Beth?

  PATIENT: I’m frightened. Terrified. Don’t do it! Please, don’t do it! I won’t tell anyone! I won’t! I promise! Please, don’t do it! Don’t!

  DOCTOR: What happened next, Beth?

  (The patient does not respond.)

  DOCTOR: What happened, Beth?

  PATIENT: Pain. Stars. Sparkling lights. Darkness. I am where nothing is, in the darkness, and only know that I don’t know.

  DOCTOR: Don’t know what?

  PATIENT: My own name. What I am. Where I am. What is. I am where nothing is, in the darkness, and only know that I don’t know. I know nothing. All gone.

  DOCTOR: You blacked out again?

  PATIENT: I awakened.

  DOCTOR: Where were you when you awakened, Beth? What did you see?

  PATIENT: I was nowhere. I was just awake. I knew I’d awakened.

  DOCTOR: Where are you now that you’ve awakened, Beth? What are you seeing?

  PATIENT: I’m still in the car. I feel sleepy... must have slept... I’m on my way to Columbus – just left Springfie
ld – and...

  DOCTOR: Yes, Beth?

  PATIENT: Where am I? I thought the sun was setting. I was heading for Columbus. Why is the car...?

  DOCTOR: Yes, Beth?

  PATIENT: I can’t believe...

  DOCTOR: Yes, Beth? PATIENT: That road sign... It says I’m heading for Dayton. I must have been driving home. I fell asleep driving home... No, I didn’t. I couldn’t have done that. I was driving to Columbus, out of Springfield, and now... Dayton. The car’s parked by the side of the road in the direction of Dayton. It’s... I can’t tell the time. My wristwatch has stopped. It stopped at five after five, though I can’t tell if that was yesterday or this morning... No, not this morning. It couldn’t have been this morning. I was definitely driving out of Springfield, heading for Columbus, at about five yesterday evening as the sun was sinking. Now the sign says Dayton. The car’s parked facing Dayton. It must be some time in the early morning... I’d say eight or nine... and I’m heading back to Dayton... Oh, dear God, what’s happening to me? I don’t want to! I don’t want to! I don’t want to!

  DOCTOR: Okay, Beth, that’s all we want to know. You have been very good. You have been extremely helpful. You are in deep, deep sleep, very deep, deep sleep, you are relaxed, you are very relaxed, you are sleeping, deep sleep. In a moment you can waken up. You won’t remember what’s been said between us. You won’t remember until I ask you to do so, you are asleep, deep, deep sleep. All right, Beth, you are waking up now, you are waking, waking slowly, pleasantly, you are pleasantly waking up. You can waken up, Beth.

  TRANSCRIPTION ENDS

  Chapter Thirty-Six ‘There are now a great number of foreign exploration stations in the Antarctic,’ Wilson’s assistant, Salvatore Fallaci, said as he sat beside Wilson at the panoramic window overlooking the glittering white wilderness. ‘Ever since the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58, the twelve nations have, with your co-operation, been spreading out to set up more and more bases. If they continue to do so, our security is likely to be threatened.’