PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  Man’s destiny, he was convinced, could only be changed through science and the evolution of a new kind of man, one less prone to mortality.

  Even then, as a boy growing up in Iowa, born of God-fearing parents, but unable to accept the idea of Him, Wilson had been convinced that mankind would eventually have to leave Earth and inhabit another, less endangered planet. To do so, he would have to create an extraordinary technology; he would also have to transcend his still primitive nature and escape the physical limitations of his weak, mortal body.

  Man would have to turn himself into Superman and then reach for the stars. Wilson realised this at ten years old as he squinted up at the sun over Iowa... Then he awakened, at eighty-two, to look out over the vast, snow-covered wilderness of Antarctica from his bed near the summit of a mountain in Neu Schwabenland.

  Though still groggy from anaesthetics, the dream, or recollection, had filled him with the awareness of how fragile was mortality and how ephemeral each individual life. From childhood to old age had taken no time at all - the past was virtually in the present

  - and now he knew with more certainty than ever that no matter what he did to himself, his time would be limited.

  Nevertheless, there was still a lot he could do before it ended, so he had to keep that dark moment at bay as long as humanly, or scientifically, possible.

  For this reason, he had become his own laboratory animal, experimenting constantly on himself, with the aid of his two specialists: Professor Adolf Eckhardt, a former Nazi concentration camp experimental surgeon, and the abducted Dr Paul Gold, formerly of the Powered Limbs Unit of West Hendon Hospital, London. Freed from the moral, ethical and religious constraints of Western surgical research, they were producing between them some extraordinary innovations in prosthetics, organ replacement and skin grafts.

  After having some of the latter done successfully to his face and hands, thus making him look sixty instead of eighty-two, Wilson had recently had his weakening heart replaced with the first of Eckhardt’s prosthetics and was already recovering from the operation.

  Sitting upright on the bed and breathing deeply, letting the cold air clear his head, he called on the phone for Eckhardt and Gold to come up immediately. He also asked for Hans Kammler and Artur Nebe to come up thirty minutes later, in order to submit their latest reports.

  Eckhardt and Gold entered together, both wearing white smocks, and stood one at each side of Wilson’s bed, smiling down at him. Once devoted to his wife and children in London, Gold was now devoted only to his work in this Antarctic colony and content to take his pleasures with the ‘comfort girls’ abducted by the flying saucer crews from all over the Earth. He was completely reliable. Eckhardt, of course, being a fugitive war criminal, still wanted by the British, not to mention the Jews of Israel, for his so-called ‘anthropological’ experiments in the Nazi concentration camps, clearly had no place else to go. Nevertheless, he also was delighted to be able to continue his experiments without restraint in the colony’s laboratories, using animals and the human abductees being held in appalling conditions in the dank, freezing underground cells. He, too, took his pleasures from the comfort girls and was obsessed with his work.

  ‘So,’ he said, lowering his stethoscope to examine Wilson’s heartbeat, ‘you look good. How do you feel?’

  ‘Excellent,’ Wilson said.

  Eckhardt listened to Wilson’s heartbeat, then straightened up. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel perfect,’ Wilson replied. ‘It’s a little uncomfortable.’

  ‘We’ll soon improve on it.’ Eckhardt was unfazed by Wilson’s cold stare, having known him since the early days in Nazi Germany, way back in 1940, before the dream of the Thousand Year Reich had collapsed into ruins.

  As Wilson well knew, Eckhardt and other Nazis were convinced that their Aryan dreams would be resurrected here, which is why they stayed on without persuasion. Wilson knew differently, but was not about to correct them, as he needed to use their insane faith for his own, infinitely more rational, purposes. He also needed them to help in extending his life, even if not indefinitely, as they were doing with his artificial heart and various joint and minor organ replacements.

