By 1945 – or so our captured German papers indicated – both the LFA at Volkenrode and the research center at Guidonia were working on a revolutionary new type of aircraft that was devoid of all obstructing protuberances, such as wings and rudders, was devoid even of the normal air intakes, and was powered by a highly advanced turbine engine. In short, the new aircraft was a ‘flying wing’ that offered the least possible air resistance, sucked in the ‘dead air’ of the boundary layer, and then used that same air, expelling it at great force, to increase its momentum.
Whether or not that aircraft was actually developed and flown is not known. What we did know, however, was that the Feuerball really existed, that it took the form of a circular ‘wing’, that the wing was in a sense wrapped around the suction pump, and that the pump was part and parcel of the engine. In other words, the Feuerball was a perfectly symmetrical disk, devoid of all surface protuberances – the first small flying saucer.
Nevertheless, with the Feuerball the boundary layer would still have been present, albeit drastically reduced. In order to get rid of the boundary layer completely – and in order to make use of the ‘dead air’ not only for acceleration but for maneuvering as well – what was required was a porous metal that would act like a sponge and remove the need for air intakes altogether. This need led scientists into the exploration of what would henceforth be called, in the words of the German engineer Schrenk, ‘frictionless air flow’ and which would result, according to Sir Ben Lockspeiser, in an aircraft that would ‘slip through the air in the same way as a piece of wet soap slips through the fingers.’ I mention this because certain documents discovered by us in both Gottingen and Volkenrode indicated that between 1943 and 1944 the German scientists had been completing their research on just such a metal – a compound of magnesium and aluminum – and had given the resultant material the name of Luftschwamm, which translated means ‘aero-sponge’.
Let us assume, then, that by early 1945 the Germans had combined all the aforementioned discoveries into one complex experimental flying machine. First, we have a small flying disk known as the Feuerball. This disk not only spins around its vertical axis, but automatically follows its target, makes its target’s ignition and radar malfunction by filling the vicinity with a gas that when burning creates a damaging magnetic field, then automatically flies away when attacked.
Now let us enlarge this flying ‘fireball’. The new, enlarged disk will also spin on its vertical axis, but with the addition of direct gyroscopic stabilization, a pilot’s cabin can now be placed on that axis, with the main body – or engine – of the disk spinning around the cabin. We then add to the enlarged, pilot-carrying disk a form of radio that can cancel at the pilot’s discretion the return signals, or blips, from the enemy’s radarscope and thus render our flying disk undetectable to the enemy. Next, we have electromagnetically or electroacoustically controlled firing weapons, we have cannons that spit ignition-damaging gas instead of shells, we possibly have various laser or pulse-beam weapons, and we have devices that insure that our flying disk will automatically retreat from enemy attacks. Add to all this the fact that the disk is made of an alloy that can withstand enormous pressure and a temperature of one thousand degrees Centigrade and that, being porous, can take the air in like a sponge and then use it to enhance its own propulsion to almost unbelievable speeds… Add it up and what do we have? What we might have is the German Kugelblitz, an offspring of the Feuerball, a piloted machine in which a single mass of wing, tail and fuselage is formed into one gyroscopically stabilized, vertical-rising, possibly supersonic flying disk.
Did such a machine exist? I think it might have. What I do know is that a machine very much like it, and called the Kugelblitz, was reportedly test-flown sometime in February 1945, in the area of the underground complex at Kahla, in Thuringia, that the test was marked as successful, and that from incomplete notes found in the Kahla complex when the Allies took it over, that machine reached a height of about forty thousand feet at a speed of approximately twelve hundred and fifty miles per hour.
