PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  Ernst almost choked up then, overwhelmed with emotion, recalling that more human aspect of himself before the war, Wilson and this hellish jungle had eaten up the last of his soul. He was going mad here – he had to get out – and now he was going to attempt to do just that while he had the chance.

  He was terrified of what would happen if he failed, but he still had to try it.

  Hurriedly packing a shoulder bag with his basic necessities, the photos he had just been studying and, most important, the great deal of cash he had gathered over the years from various transactions with General Stroessner’s corrupt officials, he left the house for what he hoped would be the last time. Crossing the muddy compound to the small flying saucer, he glanced with distaste at the log-and-thatch cabins, the bamboo cages packed with imprisoned Ache Indians, the native men and women kneeling around camp fires, the mangy dogs and chickens and goats, all dwarfed by the soaring trees, and was thrilled at the prospect of never seeing them again. Approaching the cyborg pilot, who stared at him with almost dead eyes from between the stereotaxic skullcap and the metal lower-face prosthetic – a truly awful sight – he ordered him, by speaking with the aid of his throat-microphone, to climb up into the saucer. When the cyborg had done so, Ernst followed him, clambering up the gently sloping side and slipping into the pilot’s domed cockpit. When both he and the cyborg were strapped into their seats, their shoulders almost touching, which made Ernst feel uneasy, he told the cyborg to take off, ascend as high as possible, then turn towards the sea and set the autopilot for West Germany.

  Obeying, the cyborg activated the saucer and soon, after the cockpit covering had closed automatically, its circular wings were rotating and taking on the whitish glow of ionisation. The saucer lifted off gently, swayed just above the ground, then ascended in a stately manner until it was above the canopy of the trees. So excited he could scarcely breathe, Ernst managed to take one last look at the fenced-in compound, now practically lost in the jungle far below, then the saucer suddenly shot off at startling speed, flying smoothly above the vast, river-divided, densely forested landscape of Paraguay.

  Ernst never even got to see the sea.

  No sooner had the small saucer gone into horizontal flight than Wilson’s much bigger saucer, the mother ship, appeared magically out of nowhere to sit on its tail. Horrified to see this, Ernst was also terrified when Wilson’s voice came out of amplifier vents in the cyborg’s steel facial prosthetic, saying in German, ‘I know what you’re attempting, Ernst, and I’m disappointed in you. You will now be punished for your betrayal. I’m sorry to have to do this.’

  Instantly, the cyborg let out a demented, hideously human wailing that cut right through Ernst. Smoke poured out from behind the featureless lower-face metal prosthetic, followed by showering sparks. Then, as the cyborg continued its ghastly, ear-splitting wailing, the steel prosthetic blew off, revealing the surgically shredded bone and flesh around the removed mouth, jaw and nose, with blood squirting out and splashing over Ernst. Even as Ernst looked on, aghast, too shocked to think clearly, the cyborg’s head started smoking beneath the skullcap and he made an odd rattling sound – the sound of Marlon Clarke dying – then slumped sideways in his seat, clearly dead.

  As Ernst stared at the cyborg, mesmerised by shock, the saucer flipped over and started spinning rapidly towards the earth. Rendered dizzy and nauseous by the spinning, almost deafened by the hammering of wind against the canopy, not knowing which way was up and which down, Ernst was further punished by the sight of the dead cyborg rocking wildly in his seat with blood still spewing from the mess of exposed bone and flesh where the metal prosthetic had been. He then saw the spinning jungle rushing up towards him and knew that the saucer was about to crash.

  Ernst screamed in terror.

  Miraculously, just before the spinning saucer struck the canopy of the trees, Wilson’s saucer appeared above it. A pyramid of brilliant light, some kind of force field, beaming out of the base of Wilson’s enormous craft, enveloped Ernst’s spinning machine and appeared to place it under control again.

  Held in that pyramid of light, Ernst’s saucer, though now the right way up, raced on a descending trajectory towards the jungle – heading back, as Ernst realised with dread, in the general direction of his compound by the river.

  The jungle rushed up towards him. The pyramid of light blinked out, then Wilson’s saucer ascended abruptly, vertically, and appeared to dissolve into the blazing sun. Ernst covered his face with his arms as he crashed into the jungle.

