present Air Force chief, had been equally emphatic. Of course, official denials could be expected if it were a top-level secret. But if it were a secret device, would it be tested so publicly that thousands would see it?

If it were an Air Force device, then I could see only one answer for the Godman Field incident: The thing was such a closely guarded secret that even Colonel Hix hadn't known. That would mean that most or all Air Force Base C.O.'s were also in ignorance of the secret device.

Could it be a Navy experiment, kept secret from the Air Force?

I did a little checking.

Admiral Calvin Bolster, chief of aeronautics research experimental craft, was an Annapolis classmate of mine. So was Captain Delmer S. Fahrney, head of the Navy guided-missile program. Fahrney was at Point Mugu, missile-testing base in California, and I wasn't able to see him. But I knew him as a careful, conscientious officer; I can't believe he would let such a device, piloted or not, hover over an Air Force base with no warning to its C.O.

I saw Admiral Bolster. His denial seemed genuine; unless he'd got to be a dead-pan poker player since our earlier days, I was sure he was telling the truth.

The only other alternate was Russia. It was incredible that they would develop such a device and then expose it to the gaze of U.S. Air Force officers. It could be photographed, its speed and maneuverability checked; it might crash, or antiaircraft fire might bring it down, The secret might be lost in one such test flight.

There was one other explanation: The thing was not intended to be seen; it had got out of control. In this event; the long hovering period at Godman Field was caused by the need for repairs inside the flying saucer, or repairs to remote-control apparatus.

If it were Air Force or Navy, that would explain official concern; even if completely free of negligence, the service responsible would be blamed for Mantell's death. If it were Russian, the Air Force would of course try to conceal the fact for fear of public hysteria.

But if the device was American, it meant that Project

"Saucer" was a cover-up unit. While pretending to investigate, it would actually hush up reports, make false explanations, and safeguard the secret in every possible way. Also, the reported order for Air Force pilots to pursue the disks would have to be a fake. Instead, there would be a secret order telling them to avoid strange objects in the sky.

By the time I finished my check-up, I was sure of one thing: This particular saucer had been real.

I was almost positive of one other point-that the thing had been over 30 miles high during part of its flight. I found that after Mantell's death it was reported simultaneously from Madisonville, Elizabethtown, and Lexington--over a distance of 175 miles. (Professor Hynek's analysis later confirmed this.)

How low it had been while hovering over Godman, and during Mantell's chase, there was no way to determine. But all the evidence pointed to a swift ascent after Mantell's last report.

Had Mantell told Godman Tower more than the Air Force admitted? I went back to the Pentagon and asked for a full transcript of the flight leader's radio messages. I got a quick turn-down. The reports, I was told, were still classified as secret. Requests for pictures of the P-51 wreckage, and for a report on the condition of Mantell's body, also drew a blank. I had heard that some photographs were taken of the Godman Field saucer from outside the tower. But the Air Force denied knowledge of any such pictures.

Puzzling over the riddle, I remembered John Steele, the former Intelligence captain. If by any chance he was a plant, it would be interesting to suggest the various answers and watch his reaction. When I phoned him to suggest luncheon, Steele accepted at once. We met at the Occidental, on Pennsylvania Avenue. Steele was younger than I had expected--not over twenty-five. He was a tall man, with a crew haircut and the build of a football player. Looking at him the first time, I expected a certain breeziness. instead, he was almost solemn.

"I owe you an apology," he said in a careful voice after

we'd ordered. "You probably know I'm a syndicate writer?"

I wondered if he'd found out Jack Daly was checking on him.

"When you mentioned the Press Club," I said, "I gathered you were in the business."

"I'm afraid you thought I was fishing for a lead." Steele looked at me earnestly. "I'm not working on the story--I'm tied up on other stuff."

"Forget it," I told him.

He seemed anxious to reassure me. "I'd been worried for some time about the saucers. I called you that night on an impulse."

"Glad you did," I said. "I need every tip I can get."

"Did it help you any?"

"Yes, though it still doesn't fit together. But I can tell you this: The saucers are real, or at least one of them."

"Which one?"

"The thing Captain Mantell was chasing near Fort Knox, before he died."

"Oh, that one." Steele looked down at the roll he was buttering. "I thought that case was fully explained. Wasn't he chasing a balloon?"

"The Air Force says it's still unidentified." I told him what I had learned. "Apparently you're right--it's either an American or a Soviet missile."

