PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  Gladys Bradley reached over to squeeze her husband’s hand. When he smiled, she let his hand go and sat back again.

  Fuller had another sip of beer, then put the glass down. ‘The saucer made the engine of your car cut out?’

  ‘That’s right. A kind of bass humming sound, almost physical, head-tightening. Then the engine of my car cut out and wouldn’t start again.’

  ‘Why didn’t you get out and run for it?’

  ‘I tried, but felt paralysed. It wasn’t fear, though I certainly felt that. It was some kind of paralysis.’

  ‘A kind of hypnotism?’

  ‘I was fully conscious, but it could have been something like that.’

  ‘How did you get back to your home when the saucer took off?’

  ‘I just turned the ignition key and the damned thing started up as if nothing had happened, letting me drive home. But no way, after what I’d seen, felt and heard, was I going to go up against that Wilson.’

  ‘Since then, have you ever felt you were being watched? Any contact with UFOs?’

  ‘Yes, on both counts. At least three or four times a year, always when driving at night, my car is paced by lights in the sky - either circular or in a long line, indicating a saucer shape. Also, though less frequently, Gladys and I will be awakened in the dead of night by lights beaming into the house from outside, often accompanied by that familiar bass humming sound. They’re keeping their eye on us, Mr Fuller, and they always will.’

  ‘Do you think they know we’re having this conversation?’

  ‘I really don’t think so. I suspect they keep paying me the unexpected visits just to remind me that they haven’t forgotten me. I’m taking a chance by having you here, but if they came tonight, it would just be a coincidence - an unfortunate coincidence.’

  ‘I’m sorry to put you in this danger.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Gladys said accusingly.

  Fuller glanced at her, realised how tough she was, so just grinned and then wiped it from his face when he turned back to Bradley.

  ‘So Wilson knew who you were,’ he said, ‘and also knew that you were there at Kiel harbour.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Bradley said.

  ‘Do you know where that submarine was taking him?’

  ‘I didn’t at the time, but I put it all together later, when I learned through the OSS organization that the submarine I’d seen in Kiel harbour, U-977, under the command of Captain Heinz Schaeffer, had docked at Mar del Plata, Argentina, a few months after the war.’

  ‘You think they’re in Argentina?’

  ‘No. Neither Wilson nor that SS lieutenant Stoll were found on board. Nor were any of the mechanical parts or drawings relating to Projekt Saucer - so my guess is that they used Argentina as a springboard to the next stop.’

  ‘Antarctica?’

  ‘Yes. The Nazis were obsessed with building underground structures there - just like the enormous underground rocket complexes I saw at the end of the war in Belgium and Nordhausen, Thuringia. Documents found by Operation Paperclip indicated that virtually from the moment the Nazis illegally claimed Queen Maud Land in 1938, renaming it Neu Schwabenland, to the closing days of the war, they were shipping scientists, engineers, architects, builders, slave labour, and the material and plans for various highly advanced projects, including Projekt Saucer, to somewhere in Neu Schwabenland. So it didn’t take much to put two-and-two together and come up with Antarctica. Then, when I read about Rear-Admiral Byrd’s aborted Operation Highjump, in 1947, I was pretty much convinced that I was right. Wilson is somewhere in Queen Maud Land, either under or inside a mountain range, building flying saucers and god knows what else. It’s a nightmare scenario.’

  ‘Do you think he’d be able to produce flying saucers with the capability of those being reported?’

  ‘Yes. My bet is that a lot of the saucers are small, remote-called machines that first evolved out of the German Feuerballs, better known during the war as Foo fighters. I certainly think they might be the ones involved in the so-called UFO invasion of Washington DC last July. Other saucers are bigger and piloted - just like the one that stopped me that night on the road to Roswell.’

  ‘What do you think happened to the Projekt Saucer documents and parts divided between the Russians and the Allies at the end of the war?’

  ‘I think it’s likely that they now have their own saucers, though they certainly won’t be as advanced as those created by Wilson and doubtless still being evolved in Antarctica.’