  Wilson’s new heart, or pacemaker, was a highly advanced device which, utilizing a piezoelectric crystal and a small balloon filled with water, caused the heart’s own pumping to stimulate itself. First created in crude form in Nazi Germany, but recently perfected here in the colony’s laboratories, it was more advanced than the one inserted for the first time in a human being in Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, a few months ago. That recipient, a 41-year old steelworker, had only lived for eighty minutes after his heart replacement, but Wilson would survive a lot longer.

  ‘The water-filled balloon,’ Eckhardt explained, ‘will be replaced with something smaller in a few months. Though the pacemaker is already maintenance free and doesn’t require batteries, we’ll eventually replace it with a plutonium power source, or nuclear battery, which will weigh practically nothing and last longer. As for the rest of you, that’s up to Dr Gold here.’

  Eckhardt smiled thinly, without affection, at Dr Gold, whom he viewed as a rival for Wilson’s attention. Gold, who despised Professor Eckhardt, politely ignored his smile. ‘Your arthritic problems have been cured with joint replacements,’ he said, ‘but already we have more advanced prosthetics, if you’re willing to – ’

  ‘Yes,’ Wilson interjected without a pause. ‘I am. The operations don’t bother me.’

  ‘Good.’ Gold smiled like a normal doctor with a normal patient, as if still in the West Hendon Hospital, London, not here in a hidden Antarctic colony from which he would never escape. ‘At the moment we’re experimenting with artificial knees and elbows of clear acrylic resin reinforced with stainless steel. As for the joints themselves, the main problems have always been corrosion and lubrication, but soon I’ll be removing your relatively crude, temporary stainless steel prosthetics and inserting more durable, maintenance-free, one-hundred percent mobile joints made of a corrosion-free, easily lubricated, more durable cobalt-chromium alloy. As most of the surgical work on your joints was done for the original replacements, the operations for the insertion of the new prosthetics will be relatively simple.’

  ‘And the rest of me?’

  Gold shrugged and raised his hands as if pleading for clemency. ‘These are early days yet, but with human laboratory subjects instead of only animals we should certainly progress quicker than anyone else. That heart will buy you a few more years, but problems with your kidneys and lungs will come soon enough, which is why we’re working on those right now.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Regarding your kidneys, we’re experimenting with something first devised by a Dutch surgeon, Wilhelm Kolff, and tested, ironically, on a Nazi collaborator. This involves the use of cellulose acetate film as the filter membrane and heparin as the anticoagulant. Already we have an advanced version that we think will work, but we also need to find a means of circulating your blood from time to time through the artificial kidney. A cumbersome dialysis machine has been devised, but to avoid having to keep you plugged into it twenty-four hours a day we’re working on a six-inch socket that can be permanently implanted in your circulatory system, between an artery and vein, then opened and joined to the artificial kidney. What we’ve come up with is a sixinch tube of silicone rubber, tipped with polytetrafluoroethylene - an unreactive plastic - with ends that penetrate the skin and are stitched to the adjoining artery and vein. While causing you little discomfort, this will allow you to leave the large dialysis machine for days at a time. Eventually, we hope to have a self-sustaining artificial kidney, but that, alas, will take longer to develop.’

  ‘And my lungs?’

  ‘As those are essentially mechanical, we’re looking into prosthetic replacements. However, as the lung is also a membrane of unusually high permeability and, more complex, roughly the area of a tennis court, we need to find a means of imitat
ing it within the confines of the thorax. We hope to do this with a membrane of exceptionally thin silicone - say, one-thousandth of an inch thick - and with a maximum area of one square metre. This will be placed in the thorax in concentric layers, kept apart and selfsupported in a manner that forms minute channels, which in turn form the new blood capillaries. Unfortunately, in this case, the problems are many and the death rate during experiments is high. This is due mainly to our inability, so far, to prevent the artificial membrane from becoming choked by coagulated blood. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that with time, patience, and unimpeded human experimentation, we can produce the required anticoagulant. Then the artificial, implantable lung will be within reach.’

