PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  ‘Yeah, I get the picture.’ Only twenty-five years old, still single, and filled with sexual vitality, Scaduto glanced sideways, to where an attractive, raven-haired girl in tight blue jeans and sweater was studying him slyly in the mirror angled over the bar. More wily than she would realise until it was too late, he had ascertained her interest and was about to move in on her.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Before I offer that little sweetheart a drink or two, I’ll tell you exactly what I think.’ He smiled at the girl, then lowered his gaze as if shy, though in fact he was concentrating again on Dwight. ‘I’ve always been intrigued,’ he said, ‘by the unusual amount of official interest paid to the so-called Woman from Maine – a civilian female with supposed telepathic abilities. I am, however, wise to the fact that both the Russian secret police – the KGB – and the CIA have, for years, been investigating the espionage potential of mental telepathy, psychic photography, and other forms of parapsychology. So I’m naturally starting to wonder if there could be any connection between that fact and the Woman from Maine.’

  ‘What kind of connection?’

  ‘Since communication by mental telepathy has already been attained with some degree of success in Soviet and American laboratories, and between submarine and land bases, it’s possible that the CIA was genuinely concerned with that technologically-ignorant woman’s inexplicable knowledge of the more complex details of space flight. As the CIA is interested in the espionage potential of telepathy, it stands to reason that they’d have certain men trained in ESP and would send one to attend the trance session. If we then accept that telepathic communication was made with someone in that office in CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia, and that the agent in a trance, if not actually making that UFO materialise, had at least been informed telepathically of its existence, it then seems possible that the Woman from Maine had been in contact with a telepathically-trained US government employee, albeit by accident.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that the UFO seen over Capitol Hill was a US government flying saucer?’

  ‘Yes,’ Scaduto said.

  ‘Man-made?’

  ‘Exactly. The more I look into these damned things, the more I’m convinced that the White House, the Pentagon, and certainly Army, Navy and Air Force intelligence of the White Sands Proving Ground and other top-secret areas, are deliberately causing confusion, doubt and fear regarding UFO sightings because they’re protecting their own. While the more technically advanced saucers might indeed be extraterrestrial, I think the US Army, Navy or Airforce also have their own models. I don’t know for sure – but I believe so.’

  ‘Have you raised that belief with Dr Epstein or anyone else at APII?’

  ‘No. This theory goes completely against the grain of most of the UFO organisations, including APII and NICAP, so I’m keeping my big mouth shut for now. You’re the first person in the business who’s told me he’s interested in the same possibility, so that’s why I’ve told you this.’

  ‘And you’re still interested?’

  ‘Damned right I am.’

  ‘It could be a dangerous thing to pursue,’ Dwight told him.

  ‘I don’t scare easily.’ Scaduto retorted, then he turned his head to smile deliberately, invitingly, at the raven-haired girl farther along the bar. She crossed her shapely legs and returned Scaduto’s winning smile.

  ‘You’re in like Flynn,’ Dwight told him, slipping off the barstool and taking his overnight bag in his hand. ‘If you come across anything else, please give me a call.’

  ‘I will,’ Scaduto promised, already slipping off his stool to make his move on the girl still smiling at him.

  ‘Meanwhile, try to stay out of trouble, Tony.’

  ‘The only trouble I’m going to get into,’ Scaduto said, ‘will be found between that sweetheart’s legs.’

  Dwight sighed, recalling the days of his own youth. Then he left the bar.

  Chapter Thirty The biggest flying saucer to date, the Goddard, named after Wilson’s only hero, the American rocket genius Robert H. Goddard, was known as the ‘mother ship’ because it was 350 foot in diameter, 150 foot high at the central point between dome and base, built in three layers, and carried not only a crew of over fifty men, but also the smaller manned saucers, those the size of the original Kugelblitz, the even smaller, three foot to twelve foot diameter, unmanned, remote-controlled probes, and a variety of large and small CAMS either piloted by small, surgically mutated Ache Indian cyborgs, remote controlled from the mother ship, or programmed to react robotically to certain stimuli for the exploration of the sea bed. Technologically even more advanced than its predecessor, Kugelblitz III, the gigantic Goddard was powered by a highly advanced electromagnetic propulsion system that ionised the surrounding air or sea, an electromagnetic damping system that aided the craft’s lift and hovering capabilities, and bodywork composed of an electrically charged magnesium orthosilicate so minutely porous that it managed to be waterproof while ensuring, when airborne, an absolute minimum of friction, heat and drag.