  He survived... almost certainly because of Wilson. Though the saucer crashed, it levelled out before doing so, smashing through the trees, hitting the ground the right way up, and then sliding through the soft mud until it finally came to a shuddering halt.

  Though battered, bruised, badly cut and bleeding, the shocked Ernst still managed to crawl out of the saucer, which was mangled but still in one piece. Standing upright, but almost falling again from dizziness, he wiped blood from his eyes and eventually managed to orientate himself. After taking a final look backwards at the crashed saucer, which already was being covered in falling leaves, he began what he knew would be a long, hellish march back to the compound.

  He had been punished and sentenced. Now he knew that he would be imprisoned in the compound for the rest of his days.

  His hell was right here on Earth.

  Chapter Forty-One In October, 1967, Dwight paid a visit to Dr Epstein and Scaduto in the APII headquarters in Washington DC, where he was introduced to two new members of the organisation, both physicists: a handsome, sardonic young man named Robert Stanford – whom Epstein always addressed simply as ‘Stanford’ – and the relatively famous Dr Irving Jacobs. Stanford was pretty flashy, dressed like a Californian in a sky-blue open-necked shirt, denims held up with a fancy leather belt, and a windcheater jacket. Dr Jacobs, older and wiser, was wearing a standard grey suit, shirt and tie, and well polished black shoes.

  ‘Though he looks like he comes from Malibu,’ Epstein said, ‘Stanford actually hails from right here, in Washington DC.’

  ‘McLean, Virginia, to be precise,’ Stanford explained with a shit-ass grin.

  ‘Dr Jacobs, on the other hand, hails from Camelback Hill, Phoenix, Arizona, and has been kind enough to fly here just for this meeting. They’ve both signed up to work for the APII and I’m pleased they’re with us.’

  ‘It’s swell to have you aboard,’ Dwight said, shaking the hands of both men in turn.

  ‘Still got me to deal with, though,’ Scaduto said, looking even cockier than Stanford. ‘Bet that gives you headaches!’

  ‘Headaches from bastards like you I can enjoy,’ Dwight replied. ‘At least they keep me awake.’

  ‘Ain’t he just the nicest sonofabitch?’ Scaduto asked rhetorically. ‘Say, hey, let’s get cookin’!’

  Though he didn’t know anything about the flashy, self-confident Stanford, Dwight had read about Dr Irving Jacobs in a wide variety of scientific journals and knew that apart from working for NASA and the American Nuclear Society, he was seriously interested in the UFO phenomenon. That he was joining the APII was therefore good news, since his reputation in so-called ‘serious’ areas could only enhance the credibility of the organisation.

  ‘Okay, gentlemen,’ Epstein said, indicating the chairs around his desk with an airy wave of his right hand, ‘now that my good friends Dwight Randall and Tony Scaduto have had their regular little get-together skirmish, please take a seat and let’s talk.’ When they were all seated, lighting up cigarettes and sipping water or coffee, he said to Dr Jacobs: ‘As you still work for NASA, Irving, can I begin by saying how sorry I was to read about the deaths of those three astronauts, Grisson, Chaffee and White, in the flash fire that swept through their Apollo spacecraft last January. It must have been a real blow to you.’

  ‘It’s been a bad year for the space programme in general,’ Jacobs replied. ‘I mean, apart from our three unfortunate astronauts, there was the death of t
he Soviet cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, when his Soyuz spacecraft crashed after coming out of orbit. In neither case – NASA or the Soviet Union – did anyone have a clue as to exactly what happened. God knows, it was certainly a year of disasters that set the space programme back a good deal and could threaten its funding.’

  ‘Which won’t help the APII,’ Stanford said. ‘Because when public interest wanes in the space programme – which it always does when funding is cut and there’s no media attention fixed on it – it also wanes regarding UFOs. Alas, some people – indeed millions of goddamned people – tend to link the two together. That’s one of life’s unfortunate facts.’

  ‘The man’s a philosopher,’ Scaduto said.

  ‘You read me loud and clear,’ Stanford replied. ‘I have a big mouth.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Scaduto said, ‘to get back to the subject of this meeting, it has been a wonderful year for UFO sightings.’