  ‘Good,’ Wilson said. He spent a few more minutes discussing the various surgical and medical experiments going on with the abducted humans held in the underground cells, then dismissed his two professors and waited for the arrival of administrator Hans Kammler and chief of security Artur Nebe, both former members of the Death’s Head SS. Kammler arrived first, wearing a black coverall, still blond and handsome, but no longer the golden young god of war, now visibly ageing. He took a seat by the bed and nodded at Wilson, not smiling at all.

  ‘You’re recovering well?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Hans. No problems at all. I’ll soon be on my feet again. So how is Ernst Stoll settling into Paraguay?’

  Kammler smiled frostily. ‘With no great deal of joy, but with dedication - as you had expected. He’s greatly increased the defences of the compound, constructed a landing pad for the saucers, and set up a line of communication between himself and General Stroessner, whom be believes will eventually take over as President. As Stroessner is infinitely corruptible, this is all to the good. We will certainly be well protected there.’

  ‘Apart from that, is he doing what he’s been sent there for?’

  ‘Yes. The mass abduction of Ache Indians has begun with the aid of General Stroessner’s Federales. For this, Stroessner is being well paid. Stoll claims that Stroessner is using the money to bribe senior army officers and seduce the heads of the Colorado Party. He’s buying their support in his bid for the presidency and plans to make his move this year or next.’

  ‘Excellent. We need a man like Stroessner in charge. We also need the Ache Indians - the females as comfort girls and servants, the males as conditioned pilots for the saucers and as experimental surgical fodder for Eckhardt and Gold. Since with even the abductions, we’re running short of human material, a regular supply of the Ache will be truly invaluable.’

  ‘I don’t think Stoll will let you down.’

  The door opened again and Artur Nebe entered, small and stout, as solid as a rock, with eyes as dark as his black coverall. His swarthy features, though revealing no emotion, concealed the soul of a monster. As he crossed to stand at the other side of the bed, facing Kammler, Wilson glanced through the panoramic window at the far side of the room and saw the vast, Antarctic wilderness, its soaring ice-covered peaks and snowcovered valleys stretching out to a dazzling, blue horizon. While the sheer, untouched beauty of it denied the horrors taking place daily in the laboratories and underground cells of this hidden colony, Wilson did not see it that way. Dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge – which, in his view, separated Man from beast - he was embarked on a crusade to redirect the evolution of mankind and turn the thinly disguised beast into Superman. There was no room for emotion in his grand design. His notion of beauty was absolute knowledge and the pure truths of science.

  ‘So, Artur,’ he said, looking up into Nebe’s dark, fathomless gaze and taking confidence from the murderous well of his nature, ‘what do you have to tell me?’

  ‘Everything has gone smoothly. Exactly as we had planned. The calculated spreading of disinformation about UFOs has had the desired effect and is leading to confusion, not only with the public, but with military intelligence on a worldwide basis. By now, public opinion is split between those who believe the UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin, those who insist they’re misinterpretations of natural atmospheric phenomena, those who deem them the products of mass hallucination encouraged by too much talk about the subject, and those who believe they’re the top-secret experimental craft of their own governments.’

  ‘Official attitudes are equally confused?’

  ‘Yes. The few government, military and intelligence heads who know of our existence here are so concerned about the possibility of public hysteria in the event that the news gets out, they’ve classified the subject top-secret. They’ve also classified as top-secret their own race to construct similar saucers in the vain hope of eventually getting us out of here. They’re not only concerned with what they see as the new military threat represented by our technology, but by the fact that the Antarctic is Earth’s last untapped treasure-house of oil, coal, gold, copper, uranium and, most important, water - the whole world will soon need water - and here we are, threatening to keep them out. So that’s what concerns them most of all.’

  ‘We can use that concern when we trade,’ Wilson said. ‘It’s a strong card to hold. But apart from the stubborn General Samford, what do they think of our capability?’

  ‘Deliberately letting the top brass of Fort Monmouth see one of our large saucers finally convinced the Pentagon of our vastly superior capability, though the White House, and Samford, remain unconvinced.’

  ‘They soon will be,’ Wilson said.