"After what you've told me," said Steele, "I can't believe it's ours. It must be Russian."

"They'd be pretty stupid to test it over here."

"You said it was probably out of control."

"That particular one, maybe. But there have been several hundred seen over here. If they found their controls were haywire, they wouldn't keep testing the things until they'd corrected that."

The waiter came with the soup, and Steele was silent until he left.

"I still can't believe it's our weapon," he said slowly. "They wouldn't have Air Force pilots alerted to chase the things. And I happen to how they do."

"There's something queer about this missile angle," I said. "That saucer was seen at the same time by people a

hundred and seventy-five miles apart. To be that high in the sky, and still look more than two hundred and fifty feet in diameter, it must have been enormous."

Steele didn't answer for a moment.

"Obviously, that was an illusion," he finally answered. "I'd discount those estimates."

"Even Mantell's? And the Godman Field officers'?"

"Not knowing the thing's height, how could they judge accurately?"

"To be seen at points that far apart, it had to be over thirty miles high," I told him. "It would have to be huge to show up at all."

He shook his head. "I can't believe those reports are right. It must have been sighted at different times."

I let it drop.

"What are you working on now?" Steele asked, after a minute or two.

I said I hadn't decided. Actually, I planned a trip to the coast, to interview pilots who had sighted flying disks.

"What would you do if you found it wasn't a Soviet missile?" said Steele. He sounded almost too casual.

"If security was involved, I'd keep still. But the Air Force and the Navy swear they haven't any such things."

Steele looked at me thoughtfully.

"You know, True might force something into the open that would be better left secret." He smiled ironically. "I realize that sounds peculiar, since I suggested the Russian angle. But if it isn't Russian--though I still think it is--then we have nothing to worry about."

I was almost sure now that he was a plant. During the rest of the luncheon, I tried to draw him out, but Steele was through talking. When we parted, he gave me a sober warning.

"You and True should consider your moral responsibility, no matter what you find. Even if it's not actual security, there may be reasons to keep still."

After he left me, I tried to figure it out. If the Air Force was back of this, they must not think much of my intelligence. Or else they had been in such a hurry to get a line on True's investigation that they had no choice but

to use Steele. Of course, it was still possible he was doing this on his own,

Either way, his purpose was obvious. He hoped to have us swallow the Soviet-missile answer. If we did, then we would have to keep still, even though we found absolute proof. Obviously, it would be dangerous to print that story.

Thinking back, I recalled Steele's apparent attempt to dismiss the Mantell case. I was convinced now. The Godman Field affair must hold an important clue that I had overlooked. It might even be the key to the whole flying saucer riddle.

CHAPTER VI

SHORTLY after my talk with Steele, I flew to the Coast. For three weeks I investigated sightings that had been reported by airline and private pilots and other competent witnesses.

At first, the airline pilots were reluctant to talk. Most of them remembered the ridicule that had followed published accounts by other airline men. One pilot told me he had been ordered to keep still about his experience--whether by the company or the Air Force, he would not say. But most of them finally agreed to talk, if I kept their names out of print.

One airline captain--I'll call him Blake--had encountered a saucer at night. He and his copilot had sighted the object, gleaming, in the moonlight, half a mile to their left.

"We were at about twelve thousand feet," he said, when we saw this thing pacing us. It didn't have any running lights, but we could see the moonlight reflecting from something like bright metal. There was a glow along the side, like some kind of light, or exhaust."

"Could you make out the shape?" I asked.

Blake grinned crookedly. "You think we didn't try? I cut in toward it. It turned in the same direction. I pulled up about three hundred feet, and it did the same. Finally, I opened my throttles and cut in fast, intending to pull tip if we got too close. I needn't have worried. The thing let out a burst of reddish flame and streaked up out of sight. It was gone in a few seconds."

"Then it must have been piloted," I said.

"If not, it had some kind of radar-responder unit to make it veer off when anything got near it. It matched every move I made, until the last one."

I asked him what he thought the saucer was. Blake hesitated, then he gave me a slow grin.

"Well, my copilot thinks it was a space ship. He says no pilot here on earth could take that many G's, when the thing zoomed."

I'd heard some "men from Mars" opinions about the saucers, but this was an experienced pilot.

"You don't believe that?" I said.

"No," Blake said. "I figure it was some new type of guided missile. If it took as many G's as Chuck, my copilot, thinks, then it must have been on a beam and remote-controlled."