  ‘In what way?’ Jacobs asked.

  ‘Biggest goddamned UFO flap since the mid-1950s, including the great March concentration from Montana to Maryland.’

  ‘I was out of the country then,’ Jacobs said. ‘I did read a little about it, but can’t remember too much. I was in Paris, France, where the government is seriously considering the setting up of a UFO investigations programme, but their newspapers don’t write much about this country.’

  ‘No, the Frogs wouldn’t,’ Stanford said.

  ‘Literally hundreds of witnesses reported seeing UFOs,’ Scaduto said. ‘And there were more UFOs reported from as far apart as Saigon, Vietnam, and Brixham, England. Most intriguing was a large, saucer-shaped object photographed clearly over Calgary, Alberta. However, the most widely publicised UFO-related incident was the one about a horse called Snippy, found gutted in a surgical manner, with fifteen unexplainable exhaust marks in the soil around the carcass.’

  ‘Fascinating.’ That was Epstein. ‘The Snippy case has reminded the UFO community that over the past few years there’s been an increasing number of similar incidents, when animals, including whole herds of cattle, were killed and robbed of their limbs and internal organs with what appears to be unusually precise, surgical skill.’

  ‘That’s one of my specialities,’ Stanford said, adjusting his big-buckled belt and looking, with his flashy clothes and matinée-idol handsomeness, not remotely like the very bright physicist that he was. ‘I mean, what have we got here? We’ve got animals being killed, sliced, and gutted where they stand with a precision that can only be surgical – not the handiwork of other, scavenging animals. I say it has to be done by extraterrestrials.’

  ‘Why?’ Dr Jacobs asked.

  ‘They want the body parts and internal organs for research purposes,’ Stanford replied without hesitation. ‘Some kind of medical or surgical research. Find out how we work, right? I mean, find out how our bodies function.’

  ‘But why so many parts?’ Dwight asked.

  ‘That’s the million-dollar question,’ Stanford said.

  Dwight was just about to respond when Scaduto indicated with a slight shake of his head that he should say nothing more on the subject. Wondering what Scaduto was up to, Dwight went back to more mundane matters, mainly checking the facts and figures regarding recent UFO sightings in his particular area of Dayton, Ohio.

  ‘And how’s Beth?’ Epstein asked him when he had finished with his summary.

  ‘She’s improving, but never too settled,’ Dwight replied, plunging instantly, helplessly, into a well of fearful memories. ‘She still has nightmares, but at least, for the time being, there are no visits from men in black, either real or imagined.’

  ‘You have to be brave, Dwight.’

  ‘No,’ Dwight replied. ‘Beth has to be brave. I can only offer support.’

  ‘She’s a strong woman.’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Well,’ Epstein said, obviously uncomfortable with the subject and raising his hands inquiringly in the air, ‘anything else to discuss or do we call it a day?’

  ‘No more from me,’ Scaduto said.

  ‘You?’ Epstein asked of Dwight.

  ‘Not from me,’ Dwight replied.

  ‘Anything you two want to ask?’ Epstein said to Stanford and Jacobs.

  ‘Not really,’ Stanford said. ‘It’ll take me about a month to check through these APII reports, but once I’ve done it, I’ll get back to you with my assessment and recommendations.’

  ‘Robert and Irving,’ Epstein explained, ‘have been taken on to do a long-term projection based on the flight patterns of UFOs, assessing frequency, direction of approach and retreat, and any other facts that will give us an indication of where they come from. We now have a pretty broad knowledge of their technical abilities and extraordinary flight characteristics; what we don’t know is exactly what they are and where they originate. Stanford and Dr Jacobs are going to try to come up with a pattern by analysing every single report in the APII files, going all the way back to 1947. Any help that you two... ’ here he nodded at Dwight and Scaduto... ‘can give will be greatly appreciated.’

  ‘Just give me a call,’ Dwight said.

  ‘Likewise, guys,’ Scaduto added.

  ‘Well, that just about wraps it up,’ Epstein said. ‘Are you two lunching, as usual?’

