"Moves slowly."
Joe was looking out a window, staring long at the passing blackness. "I can see a few stars. Quite a few, actually." "Any of them moving?" "What if there were, Willy boy?" "We might be in danger."
Will insists that he said those words. I wonder. Had he been genuinely afraid, I think he might have actually been more open to the others. He would have bargained with them, then, or recommended that the President attempt to do so.
Will reports that the three of them spent some hours discussing how they would handle matters in New Mexico. It was decided that Sally would proceed to Los Alamos and start groundwork there, preparing a secure area to receive whatever Will managed to send her for analysis, as well as finding housing for the scientists they were expecting CIG in Washington to locate and make available.
Joe was to open an office in Roswell and comb the airfield and the countryside for people who knew something about what had happened. His mission was to spread silence.
They slept from about two-thirty in the morning. Will was awake for a short time at four, Washington time, and found that his stateroom was filled with blue light. His immediate impression was that an engine was burning.
Even now he doesn't know the meaning of the blue light. He is aware that it is associated with the near presence of the others. When I brought up that blue light is in folklore connected with the presence of ghosts, he gave me a sidelong look and said, "If they have developed a technology that enables them to control the soul, they might have some sort of contact with the dead."
He has worried that the world of the dead might be the primary human reality, and that the others have invaded more on that level than on this.
For my part, I wonder if the dead exist.
The changing pitch of the props woke Will for good about half an hour before they were due to land. He called for coffee and lit a cigarette. The right side of his head hurt, just behind the ear. One of the stewardesses said it looked like a spider bite.
One of the many signs of close contact with the others is a painful red mark on the temple, just like that. Did they revisit Will while he was on his way to Roswell, perhaps renewing whatever they had implanted into him when he was a boy?
I don't doubt that they did. He hated the idea of it, and refused even to speculate.
The radio operator appeared with a message from Hilly, which he and Sally decoded. In those days they used a code book and a sheet of paper. The codes were kept secure by frequent changes. Now of course codes change constantly and everything is done by computer. I suppose in 1947 it was still conceivable that a spy might carry his codes in the heel of his shoe.
The message explained that AAF Intelligence had contained the press leaks by intercepting all wire-service copy leaving New Mexico and sending agents to every radio station that had picked up the story.
That must have been reassuring, but they still had an enormous problem. The news release was now appearing in places like the San Francisco Chronicle and the London Times.
They landed in Roswell and prepared to meet the Army Air Force officers who had found the disk and so irresponsibly announced this fact to the public.
They were waiting on the apron, and Will recalls them as an impressive-looking group of soldiers. Colonel William Blanchard was flanked by two men he recognized from their file photos. One was Lieutenant Peter Hesseltine and the other was Major Donald Gray. Even then Don Gray was considered one of the best Intelligence officers in the Army Air Force. Will admires him tremendously. In 1979 Don Gray admitted before television cameras that the debris of an alien craft had been located in Roswell. It is a testament to the effectiveness of Will Stone's work that the press still considers the whole thing a fraud, even after that.
Gray, Blanchard and Hesseltine were obviously wary of the three CIG officers. Blanchard was motionless, his legs spread apart, his hands on his hips. Will recalls that Gray stood at attention, perhaps awed by the impressive Defense Department plane. Hesseltine fidgeted, his fingers drifting like nervous ghosts to the knot in his tie.
Like so many soldiers they had a boyish quality to them.
Men like Blanchard, who had flown in long-range bombers in the Pacific, were a singularly untroubled group.
They had done more killing than anybody else in the war. But they did it from such a height and in such safety that it remained quite abstract to them. They read paperback thrillers on their long journeys to Japan, then spent a few minutes blowing women and children to pieces. On the way home they returned to their books.
Men like Blanchard looked as they felt: invulnerable.
By comparison, the CIG officers were tense and obviously uneasy. They were squinting, troubled by the blasting desert sun.
The first one out of the plane was Will Stone—a pale young man in what was probably the most expensive suit any of them had ever seen. The way Colonel Blanchard looked at him, Will thought that he was sizing him up as a pansy.
During the war years, Will had acquired the ability to read lips, meaning that he was able to tell what the three officers were saying to each other before he got into earshot. The conversation he reports is most revealing.
"The second one's the hired killer," Blanchard said softly.
"He looks like he could break you in half with his breath," Hesseltine added.
"Shut up, Hesseltine," the colonel muttered.