  ‘One last question,’ Fuller said, finishing his beer and preparing to leave. ‘If we sent an invitation, would you be prepared to return to UFO investigations on behalf of the US government?’

  ‘No, thanks, Mr Fuller.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Bradley.’ Fuller stood up and turned to face Gladys, who hadn’t moved from her chair. ‘And thank you, Mrs Bradley.’

  She just nodded, not trusting him an inch, letting Bradley walk him to the front door. They shook hands on the porch.

  ‘From what I’ve read, you’re a hell of a guy,’ Fuller said. ‘I mean, you really did some things in your time.’

  Bradley smiled in a modest manner, then released Fuller’s hand. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘But I hope that what I’ve told you helps. I just don’t want to be personally involved.’

  ‘You won’t be,’ Fuller promised.

  Walking back to his car, he climbed in and then looked out the window. Bradley was still on the porch, the wind blowing his silvery hair, handsome and clearly a decent citizen in his white shirt and trousers. He raised his hand in farewell. Fuller waved back, turned on the ignition, and then drove away from the house. When he glanced back, Bradley had disappeared from the porch. The lights of the house beamed out into the darkness, under a vast, star-filled sky. A real picture-postcard scene.

  Fuller only drove a short way along the road. He stopped when he came to another car that was parked by the side of the road with its headlights off. The man in the other car rolled his window down.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘He knows all about Wilson,’ Fuller said. ‘Every damned thing.’

  The other man nodded and then got out of his car, slinging a canvas bag over his shoulder. He walked back along the dark road, toward Bradley’s house. Fuller got out of his car, lit a cigarette and silently smoked it.

  When Bradley’s house exploded and turned into a distant furnace that lit up the night, turning the sky a bloody red and erasing the stars, Fuller sighed, dropped the butt of his cigarette, ground it into the dust with the heel of his shoe, then climbed back into his own car and drove off.

  ‘Too bad,’ he murmured.

  Chapter Seventeen Dwight sometimes thought he would never work out just what it was he had seen that night in July 1952, hovering over the control tower of Andrews AFB as if about to descend upon it and crush it. In fact, the object, if such it had been, had merely hovered for a few seconds, dazzling them all with the radiance of what appeared to be its vast, swirling base, before it ascended again, making only a bass humming sound, almost an infrasound, then ascending abruptly and blinking out high above, plunging everyone in the control tower into a brief, blinding darkness.

  Normal vision had returned soon enough, bringing the real world back with it, but from that day to this, Dwight had thought constantly about, and often dreamed about, that vision of luminous power, and wondered just what it was. Now, back in Washington DC, a year later but in the same month, he had to struggle to keep the memory of that night out of his thoughts and concentrate on what he was doing.

  He was in the downtown office of the recently formed Aerial Phenomena Investigations Institute, or APII, a civilian UFO organisation, to give a clandestine ‘deep background’ interview to Dr Frederick Epstein, a 41-year astronomer and head of the institute, who had often been of great assistance to Project Blue Book in its evaluation of UFO reports.

  Epstein was short and bulky, with a good thatch of hair, though there were
streaks of telling grey in his dark Vandyke beard, which he tended to stroke a lot when deep in thought. He and Dwight were facing each other across a cluttered desk, in an office with walls covered by large charts showing the most commonly reported UFO shapes, the most commonly reported UFO formations and UFO manoeuvres, both singly and in formation, the worldwide locations and flight directions of the major UFO waves from 1896 to the present, major UFO events in the United States and overseas, and details of the world’s major UFO organisations. The most common flight direction for the UFOs, Dwight noted, was south to north and back again.

  ‘It was the official reaction to the Washington sightings, more than anything else,’ Dwight told Epstein, who was recording the conversation, ‘that made all of us at Blue Book even more suspicious of the Air Force’s stance on UFOs. Too many people were telling us one thing and then changing their stories for their official reports. Also, it became increasingly obvious that the top brass in the Air Force were trying to blind us with some dodgy manoeuvres. After the Washington sightings I became convinced that pilots reporting UFOs were being intimidated into changing their reports or simply remaining silent. I also suspected - and still do - that a lot of information was being withheld from us and that the CIA was stepping into the picture for unexplained reasons.’