  ‘Yep,’ Dwight replied. ‘And as usual, you’re going to refuse to join us.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ Epstein spread his hands in that oddly rabbinical manner. ‘I have a desk piled with work and a lot of business still to cover with Dr Jacobs and Stanford here, so if you’ll excuse us...’

  ‘We come all the way to Washington DC to be thrown out of his goddamned office,’ Scaduto said, grinning. ‘On the other hand, a nice lunch and a couple of drinks... Are you ready, Dwight?’

  ‘I’m your man,’ Dwight said.

  They both stood up, shook hands with Robert Stanford and Dr. Irving Jacobs, then left the office.

  Soon after, they were having their traditional lunch in Clyde’s in Georgetown, which Dwight had once enjoyed, but which now always reminded him of the mysterious death of his best friend, Bob Jackson. For that reason, if no other, the lunches were not as enjoyable as they had once been, though they were always informative.

  ‘Have you mentioned your man-made UFO theory to Epstein yet?’ Dwight asked of Scaduto when the meal was finished and they were having a final beer.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s a wonderful researcher, but he believes implicitly in the extraterrestrial hypothesis and I think he’d believe that any work I did in that particular direction would be a waste of the organisation’s time and money. So, you know, I don’t mention it.’

  ‘Maybe you should.’

  ‘Hey, hold on there, friend. I get paid by the APII. Don’t wanna lose my income, don’t you know?’

  ‘But you still believe in it, right?’

  ‘Fucking A. That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘I was under the impression, possibly mistaken, that this was just our traditional Georgetown lunch, though I did catch your warning glance back in Epstein’s office. What was that all about?’

  ‘Get this. One of my buddies in the NICAP recently informed me that the members of the board of governors of that organisation – our lively rival – had managed to run down one of the CIA agents who’d been transferred – how shall I put it? – out of harm’s way, after the so-called “Woman from Maine” affair. The agent, who’d been transferred to London before being eased out of the service, was naturally feeling embittered and so was willing to talk off the record, which eventually he did, during a meeting in the Drake hotel in New York.’

  ‘A meeting with you?’

  ‘Shit, yes.’

  ‘Okay. Sorry. Continue.’

  ‘Well, according to this agent, one of his assignments in the CIA was to undergo specialised training in the Duke University’s parapsychology lab, a sensorydeprivation establishment at Princetown, and the
psychology department at McGill University in Canada. The purpose of all this was to open his mind, a highly responsive one, to mental telepathy, sightless vision, and psychokinesis.’

  ‘You want me to ask, “Why?” I can tell.’

  Scaduto grinned. ‘The reason – and I think you’ve already guessed – is that the Russians were already employing agents with such skills for espionage purposes.’

  ‘That’s only a rumour. Unsubstantiated.’

  ‘Bullshit. It’s an established fact and you know it. You know damned well that the Parapsychology Lab of the University of Leningrad has been neck-deep in this shit for years.’

  Dwight grinned and raised his hands in a pleading manner. ‘Lord forgive me for my mendacity. Okay, please get on with it.’

  ‘So this guy,’ Scaduto continued, ‘after a year of training at both Duke and McGill’s parapsychology labs, found that he could, like Ted Serios, cause photographs to appear on a film by merely concentrating on the camera. A year after his training, in 1959, he was working successfully with US Naval Intelligence and having successful shore-to-ship telepathic communications with an atomic submarine, the US Nautilus. And the same year, when the press exposed the Nautilus experiments, he was transferred back to Washington to work with – wait for it...’

  ‘The female psychic from Maine.’

  ‘Right!’

  ‘So he managed to make contact?’

  ‘No. At least, not straight away. During his first session, in the presence of the female psychic, he failed to make contact. At the second session, however, in that CIA office in Washington DC, when the woman wasn’t present, he went into a trance and made contact with... someone.’

  ‘Stop tormenting me, Tony.’

  Scaduto’s grin was now like that of a Cheshire cat. ‘Well, like the woman from Maine, he was scribbling down automatically what it was he was hearing in his trance state. However, he never found out what he wrote, because before he snapped out of his trance, one of the CIA agents present at the session spirited the message out of the office.’

  ‘So they didn’t want him to know who he’d been in communication with.’