Regarding the possibility that what we found in Germany was later utilized by the Allies, I can only point out that shortly after the war the British and the Canadians between them began to develop some revolutionary kinds of aircraft that were rumored to be based on designs discovered in Germany after its collapse. Included in these were the Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Company’s AW-52-G all-wing glider and the AW-52 Boomerang – both of which were similar in appearance to the German ‘flying wing’ designs and, incidentally, to the enormous ‘flying wing’ seen over Albuquerque in 1951. Also, during that same period, there was much talk in British and Canadian aeronautical circles about research into ‘porous’ metals and vertical take-off jet planes – and, of course, there were a remarkable number of UFO sightings. Finally, as you yourself have reminded me, both the Americans and the Canadians made numerous mentions of official flying saucer projects. From all this, Dr Epstein, I think you can draw your own conclusions.
Chapter Thirty
The noon sun was scorching, the humidity suffocating. The river rippled and flashed, curving away in the distance, shadowed by the conifer trees and the banks of reddish mud as the sun beat down on the forests, on the creaking gunboat, draining Stanford and making his eyes sting as he clung to the railing. He could scarcely grasp where he was, had lost track since his arrival, stunned by the heat, by the stifling humidity, alienated by the noise and dusty streets of Asunción, now gazing across the Paraguay River and wondering where he was going. Stanford normally enjoyed the heat, had grown up with it, was used to it, but here, on the gunboat, the forests looming across the river, the heat was unearthly, unreal, totally monstrous, a sodden heat that clamped all around him and threatened to choke him. Stanford took off his hat, wiped the sweat from his forehead, put the hat back on and glanced about him, his clothes soaked, his boots burning.
‘Have a beer,’ Señor Stanford. It will help cool you down. You must not let the sun dehydrate you. You need plenty of liquid.’
Juan Chavez was smiling, a sly, gap-toothed grimace, his dark eyes as unrevealing as the forests slipping past the gunboat. Stanford nodded and took the beer, the bottle cold in his sweaty hand. He drank and wiped some foam from his lips, stared uneasily at Chavez.
‘How much longer?’ he asked.
‘Not long, señor.’ Chavez grinned and the spat over the railing, his open shirt fluttering.
‘How long?’ Stanford asked.
‘Not long,’ Chavez repeated. ‘Five, maybe ten or fifteen minutes. It is just around the bend in the river. It will not take much longer.’
Stanford gazed along the river, saw it curving around the line of trees, flowing lazily, rippling out around rocks, slashed by sunlight and shadow. The sight of it chilled him, made him feel more unreal, filled with foreboding and with vague, nameless fears that lanced through him for no apparent reason and drained him of courage. He despised himself for it, tried to fight it, failed repeatedly, tumbled back into fear and confusion like a child having bad dreams. In a sense that’s what it was – he recent recollections were all nightmarish: the strange ‘boys’ outside the ranch, the ‘suicide’ of Scaduto, Epstein willingly clambering up the darkened hill and not seen since that evening. Stanford felt crushed by it all, dogged by incomprehension, dreaming frequently of the lights that pulsated and merged, and then awakening to an alien world in which nothing was constant… And now here he was in Paraguay, the sun blinding him, the heat draining him. He had been on the shuddering gunboat for four or five hours, passing banks of reddish mud and sleazy waterfront cafés and dense forests that soared on either side and seemed to be totally impenetrable. Stanford coughed into his fist, trying to clear his dry throat, raised the bottle to his lips and drank some more, seeking some kind of solace.
‘Good,’ Chavez said. ‘You must drink. You must never dehydrate.’ He was eating from a cone of paper, dipping into it with his fingers, and he grinned and held t
he cone out to Stanford, his brown eyes faintly mischievous. ‘Here, señor,’ he said. ‘You must eat as well as drink. You should have some camarónes.’
Stanford fought back his revulsion. ‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘I can just about stomach this beer. I don’t think I can eat.’
‘You are feeling ill, señor?’
‘Not really,’ Stanford said.
‘Ah, yes,’ Chavez said. ‘This stinking boat. And the heat… You’re not used to it.’