  Epstein stopped him there, in order to change the tapes. Dwight glanced at the window, but the curtains were drawn, even in broad daylight, and the door behind, he knew, was locked to prevent anyone coming in accidentally. It seemed a melodramatic thing to do and made him feel a little foolish, but when he thought of the mysterious deaths of Mike and Gladys Bradley, whose house had gone up in flames after an unexplained explosion about seven months ago - a tragedy that many thought had been caused by an act of arson - his foolishness was replaced with the fearful conviction that people investigating UFOs were putting themselves at risk.

  Dwight was worried not only about himself, but about Beth and their daughter, Nichola. You just never knew...

  When Epstein had changed the tapes, he looked up and said, ‘Okay... The CIA was stepping into the picture for unexplained reasons.’

  ‘Right. The person who most worried us was Chief of Staff, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. It was Vandenberg who’d buried the original Project Sign Estimate, caused its incineration, and had the project renamed Project Grudge. We’re still not sure just how much Vandenberg was influencing the Air Force or the CIA, but certainly he’d been head of the Central Intelligence Group, now the CIA, from June 1946 to May 1947 and his uncle had been chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the most powerful committee in the Senate. Clearly, Vandenberg still has great influence in those areas - and it’s from those very areas that pressure’s always coming to suppress the results of our UFO investigations.’

  ‘So you weren’t surprised,’ Epstein said, smiling encouragingly, ‘when you learnt that the CIA and some high-ranking officers, including Generals Vandenberg and Samford, were convening a panel of scientists to analyze all the Blue Book data.’

  ‘No. And I wasn’t surprised, either, to discover that this panel was to be headed by Dr H.P. Robertson, director of the Weapons System Evaluation Group in the Office of the Secretary of Defence - and a CIA classified employee. The Robertson panel, by the way, was also convened against the objections of the Batelle Memorial Institute - the private research group used by the Air Force to carry out statistical studies of UFO characteristics and advise them on UFO investigations. Normally the Air Force bows to the Batelle Memorial Institute’s every demand, but not in this instance.’

  ‘Certainly sounds like they’re determined to form that panel, come hell or high water.’

  ‘They are,’ Dwight said.

  ‘What can you tell me about the panel?’

  ‘This is strictly deep background. My name’s not to be mentioned.’

  ‘You have my word on it,’ Epstein said.

  Dwight took a deep breath, feeling nervous, but determined to let out what was troubling him, hopefully for future use by Epstein’s invaluable organisation. Exhaling his breath in a sigh, he said, ‘The Robertson panel was convened in great secrecy right here in Washington DC last January. While some insist that it opened on January twelve, it actually ran from January fourteen to eighteen. Apart from Robertson, the group’s panel consisted of physicist and Nobel Prize-winner Luis W. Alvarez; geophysicist and radar specialist Lloyd V. Berkner and physicist Samuel Goudsmit, both of the Brookhaven National Laboratories; and astronomer and astrophysicist Thornton Page, Deputy Director of the John Hopkins Operations Research Office. Other participants included J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer consultant to the United States Air Force; Frederick C. Durant, an army ordnance test station director; William M. Garland, the Commanding General of the ATIC; our Pentagon liaison officer, Major Dewey Fournet; my Project Blue Book chief, Captain Ruppelt; two officers from the Navy Photo Interpretation Laboratory; and three high-ranking CIA representatives.’

  Epstein gave a low whistle. ‘That’s some group,’ he said. ‘Almost impossible to argue with.’

  ‘That seems to be the point,’ Dwight said. ‘The seriousness with which the subject was supposed to be treated is best illustrated not only by the calibre of the men involved, but also by the fact that the group’s report was to be given to the National Security Council, NSC, and then, if the decision was that the UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin, to the President himself.’