  It was Wilson’s intention to have even bigger ‘mother ships’ for sea-bed exploration and flights in outer space, but at the moment this 350-foot craft, submerged deep in the Sargasso Sea between Florida and Bermuda, was the best he could manage for the most ambitious series of underwater experiments he had so far attempted. These included the capturing of marine beasts and fish never before seen by man, a general exploration of the sea-bed and the collection of samples from it, the abduction of crew members of boats afloat in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle, and, in two instances, the capture of whole motorboats, complete with their terrified passengers.

  ‘A truly great achievement,’ Vance Whitaker, the new Flight Captain of the mother-ship, said as he gazed through the viewing window – he was standing between Wilson and Sea Captain Ritter Dietrich – at the artificially and naturally illuminated wonders of the deep, including all kinds of plankton, bizarre fish, and other creatures never before seen by man and either remarkably beautiful or, by human standards, hideous. ‘Absolutely magnificent!’

  Wilson did not bother explaining to the chemically ‘indoctrinated’ former NASA astronaut that the colony’s great advances in submersible technology had only been made possible because of the many undersea prototypes tried out in Antarctica with living crewmembers, none of whom had volunteered, many of whom had lost their lives when the prototypes leaked in the ice-covered sea or broke up underwater. Goddard, however, was the superb result of those experiments and could be used either under the water or in the stratosphere. For this reason it had a Sea Captain, Ritter Dietrich, for undersea voyages, as well as a Flight Captain, Vance Whitaker, for atmospheric and stratospheric flight. As the last pilot, another abducted USAF officer, had never managed to learn the complexities of stratospheric flight, he had recently been terminated and replaced by this new man, Whitaker, who, the previous month, had supposedly crashed in the sea near the Bahamas, 360 miles from Cape Canaveral, during a fifteen-minute sub-orbital test flight of NASA’s new Mercury spacecraft.

  The three men were standing at one of the many windows of the control room, which had about a dozen reinforced viewing windows around its circular wall and a dome-shaped ceiling of heat-resistant, reinforced Perspex over which was what resembled a great umbrella of seamless steel, though it was actually minutely porous magnesium orthosilicate, like the rest of the hull. The dome-shaped steel covering of the Perspex ceiling – seen from outside as the central dome of the flying saucer – was divided almost invisibly into two concave sections that could slide apart in opposite directions and curved back down into the floor, thus giving the crew members a 360° view from any part of the flight deck.

  The latter was composed of what looked like the standard hardware for a normal airliner, including switch panels, pitch-trim controls, autopilot engage switch, inertial navigation, navigational radio selector, weather radar, radio equipment, intercom switches, an unknown brand of ADF (automatic direction finder),
computer selection switches, and an unusually small but exceptionally powerful computer that controlled most of the flight-deck functions and could be activated by an electronic ‘voice’ composed of minute vibrations transmitted at varying speeds and frequencies.

  Such orders were conveyed by the small Ache cyborgs who, though having had their vocal cords severed as part of their lower-face surgery, including the removal of the nose, mouth and jaw, communicated electronically from their metal prosthetics to the electronic-voice activated computer. Instructions to the cyborgs were communicated via a pinhead microphone strapped to the throat of a human superior, such as Sea Captain Dietrich or Flight Captain Whitaker, and activated by an on/off switch built into his international date-time wristwatch. As Flight Captain Whitaker had already learned, the flight deck did not contain such standard aircraft controls as thruster reverse light, nose gear tiller, speed brake handle, or even brake pressure or aileron and rudder trims, as these were not required for the unique propulsion system of the Goddard.