Later, I found two other pilots who had the same idea as Chuck. One captain was afraid the flying saucers were Russian; his copilot thought they were Air Force or Navy. I met one airline official who was indignant about testing such missiles near the airways.

"Even if they do have some device to make them veer off," he said, "I think it's a risk. There'll be hell to pay if one ever hits an airliner."

"They've been flying around for two years," a line pilot pointed out. "Nobody's had a close call yet. I don't think there's much danger."

When I left the Coast, I flew to New York. Ken Purdy called in John DuBarry, True's aviation editor, to hear the details. Purdy called him "John the Skeptic." After I told them what I had learned Purdy nodded.

"What do you think the saucers are?" asked DuBarry.

"They must be guided missiles," I said, "but it leaves some queer gaps in the picture."

I had made up a list of possible answers, and I read it to them:

"One, the saucers don't exist. They're caused by mistakes, hysteria, and so on. Two, they're Russian guided missiles. Three, they're American guided missiles. Four, the whole thing is a hoax, a psychological-warfare trick."

"You mean a trick of ours?" said Purdy.

"Sure, to make the Soviets think we could reach them with a guided missile. But I don't think that's the answer--I just listed it as a possibility."

DuBarry considered this thoughtfully.

"In the first place, you'd have to bring thousands of people into the scheme, so the disks would be reported often enough to get publicity. You'd have to have some kind of device, maybe something launched from highflying bombers, to give the rumors substance. They'd

certainly do a better job than this, to put it over. And it wouldn't explain the world-wide sightings. Also, Captain Mantell wouldn't kill himself just to carry out an official hoax."

"John's right," said Purdy. "Anyway, it's too ponderous. It would leak like a sieve, and the dumbest Soviet agent would see through it."

He looked back at my list. "Cross off Number One, There's too much competent testimony, beside the obvious fact that something's being covered up."

"That leaves Russian or American missiles," I said, "as Steele first suggested. But there are some points that just won't fit the missile theory."

"You've left out one answer," said Purdy.

"What's that?"

"Interplanetary."

"You're kidding!" I said.

"I didn't say I believed it," said Purdy. "I just say it's possible."

DuBarry was watching me. "I know how you feel. That's how it hit me when Ken first said it,"

"I've heard it before," I said. "But I never took it seriously."

"Maybe this will interest you," Purdy said. He gave me a note from Sam Boal:

"Just talked with D-------," the note ran. (D------- is a prominent aeronautical engineer, the designer of a world-famous plane.) "He believes the disks may be interplanetary and that the Air Force knows it--or at least suspects it. I'm enclosing sketches showing how he thinks the disks operate."

"He's not the first one who told us that," said Purdy. "We've heard the same thing from other engineers. Over a dozen airline pilots think they're coining from out in space. And there's a rocket expert at Wright Field who's warned Project 'Saucer' that the things are interplanetary. That's why I'm not writing it off."

"Have you read the Project 'Saucer' ideas on space travel?" DuBarry asked me. I told him my copy hadn't reached me. He read me some marked paragraphs in his copy of the preliminary report:

"'There has been speculation that the aerial phenomena might actually be some form of penetration from another planet . . . the existence of intelligent life on Mars is not impossible but is completely unproven . . . the possibility of intelligent life on the Planet Venus is not considered completely unreasonable by astronomers . . . Scientists concede that living organisms might develop in chemical environments which are strange to us . . . in the next fifty years we will almost certainly start exploring space . . . the chance of space travelers existing at planets attached to neighboring stars is very much greater than the chance of space-traveling Martians. The one can be viewed as almost a certainty . . .'"

DuBarry handed me the report. "Here--I practically know it by heart. Take it with you. You can send it back later."

"I know the space-travel idea sounds silly at first," said Purdy, "but it's the only answer that explains all the sightings-especially those in the last century."

He asked DuBarry to give me their file of historic reports. While John was getting it, Purdy went on:

"Be careful about this man Steele. After what he said about 'moral responsibility' I'm sure he's planted."

I thought back to Steele's warning. I told Purdy: "If he had the space thing in mind, maybe he's right. It could set off a panic that would make that Orson Welles thing look like a picnic."

"Certainly it could," Purdy said. "We'd have to handle it carefully-if it turned out to be the truth. But I think the Air Force is making a mistake, if that's what they're hiding.