Stanford didn’t reply. He gazed around the crowded gunboat. The Ache Indians were still crouching at the aft end of the desk, small, emaciated, their narrow eyes dulled by dread, dressed in rags and huddling close to one another as if for protection. Two Federales were guarding them, wearing jackboots, holding rifles, both gaunt-faced and bored, chewing gum, their mean eyes hooded beneath peaked caps. Stanford studied them at length, feeling helpless and ashamed, recalling how the Ache Indians had been herded onto the boat after being abducted from a village some miles back. They were being sold into slavery. They would end up in Bolivian tin mines, in the ranches of Boqueron, in the brothels of Argentina and Brazil, in the cotton fields of Guatemala. Stanford felt shame when he thought of it. The eyes of the women and children haunted him. He turned away and gazed along the muddy river, drinking his beer, soaked in sweat.
‘This is your first time in Parguay, Señor Stanford?’
‘Yes,’ Stanford said.
‘You must get used to these things,’ Chavez said. ‘You must not be upset by them.’
‘I won’t get used to them,’ Stanford replied. ‘I won’t be staying here long enough. Once I speak with the German I’m leaving. I won’t get used to anything.’
‘You disapprove,’ Chavez said.
‘That’s right: I disapprove.’
‘Disapproval is a luxury,’ Chavez said. ‘An American luxury.’ He grinned and glanced about him, his jaws working on camarónes, drank some beer and then looked back at Stanford, his brown eyes still mischievous. ‘You know the German?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Stanford said.
‘It is very strange, señor,’ Chavez said, ‘that you should know he is here.’
‘Why strange?’ Stanford asked.
‘The German doesn’t have many friends. He has been here in the forest for thirty years and is a man of great mystery.’
‘That’s not unusual,’ Stanford said. ‘There are a lot of Germans here. They own and operate the estancias and are all well protected.’
Chavez grinned broadly. ‘You do us wrong, señor. These rumors about us harboring Nazis have no basis in fact.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Bullshit,’ Stanford said. ‘Your whole economy is based on slavery and drugs – and on harboring Nazis.’
‘Lower your voice, señor.’ Chavez’s eyes flicked left and right. ‘It is not wise to speak of such things in so open a manner.’
‘I’m an American,’ Stanford said.
‘That wouldn’t help you, señor. The Federales are devoted to General Stroessner and would not make allowances.’
Stanford glanced past Chavez and saw the lounging Federales, most of them lingering around the rusty gunmounts, chewing gum, smoking cigarets. Stanford didn’t like the look of them. They looked simple-minded and brutal. They had Kalashnikov rifles slung across their shoulders, and their jackboots, which were covered in mud, made him think of the Nazis.
‘Okay,’ Stanford said. ‘What’s your connection to the German? Note: I didn’t call him a Nazi. I’m a very good tourist.’
Chavez grinned and shrugged. ‘The Ache,’ he said. ‘I round up the Ache and deliver them to the German, and he gives me a percentage of what he makes on the ones that he sells on.’
‘And what happens to the ones he doesn’t sell?’
Chavez grinned again. ‘At our worst, we are patriotic. The Ache are vermin, filthy and diseased; they cannot look after themselves and they cause us much trouble. So, if they cannot be sold, we look after them in other ways…’
‘You exterminate them,’ Stanford said.
‘A harsh word, señor. Let’s say we put them out of their misery and leave it at that.’
Stanford finished his beer, threw the bottle overboard, watching it glinting as it bobbed briefly in the river before finally sinking. He glanced again at the Indians, huddled pathetically on the deck. He tried to reconcile this world with the one he had come from: with the pilots and astronauts and the control towers of NASA, with the jet planes and the space probes and the orbiting satellites, with the UFOs that haunted man’s thoughts and mapped out his future. He couldn’t reconcile the two. This river carried him through history. The gunboat and the forest, the Federales and the Indians, all existed in a primitive, frozen past far removed from the modern world. But what was the modern world? It was what he had come from. It was a world of technology, of relentless, searching science, racing blindly into a future not yet even imagined, a future in which men would be numbers and facts would rule feelings. Yet was that such a bad thing? Stanford felt sure that it was. He looked at the squatting Indians, saw them bought and sold as meat, and then wondered if the future conjured up by the man called Wilson would in any sense be better than this: less cruel, more just. No, it would not be. The human lot would not improve. The cruelty and injustice and inequality would remain, changed only in their areas of distribution and in who would most suffer. The advances of science ignored this fact. The two worlds were all too similar. The future being created by Wilson, and represented by his technology, was as cruel and emotionally primitive as the world this gunboat was moving through.