  Dubbed the ‘mother ship’ because it was actually a carrying ship, the Goddard used its wide variety of large and small CAMS to pick up exotic marine life, lost treasure from ancient sea wrecks, and a wealth of normally unavailable minerals from the ocean-bed and from Earth – notably, in the latter case, the bodily parts of animals, which were required for the continuing medical experiments in the Antarctic colony.

  The Goddard could also release, and receive, highly advanced versions of the original Feuerballs, the latest models being used mainly as spy-satellites and radarblocking devices, but with the added capability of laser-beam technology that could make the engines of automobiles and aircraft malfunction, as well as stunning or hypnotising human beings.

  Looking at the battery-charged lights beaming out through the murk of the ocean, revealing ever more as the great craft surfaced, Flight Captain Whitaker said: ‘Aren’t you frightened that the lights, if seen by the crews or passengers of ships or aircraft, will give your presence away?’

  ‘No,’ Wilson replied with confidence. ‘USOS, or Unidentified Submarine Objects, are even harder to identify than UFOs because of the wide diversity of marine biology, which includes a surprising amount of phosphorescent plant and animal life. Look!’ He pointed at the window, to what appeared to be unusual plants that were drifting through and around the beams of the Goddard’s lights, giving off their own eerie illumination. ‘Single-celled, luminous, planktonic organisms. They glow even brighter when near the surface of the sea, being stimulated by the movement of the waves. Others, such as the Cypridina Noctiluca, actually respond automatically to beams of light, such as searchlights, by ejecting a luminous cloud in the water. Luminous crustaceans, such as copepods, some living on the water’s surface, some in the ocean depths, can be found in seas all over the world. Then, of course, you have jellyfish and other coelenterates and ctenophores, which also create patches of light in the water – some very big. So, as you can appreciate, experienced sailors or pilots who see our lights under the water aren’t likely to be too concerned. That only comes when we surface. Which, of course, we’ll be doing shortly. Come with me, Flight Captain.’

  Leaving Dietrich to supervise the surfacing of the Goddard, Wilson led Whitaker out of the flight deck and along a curving, steel-walled, white-painted corridor (for it was, in fact, circular, running around the inner rim of the giant saucer, as did the corridors on all levels) until they came to a closed door, which opened automatically when Wilson aimed his remote control at it. The doorway led to the top level of an immense, silvery-grey dome filled with ladders and catwalks. Below were glittering doors and platforms, modules of steel and glass, shining mazes of pipes coiled around generators, bright lights flashing off more white-painted walls. There were people down there, looking tiny and far away, climbing ladders, crossing catwalks, moving up and down that 150-foot drop in elevators constructed like steel cages.

  About halfway down, fifty feet above the lowest floor, on a centrally positioned, circular-shaped, third-level platform, in the centre of the lowest, largest workshop, the smaller man-made saucer, Kugelblitz II, which Whitaker estimated was 150 foot in diameter, was resting on its launch pad, surrounded by four even smaller, unmanned flying-saucer probes, each about fifteen foot wide.

  ‘This way,’ Wilson said, leading Whitaker across the catwalk, above that dizzying drop, until they arrived at the cage-like elevator that descended through the centre of the Goddard, from just under the floor of the flight deck to the third-level platform. Once down there, Wilson, followed by the obedient Whitaker, advanced to the lowered ramp of the Kugelblitz II.

  Just as they reached the smaller saucer, the Goddard broke the surface of the ocean, with the sea suddenly roaring and pounding as water parted around the outer steel covering of the dome and rushed down its sides. The great mother ship rocked gently for a moment as it floated in the turbulent waves created by its own surfacing, but eventually, when the sea’s surface had returned to normal, the rocking stopped and the metallic dome divided in two, forming separate concave plates that moved away from each other, then sank back out of sight, leaving only the immense dome of special heat-resistant, reinforced Perspex, through which sunlight beamed down to form a dazzling web of silvery-white striations that illuminated the gloomy interior.

