by Howard Marsh
“Why are you going back while I go on? Aren’t you in this as much, or more, than I am?”
“It’s different for you and me,” Walt replied. “I’m one of the outside men. I have a family and can’t just disappear like Yuri, Ludmila, and Nigel. My job is to work both sides of the fence and help with some of the technology problems that require working with outsiders who don’t know that our secret project exists. Your job will be different and more important than mine. You’ll stay on the inside from now on, and you’ll probably get briefed into higher levels than I’m at. I’ve only gone a couple steps higher, and there’s obviously more that’s known only to the people who remain inside. You’ll be one of them. An appropriate accident will be arranged, and people will be sorry for you, but since you’re single, it won’t be a catastrophe for anyone, other than the loss of your friendship until you can reemerge when this project ends. The only problem will be if someone does find out that you’re alive and working with us on the inside. But you’ll get briefed on all of this at the next stop.”
“OK, so I understand that I need to learn more, but why don’t we just go to the other location where we went a few days ago? It looked like it had rooms that could be used for classified discussions at any level.”
Brad answered. “We’re restricted in what we can discuss at that facility. It’s pretty secure, but not for what we’ll get into next. We need to go to another one that’s cleared for a higher level. Just relax and roll with it, and everything will be OK.”
The spy-versus-spy charade continued for another few hours until they reached what appeared to be their destination, this time in west-central New York State. If anyone had been following them, they would have been totally confused by the trip, first west, then a bit north, and then northeast. It would have looked like a drunken giant staggering across the land, from the suburbs of Washington, DC and ending up in the hilly region in upstate New York. But now they apparently were at the intended destination, since they all got out of the car and walked calmly toward the farm house at the end of the dirt road.
Once inside the house, Harry recognized, once again, that the appearance belied the full nature of this decrepit looking house. The main floor was definitely in character with the outside, but once they passed through the cellar door and walked down one flight of stairs, the rooms became much more modern, and the basement level was clearly larger than the house above. Its floor space was at least twice as large. There was another set of stairs that led into an even larger area with a long corridor and several rooms. To get there, they had to go through an elaborate set of security doors, the first of which was concealed behind a fake wall panel. The grade-B movie continued, it seemed.
Harry was led into one of the rooms about midway down the hall. When he entered, he saw that it was a very well equipped conference room, with all the audio-visual aids that one could ask for. At one end was a large screen display that took up most of the wall. In the center was a conference table that could seat fifteen people, seven on each side and one at the end. Harry was motioned to the seat at the end.
Five other people were already in the room, seated at the chairs nearest Harry’s end seat. Charlie went somewhere else, but Brad followed him in and also sat down. Then an older man entered and went up to the speaker’s lectern that was off to the left, near the large screen on the far end.
“Good evening, Dr. Ambrose,” he began. My name is George Giovanis. I’m the Deputy Director for our project and the Director of our North American Operations. I’ll brief you on the history and scientific aspects of the project. That will take you to Level-2. All your security agreements will apply, plus you will now be committed to this project for as long as we require your services. I think that you understand that.”
“Sure, but I still want to know what this is all about and why everything is so absurdly hush-hush.”
“That’s part of the briefing you’re about to receive. OK, Myron, let’s get rolling.”
The screen in front immediately came to life, actually larger than life. An elderly man appeared, magnified at least two or three times, and began speaking with a slight foreign accent. “Hello and welcome to Nebula. My name is Yevgenie Seduro, and I am the chairman of the board of directors of the project. I will now give you a summary of the events that led to the formation of our organization and the technology that we are involved with.”
Yevgenie Seduro? Harry recognized that name. He was one of the Russian entrepreneurs who amassed billions of dollars in a number of enterprises, some of them slightly suspicious, as Harry recalled. This further concerned him that they were involved with some sort of criminal activity.
“You may recognize my name,” he continued. “I admit that some of my dealings were not exactly on what you would call the up-and-up, but I did make a lot of money, and I’ve directed a good part of it to this project. It won’t yield me any monetary gain, but as you’ll soon find out, the return on investment will be significant. But you need to get to the higher classification levels to appreciate that. For now, let’s look at how we got where we are and just what that means in terms of technological achievement.”
The picture on the screen now changed from the old man’s face to a scene somewhere in a semi-desert region, with a lot of people and equipment circled around a very large piece of machinery that was obviously broken apart. There was a long scar on the ground, as if the broken machine had slid in from above and ended up where it now was.
“You’ve no doubt heard of the UFO event at Roswell, New Mexico,” Yevgenie Seduro continued. “This is the scene several hours after the crash. The area was cordoned off, and all the people and vehicles that you see in the photo are from the US military, the Atomic Energy Commission, and several intelligence agencies.”
Harry looked at George Giovanis, and saw the sly grin coming back at him. Giovanis interjected, “Keep watching and listening. It gets better.”