When Sally appeared the soldiers reacted again. "Wow," said Hesseltine, "I could stand to nibble that sandwich."
"Don't worry yourself, boy. Gals like that don't eat Army meat."
"Yes sir, Colonel."
"You'd be lucky to get her to bed the Duke of Windsor."
"Hell, Colonel, try the Pope."
"Saint goddamn Francis of Asskissi."
The irreverent Hesseltine laughed at Colonel Blanchard.
"You'd blister your lips on that hot little ass," the colonel said in reply to the sneer.
Major Gray, most proper, was disgusted with them. "You gentlemen are sick."
"I've got it figured," Lieutenant Hesseltine said in an insincere twang. "These palookas are the team that pulled down Al Capone."
"Those were T-men."
"Hell, Colonel, I'm not talking about the team that arrested him. I'm talking about the team that gave him syphilis."
"Not the Virgin Mary? Don't shatter my dreams."
"Hell no. The pansy dancing up the front. The way they did it, the guy danced up and breathed on old Al.
Presto, one case of drippy dickie."
Now even the Colonel was disgusted. "I'm going to have you up on charges for language like that before breakfast." "Yes, sir!"
As the CIG party approached, Blanchard locked eyes with Will. "Look at him," he said under his breath. "My opinion has changed. Fancy-pants is the gunman. The other guy's a toughie with a heart of lead. And that lady's probably some kind of whiz kid. Nobody's ever managed to get in her pants. That's as good as law."
There were introductions all round, and then they moved to a bacon-and-eggs breakfast at the officer's club, which was a barracks full of surplus furniture and steam tables. In lieu of air conditioning there was tinfoil on the windows to reflect the heat.
Will recalls being surprised to find that the food was more than passable. No powdered eggs here, no Spam.
He made an immediate frontal assault. "I propose that we go to the site at once," he said around a mouthful of sausage.
Colonel Blanchard responded nervously. "We've got to have confirmation on that from Eighth Air Force."
It was as Will expected. Those words meant to him that Vandenberg was going to try to keep the whole affair under his own authority. Will would perhaps have preferred to play a more cunning game, but he had no time.
He decided to use his strongest card at once. "We should have brought a doctor's note," he said to Blanchard. " 'Dear Colonel, Please let these children do what they have to do.' Signed, Dr. Harry Truman."
Blanchard was the hottest
colonel in the AAF. He didn't want any waves that might disturb his shot at becoming commanding general of Eighth Air Force. Undoubtedly Will was right to threaten him with serious waves.
He capitulated, at least partially. "Okay, fair enough," he said. "Hesseltine here will take care of it."
"Very well." Will relaxed. He thought he'd won his point.
Major Gray got up from the table. "I'm afraid I've got to leave you folks in capable hands. I'm off to Wright Field with the debris we collected."
Will was furious. "We expected to see that material!"
Gray glanced at Colonel Blanchard. The colonel spoke quickly. "It's already loaded aboard a B-29. General Ramey's going to press conference the stuff at five this afternoon. My own second is flying it up to Forth Worth and Major Gray is going with him."
Joe was charged with the practical task of keeping things quiet. He exploded. "Press conference! That's just what we need."
"We're saying it's a mistake. A rawinsonde. That's a type of radar target." Will was uneasy about Major Gray.
He told me that he would have "taken care" of the major in short order. In Will Stone hate and envy are essentially the same emotion. "In the end Don told the truth," he says. "It took him thirty-two years, but he did it." His tone is curt because of his envy for the man's moral clarity. Not that the statement helped. Don Gray's words collided with the brick wall of Will Stone's cover-up and quite simply died.
Now Joe went to work on the colonel. "We want air transport," he said. "Mr. Stone wants to be on site within the hour. And we want full support. CIG intends to stay physically with the disk and the bodies until they are delivered to Los Alamos."
"I understood they were following the other debris to Wright Field."
Legally, the AAF had jurisdiction at Wright. Los Alamos had just shifted to Atomic Energy Commission control and was thus no longer within the reach of the Joint Chiefs, specifically Van. That was the main reason that Hillenkoetter had decided to park the disk there. Smoothly, Joe made his case. "The best scientists in the world are located at Los Alamos, and it's only a few hundred miles away."
"Washington already set it all up," Sally added.
Colonel Blanchard raised his eyebrows. "I don't know if we have the whirlybirds available to take you to the site."
"You have them," Joe said. "I counted six on the apron as we landed."