  ‘Which may have been so much cotton wool,’ Epstein said.

  ‘I think it was.’

  Epstein nodded his understanding. ‘So what information was the Robertson panel given?’

  ‘For the first two days of the session, Captain Ruppelt reviewed the Blue Book findings for the scientists. First, he pointed out that Blue Book received reports of only ten percent of the UFO sightings made in the United States, which meant that in five and a half years about 44,000 sightings had been made. He then broke the sightings down into the percentage that was composed of balloons, aircraft, astronomical bodies, and other misinterpretations, such as birds, blowing paper, noctilucent and lenticular clouds, temperature inversions, reflections, and so forth, and pointed out that this still left 429 as definite unknowns. Of those, it was clear that the most reported shape was elliptical, the most often reported colour was white or metallic, the same number of UFOs were reported as being seen in daylight as at night, and the direction of travel equally covered the sixteen cardinal points of the compass. Seventy percent of those unknowns had been seen visually from the air - in other words, by experienced pilots and navigators; twelve percent had been seen visually from the ground; ten percent had been picked up by airborne and ground radar; and eight percent were combination visual-radar sightings. Ruppelt also confirmed that many UFO reports came from top-secret military establishments, such as atomic energy and missile-testing installations, plus harbours and manufacturing areas.’

  ‘That should have impressed them,’ Epstein said. ‘They always sit up when their own top-secret establishments are involved.’

  ‘It should have impressed them,’ Dwight said, hardly able to contain his lingering bitterness. ‘Ruppelt and Major Dewey Fournet had completed an analysis of the motions of the reported unknowns as a means of determining if they were intelligently controlled. Regarding this, Major Fournet told the panel of how, by eliminating every possibility of balloons, airplanes, astronomical bodies, and so forth, from the hundreds of reports studied, and by then analysing the motions of the unidentifieds in the remaining unknown category, his study group had been forced to conclude that the UFOs were intelligently controlled by persons with brains equal to, or maybe surpassing, ours. The next step in the study, Fournet explained, had been to find out where those beings came from; and since it seemed unlikely that their machines could have been built in secret, the answer had to be that they came from outer space.’

  ‘Substantiating evidence?’ Epstein asked, distractedly stroking his beard and studying the turning spool
s in the tape-recorder, as if they might reveal something Dwight hadn’t told him.

  ‘Yes,’ Dwight said. ‘The morning after Fournet’s summary, the panel was shown four strips of movie film that had been assessed as falling into the definite-unknown category. The cinetheodolite movies taken by Air Force technicians at the White Sands Proving Ground on April 27, 1950, and approximately a month later; the so-called Montana movie taken on August 15 the same year by the manager of the Great Falls baseball team; and the Tremonton movie taken on July 2, 1952, by Navy Chief Photographer, Warrant Officer Delbert C. Newhouse.’

  ‘Let’s take them in turn,’ Epstein said.

  ‘Right.’ Dwight removed a kerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face. The room, with its windows closed and doors locked, was unbearably hot. ‘One of the White Sands movies showed a dark smudgy object that proved only that something had been in the air and, whatever it was, it had been moving. The second movie had been analysed by the Data Reduction Group at Wright-Patterson AFB, with results indicating that the object had been approximately higher than 40,000 feet, travelling over 2,000 miles per hour, and was over 300 feet in diameter.’

  Epstein gave another low whistle and shook his head from side to side in a gesture either of disbelief or admiration.

  ‘The Montana movie showed two large, bright lights flying across the blue sky in an echelon formation. The lights didn’t show any detail, but they appeared to be large, circular objects. The Tremonton movie showed about a dozen shiny, disc-like objects fading in and out constantly, performing extraordinary aerial manoeuvres, darting in and out and circling one another in a cloudless blue sky.’

  ‘Astronomical phenomena?’

  ‘No. Any possibility that they might have been that was dispelled when the film clearly showed them heading in the same tight cluster toward the western horizon and, more specifically, when one of them left the main group and shot off to the east.’