  Glancing upwards, Wilson and Whitaker saw the different floors more clearly, with men in grey or black coveralls hurrying across catwalks, clambering up and down ladders, or moving back and forth in the glass-panelled offices located around the curved inner wall of the mother ship.

  ‘What a sight!’ Whitaker whispered, clearly awe-struck. Even as he was speaking, immense panels in a section of the wall of the mother ship slid apart like the doors of an aircraft hangar, offering a view of the vast, sunlight sky and a glimpse of the sea below.

  ‘The level upon which this landing pad is located,’ Wilson explained to Whitaker, ‘is approximately fifty feet above the surface of the sea. Let’s go in.’

  They entered the Kugelblitz II by walking up the sloping ramp that would, once they were inside, be retracted to form the underside of the bottom disc. This is exactly what happened: the ramp moved back up into the loading bay on thick steel hinges, until it formed part of the wall, slotting back where it belonged with such precision that the joins around its edge could scarcely be seen and formed a perfect waterproof, airtight seal.

  The loading bay was actually a space in the revolving lower disc, used only as a passageway for men and equipment; in other words, anyone, or anything, entering the loading bay from outside had to continue on until they were in the non-rotating main body of the saucer. For this reason, Wilson and Whitaker hurried through the loading bay, which could have been that of any large aircraft, and emerged to the central, non-revolving main body, which also was circular, being the bottom of the large, dome-shaped superstructure. After following the corridor around for a few more feet, they stepped into an elevator that took them up nearly fifty feet, past the engine rooms, storage rooms, barred cages for abducted people, a surgery where those abducted could be medically examined or even dissected during flight, latrines, foodstores, a small recreation room containing books, maps, and a recently invented video-TV set that could show films on tape, and, finally, into the flight deck.

  For the time being the meniscus-shaped, porous-metal covering for the Perspex dome was open, giving those on the flight deck a 360° view of the interior of the mother ship, though from their position on the landing pad they could see only the third-floor level and most of what was above it. The flight deck was, at that moment, being prepared for take-off by another crew of surgically mutated and robotised Ache Indians who, being small, and with their lower-face metal prosthetics and myoelectric metal claws (actually small CAMS), looked even more frightening than they would have had they been taller.

  No sooner had Wilson and Whitaker entered the flight deck than two massive plates in what had appeared to be the seamless facing wall of th
e mother ship slid apart and kept opening until they formed a rectangular space about the same size as the entrance to an aircraft hangar. That great space framed a sheer blue sky, the clear horizon, and a strip of green-blue sea.

  As Wilson and Whitaker strapped themselves into seats at the control panel – between the busy cyborgs whose metallic throats were giving off infrasounds that enabled them to electronically ‘talk’ to the computerised controls – the Kugelblitz II throbbed with that familiar bass humming sound, then vibrated slightly, swayed from side to side, and finally lifted a couple of feet off the landing pad. While it was still hovering, Wilson nodded to Flight Captain Whitaker, who, now taking command, spoke his instructions, in plain English, into the pinhead microphone strapped to his throat, as part of a communication system that included a covert ear piece for receiving. Those spoken instructions would be converted by the computer into an electronic language understood by the saucer’s control console, which would react accordingly.

  Because the saucer utilised a gravity shield that came on automatically when required, its passengers needed no protection against the pull of gravity or increasing outer pressure and were only strapped into their chairs during the initial stages of take-off. Now, under Whitaker’s supervision, the hovering saucer advanced horizontally to the large opening in the sloping side of the hull, hovered again halfway across the lip of the opening, then moved outside altogether and stopped again, hovering just a few feet from the Goddard, but a good fifty feet above the surface of the Sargasso Sea. There, at a command from Whitaker, the meniscusshaped, metallic outer casings of the dome emerged from the floor at both sides of the flight deck and curved upwards and inward to meet at the top of the dome, forming what looked deceptively like a seamless whole. Matching windows in the lower half of the metallic casing ensured that the flight crew still had their 360° view, though they could no longer see directly above them.