{p. 104}

amount of energy required to pump blood through the veins would be almost negligible. What would that do to your heart?"

"I couldn"t even guess," I said.

"Well, that"s all the Aero-Medical lab can do--guess at it. They"ve been trying to work out some way of duplicating the effect of zero gravity, but there"s just no answer. If you could build a machine to neutralize gravity, you could get all the answers, except to the "dead distance" question.

"For instance, there"s the matter of whether the human body would even function without gravity. All down through the stages of evolution, man"s organs have been used to that downward pull. Take away gravity, and your whole body might stop working. Some of the Aero-Medical men I"ve talked with don"t believe that, but they admit that long trips outside of gravity might have odd effects.

"Then there"s the question of orientation. Here on earth, orienting yourself depends on the feeling you get from the pull of gravity, plus your vision. just being blindfolded is enough to disorient some people. Taking away the pull of gravity might be a lot worse. And of course out in s.p.a.ce your only reference points would be distant stars and planets. We"ve been used to locating stars from points on the earth, where we know their position. But how about locating them from out in s.p.a.ce, with a ship moving at great speed? Inside the s.p.a.ce ship, it would be something like being in a submarine. Probably only the pilot compartment would have gla.s.s ports, and those would be covered except in landing--maybe even then. Outside vision might be by television, so you couldn"t break a gla.s.s port and let out your pressure.

"But to go back to the submarine idea. It would be like a sub, with this big difference: In the submarine you can generally tell which way is down, except maybe in a crash dive when you may lose your equilibrium for a moment. But in the s.p.a.ce ship, you could be standing with your feet on one spot, and another crewman might be--relative to you--standing upside down. You might be floating horizontally, the other man vertically. {p. 105} The more you think about it, the crazier it gets. But they"ve got to solve all those problems before we can tackle s.p.a.ce."

To make sure I had the details right, I checked on the Air Force research. I found that the Randolph Field laboratory is working on all these problems, and many more.

Although plans arc not far enough advanced to make it certain, probably animals will be sent up in research rockets to determine the effect of no gravity before any human beings make such flights. The results could be televised back to the earth.

All through my check-up on s.p.a.ce exploration plans, one thing struck me: I met no resistance. There was no official reticence about the program; on the contrary, nothing about it seemed secret.

Even though it was peacetime, this was a little curious, because of the potential war value of an earth satellite vehicle. Even if the n.a.z.i scheme for destruction proved just a dream, an orbiting s.p.a.ce base could be used for other purposes. In its two-hour swing around the earth, practically all of the globe could be observed-directly, by powerful telescopes, or indirectly, by a combination of radar and television. Long-range missiles could be guided to targets, after being launched from some point on the earth. As the missiles climbed high into the stratosphere, the satellite"s radar could pick them up and keep them on course by remote control.

There were other possibilities for both attack and defense.

Ordinarily, projects with wartime value are kept under wraps, or at least not widely publicized. Of course, the explanation might be very simple: The completion of the satellite vehicle was so remote that there seemed no need for secrecy. But in that case, why had the program been announced at all?

If the purpose had been propaganda, it looked like a weak gesture. The Soviets would not be greatly worried by a dream weapon forty or fifty years off. Besides that, the Pentagon, as a rule, doesn"t go for such propaganda.

There was only one conventional answer that made any sense. If we had heard that the Soviets were about

{p. 106}

to announce such a program, as a propaganda trick, it would be smart to beat them to it. But I had no proof of, any such Russian intention.

The date on Secretary Forrestal"s co-ordination announcement was December 30, 1948. One day later, the order creating Project "Saucer"

had been signed. That didn"t prove anything; winding up the year, Forrestal could have signed a hundred orders. I was getting too suspicious.

At any rate, I had now a.n.a.lyzed the Gorman case and checked on our s.p.a.ce plans. Tomorrow I would see Redell and find out what he knew.