Another picture was now on the screen, and Seduro was continuing his monologue. The picture was a close up of the UFO. It had broken into three large pieces upon impact, but not too much of the interior could be seen.
“Only a few people were allowed to approach the wreckage. The Army established a protective perimeter to prevent any unauthorized personnel from approaching, and it was soon decided that the wreckage would be moved to a US Air Force facility in Nevada, near Las Vegas. This wasn’t the legendary Area 51 that the UFO enthusiasts always refer to, but it was in that general area.
“The pieces of the UFO remained at that location for several months before the US government, at the highest levels, decided to relocate them to another site, further into the desert. They also decided that the entire event would be held very close, under the control of a new office that was created and reported directly to the Director of Central Intelligence. They knew that the craft was extraterrestrial and not some advanced Soviet aircraft because they found half a dozen dead bodies in the wreckage. Those were also moved to the new site with the wreckage and preserved in cold storage.”
At this point, George Giovanis asked Myron to pause the recorded briefing. “So you see, Professor Ambrose, what you were told about extraterrestrial technology was not just fiction. We’ve had proof of this since the crash at Roswell in 1947, and there’s more, much more that we’ve learned since then. OK, Myron, continue the briefing.”
Yevgenie Seduro’s face appeared on the screen again, and he continued. “At this point, the US formed a small, highly secret organization that was split away from the CIA and Air Force intelligence agencies and that took possession of the wreckage and dead aliens. The organization was given the name Nebula, the name that we keep to this day, and the wreckage and dead aliens were relocated again, this time to Nebula’s headquarters, a secret, underground facility in the desert, still in Nevada, but further from Las Vegas. We don’t recall why the name Nebula was chosen, but it fits us well. A nebula is a cloud, something that is wispy, hard to define in terms of preci
se boundaries, size, or shape. It’s also a name that astronomers give to things that appear like stellar clouds, things like galaxies or the remnants of supernovas.
“Just as Nebula was getting started, two other UFO encounters, real ones, occurred. One was in the Soviet Union in 1949. It happened in a very desolate region in Siberia and was kept highly secret by the KGB and the small military unit that was in the area at the time and was first to arrive at the scene. The CIA and MI-6 were able to get a bit of information that the event occurred but nothing of substance other than that fact.
“The other real UFO event was in the United Kingdom, two years later. The UFO crashed at a restricted military area, so the government was able to control all access to it and managed to keep news of it suppressed, mainly as rumors that some local people had seen a strange light descend from the sky. The Brits explained it as a fireball from a meteor that disintegrated several thousand meters in the air.
“These were the only actual UFO events. All others are either figments of deranged minds or of overactive imaginations, or they are the result of our own manipulations to bury the real facts within a web of fantasy that is so unbelievable and unsupportable that the entire area of UFO research is turned into a laughable pursuit by people who are too foolish to be taken seriously. We even caused the US Air Force to create an activity called Blue Book, to document UFO sighting reports and to show that they had no basis in fact. We started rumors about government conspiracy theories and encouraged all sorts of activities, from television shows to movies that turned UFOs into the stuff of fiction. You’ll have to admit that it worked beautifully. In fact, I expect that when you were briefed to Level-1, you ridiculed the briefer and thought that everything was just a pack of lies. That was our intent.”
Seduro smiled and took a sip of water, giving Harry a few seconds to absorb what he’d just been told. Then he continued with the briefing.
“The occurrence of UFO contacts in the Soviet Union and UK required that we expand the small circle of people who knew about Nebula and to bring others into the active project to understand and exploit the discoveries. This was necessary both to be able to combine all the information and physical objects that had been acquired and to eliminate any motivation for each nation to try to capitalize on the discoveries to be used against one another. There was a realization that cooperation was needed here, and that we couldn’t afford to let our parochial interests overcome the need to treat this as a global issue of importance to the human race and not just one nation.
“Once this expansion occurred, Nebula began to detach itself from formal relationships with each of the three governments. Senior leaders knew about it and did keep informed to some degree, but as they left government service, the connections remained only to the few senior civil servants who had the day-to-day job of overseeing the project and making sure that funds flowed covertly to support it. New political figures were not briefed in. It was at this time that connections were made to several non-government enterprises, mainly some corporations that did classified work for the Soviet (later Russian) military and intelligence organizations and their counterparts in the US and UK. These companies were able to supplement the government funds and eventually provided a bulk of the funding.
“Some not-so-legitimate enterprises were also brought into the sponsors’ group, mainly because they had very deep pockets filled with untraceable money. The ones in my country had chief executives, myself included, who had been former high officials in our military and intelligence agencies. We knew of Nebula and recognized that some of our ill-gotten gains could help in a very important way. After all, we aren’t totally evil and blind to the larger needs of mankind. Similar industrial and semi-legal connections were made in the US and UK, providing an extremely strong base of financial support, independent of government meddling. It also provided Nebula with an extra-legal mechanism for enforcing secrecy. You may already have seen some of this in action.”