Stanford shivered and looked ahead. The river curved out of sight. He saw a jetty thrusting out from the riverbank, the water rippling around it.
‘There it is,’ Chavez said. ‘Your journey is ended, señor. You will soon feel the ground beneath your feet – and can talk with your German friend.’
‘He’s not a friend,’ Stanford said.
‘My apologies, señor. A man like you would not have such friends. Your appearance confirms this fact.’
Stanford ignored the sarcasm, his eyes fixed on the wooden jetty, watching intently as the boat approached and the waterside village slid into view, thrusting out from the tangled reeds and liana at the edge of the forest. There were people on the jetty, men in filthy fatigues, looking suspiciously like contrabandistas, pistols stuck through their belts. The boat growled and shuddered, turning in toward the village, inched forward and then bounced against the tires along the jetty’s walkway. Stanford glanced back over his shoulder. One of the Ache women was wailing. A Federale slapped her brutally on the face and bawled a stream of abuse. The woman’s wailing became a whimpering. Stanford flushed and turned away. One of the crew had thrown a rope to a man on the jetty and this man was tying the rope around an upright, bending low, shouting something. The boat’s engine cut out. A few member removed the gate. A plank was thrown across the space between the deck and the jetty’s walkway, then tied to some flaking uprights to form a crude gangplank. Stanford moved toward the plank, wanting desperately to disembark, but Chavez tugged at the sleeve of his shirt and motioned him back.
‘No,’ he said. ‘First the Ache.’
Stanford stopped and stared at him, saw the sly, gap-toothed grin, stepped back as Chavez went to the Federales and bawled his instructions. The Federales were quick to move, venting their boredom on the miserable Indians, screaming abuse and kicking them to their feet and herding them toward the makeshift gangplank. The Indians were not so quick, weak from hunger, confused, and the Federales encouraged them along with vicious blows from their rifles. The women wailed and hugged their children, cowering away from the rifle butts, while their menfolk, uncommonly small and frail, tried in vain to protect them. Stanford had to stifle his rage, turning away and surveying the gangplank; he saw the first of the Indians stumbling across it with their hands on their heads. Chavez was leading them down, hi
s shirt unbuttoned and flapping loosely, his broad hat tilted over his eyes, keeping off the fierce sunlight. Stanford burned and looked away. He let his gaze roam over the village, a drab collection of leaning huts made from palmetto trunks and vines, hogs and goats sniffing lethargically at the dust, babies lying on corn shucks. The poverty was total, the old and young emaciated, sunlight falling on scattered gourds and woven baskets and banana leaves, on the giant rat that raced across the clearing and disappeared into the forest. Stanford glanced along the jetty. The last of the Ache had just stepped off it. They were now at the edge of the clearing, the Federales surrounding them. Chavez waved both his hands. He was signalling to Stanford. Stanford choked back his rage and crossed the gangplank, glanced down once at the muddy, oil-slicked water, then stepped onto the jetty.
One of the nearby men approached him, a big man, broad and muscular, a pistol stuck behind his belt, a knife bouncing against his hip, his shirt open to expose a hairy chest, his trousers tattered and greasy.
‘The Americano?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Stanford said.
‘You speak Spanish?’
‘No,’ Stanford said.
‘Okay. Come with me.’
‘You’re from the German?’ Stanford asked.
‘You have no luggage, señor.’
‘I don’t intend staying,’ Stanford said. ‘All I need is in here.’
Stanford indicated his shoulder bag. The big man just stared at him. He had narrow eyes and juicily fat lips and his head had been shaved.
GENESIS (Projekt Saucer) Page 51