{p. 107}

CHAPTER XII

"WHEN I called Redell"s office I found he had flown to Dallas and would not be back for two days. By the time he returned, I had written a draft of the Gorman case, with my answer to the balloon explanation.

When I saw him, the next morning, I asked him to look it over.

Redell lighted his pipe and then read the draft, nodding to himself now and then.

"I think that"s correct a.n.a.lysis," he said when he finished. "That was a very curious case. You know, Project "Saucer" even had psychiatrists out there. If Gorman had been the only witness, I think they"d have called it a hallucination. As it was, they took a crack at him and the C.A.A. men in their preliminary report."

Though I recalled that there had been a comment, I didn"t remember the wording. Redell looked it up and read it aloud:

""From a psychological aspect, the Gorman incident raised the question, "Is it possible for an object without appreciable shape or known aeronautical configuration to appear to travel at variable speeds and maneuver intelligently?"""

"Hallucination might sound like a logical answer," I said, "until you check all the testimony. But there are just too many witnesses who confirm Gorman"s report. Also, he seems like a pretty level-headed chap."

Redell filled his pipe again. "But you still can"t quite accept it?"

"I"m positive they saw the light--but what the devil was it? How could it fly without some kind of airfoil?"

"Maybe it didn"t. You remember Gorman described an odd fuzziness around the edge of the light? It"s in this Air Force report. That could have been a reflection from the airfoil."

"Yes, but Gorman would have seen any solid--" I stopped, as Redell made a negative gesture.

"It could be solid and still not show up," he said.

"You mean it was transparent? Sure, that would do it!"

{p. 108}

"Let"s say the airfoil was a rotating plastic disk, absolutely transparent. The blurred, fuzzy look could have been caused by the whirling disk. Neither Gorman nor the C.A.A. men in the tower could possibly see the disk itself."

"Paul, I think you"ve hit it," I said. "I can see thc rest of it--the thing was under remote control, radio or radar. And from the way it flew rings around Gorman, whoever controlled it must have been able to see the F-51, either with a television "eye" or by radar,"

"Or by some means we don"t understand," said Redell. He went on carefully, "In all these saucer cases, keep this in mind: We may be dealing with some totally unknown principle--something completely beyond our comprehension."

For a moment, I thought he was hunting at some radical discovery by Soviet--captured n.a.z.i scientists. Then I realized what he meant.

"You think they"re interplanetary," I murmured.

"Why not?" Redell looked surprised. "Isn"t that your idea? I got that impression."

"Yes, but I didn"t think you believed it. When you said to check on our s.p.a.ce plans, I thought you had some secret missile in mind."

"No, I had another reason. I wanted you to see all the problems involved in s.p.a.ce travel. If you accept the interplanetary answer, you have to accept this, too--whoever is looking us over has licked all those problems years ago. Technically, they"d be hundreds of years ahead of us--maybe thousands. It has a lot to do with what they"d be up to here."

When I mentioned the old sighting reports, I found that Redell already knew about them. He was convinced that the earth had been under observation a long time, probably even before the first recorded sightings.

"I know some of those reports aren"t authentic," he admitted. "But if you accept even one report of a flying disk or rocket-shaped object before the twentieth century, then you have to accept the basic idea.

In the last forty years, you might blame the reports on planes and dirigibles. But there was no propelled aircraft until 1903. {p. 109} Either all those early sightings were wrong, or some kind of fast aerial machine has been flying periodically over the earth for at least two centuries.

I told him I was pretty well convinced, but that True faced a problem.

There was some conflicting evidence, and part of it seemed linked with guided missiles. I felt sure we could prove the s.p.a.ce-travel answer, but we had to stay clear of discussing any weapons that were still a secret.

"I can"t believe that guided missiles are the answer to the G.o.dman Field saucer and the Chiles-Whitted case, or this business at Fargo.

But we"re got to be absolutely sure before we print anything."

"Well, let"s a.n.a.lyze it," said Redell. "Let"s see if all the saucers could be explained as something launched from the earth."