  Nebe didn’t return his smile, but continued speaking in his soft, oddly threatening monotone. ‘The so-called Lubbock lights, which were in fact the lights on the tail end of an American-Canadian experimental flying wing constructed in secret at the White Sands Proving Ground, has further convinced the American public that alien craft are exploring the earth. The Lubbock lights - that flying wing - also succeeded in further confusing those in military intelligence who don’t yet know of our existence and are baffled as to why their own superiors are trying to kill off the sighting reports, even as they insist that the saucers are a threat to national security.’

  ‘We couldn’t have done better ourselves,’ Wilson observed.

  ‘Finally,’ Nebe continued, ‘the concentrated build-up of flights of our mass-produced World War II Feuerballs over the east coast of the United States has been highly successful, leading to nationwide concern and numerous wild stories about green or orange fireballs and extraterrestrial flying saucers, as well as secret speculations in military circles about a forthcoming UFO invasion of the nation’s capital.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Wilson said. ‘We’ll now proceed to do just that. We’ll surround Washington DC in general and the White House in particular with a virtual armada of Feuerballs. If that doesn’t persuade them the first time, we’ll repeat the performance a week later with even more Feuerballs and some larger, piloted saucers. I think it will work.’

  ‘When will it begin?’ Kammler asked him.

  ‘Time is of the essence,’ Wilson said. ‘The invasion commences tomorrow.’

  Chapter Fourteen Just off a flight from Dayton, Ohio, Dwight and Bob Jackson were passing a newspaper stand in the lobby of Washington National Airport Terminal Building when they were stopped dead in their tracks by the headline: INTERCEPTORS CHASE FLYING SAUCERS OVER WASHINGTON DC. Shocked, Dwight purchased the paper and read that the capital was in the middle of the biggest UFO flap of all time.

  ‘The bastards didn’t even tell us!’ he fumed, folding up the paper and jamming it into the side pocket of his Air Force jacket. ‘If we hadn’t come here on our own bat, they probably wouldn’t have called us. The biggest UFO flap of them all and we weren’t even informed!’

  ‘Come on,’ Bob said, swinging his briefcase from one hand to the other and heading energetically for the cab rank. ‘Let’s go and talk to Dewey Fournet.’

  Instructing the cabbie to take them to the Pentagon, Dwight, still furious, opened the paper again and read the newspaper account of the present flap more carefully, tying the report to what he already k
new. He was even more furious about not being informed because he had practically predicted that this flap would occur and, indeed, had informed generals Conroy, Lamont and Hackleman about it during his recent, unpleasant interrogation. The Air Force’s Project Blue Book was now going strong under the leadership of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and had received more official UFO reports than it had done in any previous month in its history. In fact, according to Ruppelt, the sheer number of reports was making Air Force officers in the Pentagon frantic.

  By June 15, the locations, timing, and sequence of the reports had indicated that the UFOs were gradually closing in on Washington DC.

  Throughout the afternoon of June 15, reports of ‘round, shiny objects’ and ‘silvery spheres’ had come in from all over Virginia, one after the other: 3.40pm at Unionville; 4.20pm at Gordonsville; 4.25pm at Richmond; then 4.43pm and 5.43pm at Gordonsville. At 7.35pm a lot of people in Blackstone, about eighty miles south of Gordonsville, had observed a ‘round, shiny object with a golden glow’ moving from north to south. By 7.59pm the same object was observed by the people in the CIA radio facility at Blackstone. At 8.00pm a jet from Langley Air Force Base tried to intercept it, but five minutes later the object, moving too slowly to be an airplane, disappeared.

  So inexplicable and disturbing were these reports that Captain Ruppelt was called to Washington DC to give a briefing in the restricted area of the fourth-floor ‘B’ ring of the Pentagon to General Samford, the Director of Intelligence, some of the members of his staff, two captains from the Office of Naval Intelligence, and some others whom Ruppelt had refused to name for security reasons. That meeting had resulted in a directive to take further steps to obtain positive identification of the UFOs.