Harry could relate to that only too well. The picture was becoming clearer, yet still more confusing.
Seduro continued. “By the 1980s, all the government officials who knew of Nebula had either died or left government service, and everything became so covert that not even the national leaders in the US, Russia, and the UK knew of it any longer. The full purpose of Nebula also changed as we learned more about the technology and the aliens themselves, but we’ll save that for the higher level briefings. I now turn the remainder of your Level-2 in-brief back to your local host.” And with this, the screen went blank.
Giovanis took over again and called to Myron to display the next set of charts. “Now let’s give you a summary of what we’ve found so far and why we are so obsessed with security. You need to understand the risks both to the project and to yourself.”
He proceeded to present a summary of the science and technology discovered in the UFOs and reconstructed to provide the spacecraft that Yuri, Ludmila, and others had used to travel throughout the solar system.
First of all was a general description of the alien spacecraft, complete with on-screen pictures and diagrams of the craft as they were when they were found and later on, when they were reconstructed. They didn’t look like the popularized view of flying saucers. They were more like oblate spheroids with smooth surfaces and no protrusions. They didn’t have any of the lights or other features that UFO enthusiasts often pictured. They were just very plain and rounded.
“Only the UFO that crashed in Roswell had aliens onboard,” he explained. “The other two were totally robot-crewed spacecraft. It seems that the aliens make extensive use of robots, probably due to the difficulty of being able to sustain living beings for long duration space flights. As you know, two difficult problems for manned space travel are providing life support to sustain the occupants and providing a way to shield them from long term exposure to cosmic radiation. The Roswell craft had an elaborate magnetic shield system that worked in a way similar to the Earth’s magnetic field and a gravitational repulsion shield. Both of them helped deflect the charged particles so that they didn’t strike the ship, and the gravitational shield also protected against other things that could damage the ship. It also had an ingenious device to produce a layer of gas inside the ship’s double hull, and that seemed to be able to absorb other cosmic radiation. Our scientists were able to repair those devices and even adapted them to better suit the needs of human beings. As a result, it’s possible for people to travel in the repaired craft for a very long time.”
The screen now showed pictures of the alien bodies. They looked almost human, but much smaller, about one and a quarter meters tall, with bulging eyes, small ears, and small noses, and with a bit of a coppery tint to their skin. They appeared totally hairless, and they had six fingers on each hand. Harry could see that each of the hands had what looked like two thumbs with four normal fingers in between. But aside from those small differences, the aliens did look a lot like humans. Anatomically, they could almost have passed for human, a bit small and strange looking but still almost within the wide range of variations among ordinary humans.
“We did a lot of measurements on their bones, muscles, internal organs, blood chemistry, DNA, and all the other things that we could measure. We concluded that they come from a planet much like ours. They clearly are built to exist in a gravity field about as strong as Earth’s, and our work on their gravitational systems showed that the artificial gravity and inertial control systems are designed to make beings like us fairly comfortable, even when the spacecraft undergoes extreme acceleration. That convinced us that they do come from an Earthlike planet. Their atmosphere and soil may be a bit different, accounting for the small pigmentation difference, but all in all, they seem pretty much like us. The only big difference is in their DNA. They have twenty four chromosome pairs instead of our twenty three. Each chromosome contains DNA based on the same organic chemistry as ours, but the sequences are very different from ours. We were surprised that the end result is so simi
lar to us, but you can see for yourself that they do look almost human.”
Next, Giovanis explained the robotic craft. “You can see in these pictures that the robotic spacecraft are much simpler and smaller than the Roswell UFO. They don’t need life support or protective devices since the crew consists only of robots that can withstand the bombardment of cosmic rays. The technology used to create the robots is a marvel of science and engineering. The robots appear to be able to link directly to alien brains over significant distances and they have advanced artificial intelligence that allows them to act autonomously most of the time. These two crews apparently ran out of specific instructions several years after they lost contact with their alien masters, and we think that they just got confused and went into some sort of chaotic state. We never did find the cause for those two crashes.
“Our researchers concluded that an alien exploratory group would probably consist of a single manned craft with up to a dozen robotic craft. That seemed pretty clear since the Roswell ship had two positions that looked like they were pilot stations and six others for technical specialists. At four of those positions, the computer stations had monitors for twelve offboard navigation and status readouts, three at each station. They also had what looked like controls for interacting with other spacecraft and that these seemed to be intended to direct and control twelve semi-autonomous robotic spacecraft. The other two positions appeared to be for control of onboard systems, including sensors, weapons, and communications. Subsequent studies of the spacecraft and other things that we found verified these initial assumptions. But this group seems to have had only the three ships. We verified that in the records stored on the computers that survived the crashes.
“Propulsion is also an amazing feat of science and engineering. It’s totally gravitational and includes a means to make the rest mass appear to be nearly zero. It also provides artificial gravity, as I mentioned before, so the travelers would be able to remain in space indefinitely without losing muscle tone or bone mass.