"I meant unassigned."
Once again Will played his high card. "Reassign them. Surely you can do that for the President."
Blanchard gave Hesseltine a curt nod, and the young officer went, off to arrange matters. The CIG group finished breakfast and went over to the colonel's office to wait. On the way Will picked up a copy of the Roswell Daily Record. The headline made him furious.
RAAF CAPTURES FLYING SAUCER IN ROSWELL REGION
Will was so enraged that he was afraid to speak lest he jeopardize their tenuous rapport with the colonel.
Once in his office they looked at more photographs of the disk. These were copies of the aerials they had seen at the White House. "What is the status of these pictures," Sally asked.
"Restricted."
"I'm officially changing them to Top Secret. Take them off the walls and place them under covers, please, Colonel." She had no legal right to change the classification level of anything, but her action was typical of the way these people regarded themselves.
Blanchard and Hesseltine fell all over each other to get the pictures off the walls. They stacked them backside up on the colonel's steel desk, and covered them with pink sheets of paper stamped top secret in block letters.
Joe, as liaison with Air Force Intelligence, made a call to S-2 at White Sands to confirm that all wire-service output from the area was still being intercepted. Given the headline that had just appeared, it was probable that reporters by the hundreds would be on their way to this place within a matter of hours.
Will was leaving for the helicopter port when he received word that Hilly was on the line from Washington.
He took the call in an empty office he later found out belonged to the base press officer who had issued the offending press release. Hillenkoetter was abrupt. "What's it look like?"
"Well, Admiral, I'm not sure. We only arrived here an hour ago. They didn't have any transport prepared. Then they wanted to send me in convoy. Now I'm in a whirlybird. It's a struggle dealing with them. And they've hijacked the debris they've already collected. It's on its way up to Wright via Eighth Air Force in Fort Worth.
Ramey's going to hold a press conference claiming the debris is a crashed radar target."
"Don't get your back up. The President approved that last night. By the way, Blanchard doesn't know it yet, but he's going on leave this afternoon. His second's gonna take the heat. Van wants to make sure nobody throws up on his favorite boy's pretty blue uniform."
"I want support from Van. So far it looks like I'm getting anything but."
"I'll have to go through Forrestal."
"Van will totally ignore you."
"Forrestal is too weak a weapon, Truman too strong."
"Meaning that I'm on my own."
"Get out there and get that disk. And the bodies. Especially the bodies."
Bodies. Disks. Debris. Huge newspaper headlines. Will experienced a moment of despair. How were they ever going to hide this thing? "I've got to tell you that I don't think the radar-target story will work. The press'll never buy it."
"They will, old son."
"But it's absolute, obvious crap. Admiral—"
"You add together all the reporters west of the Mississippi and you still haven't got enough smarts to tune a radio. They'll buy it. Anyway, I read reporters as frustrated egos. They don't want to hear anything about superior aliens when they're already suffering from the sneaking suspicion that they're nothing but pieces of shit themselves."
"You're being briefed by the headshrinkers again, Hilly. And you're believing it." "No—"
"Remember what happened last time? When we tried to psychoanalyze Stalin and we predicted—"
"Never mind that. Truman forgave me."
"Good luck with your radar targets, Admiral. You and Van and Ramey are going to need it."
Will said nothing of this disturbing turn of events to Sally and Joe as he hurried through the beating sun to where the helicopters were firing up. His two associates would remain at the base to begin setting up a field office.
Will had never flown in a helicopter before. As a matter of fact, none of them had. In those days they were quite a new technology. Will was strapped into a miserable plastic seat and given a helmet that was not sized for him. It stank of the sweat of many heads.
The machine rose into its own cloud of dust. A moment later Roswell AAF was swinging away below. The pilot soon set a course to the north and west.
On the way the machines seemed to make dozens of banks, all of them very steep. Will held tightly to the edge of his seat and the lip of the windshield. He vividly remembers the feeling that he was going to fall out at any moment.
"Want to listen to the radio? We can pick up KGFL in Roswell."
Radio. What more could a man want? "Yeah, fine." Will tried to sound enthusiastic. Unfortunately the station did not offer dance music, at least not at nine-fifteen A.M. Instead, he was forced to listen to something called Trading Post. A rancher called in wanting to trade a "black shoat" for a set of golf clubs. A beauty salon owner would trade a Toni Professional Permanent for three nights of baby-sitting with her two sons.
And Will was on his way to view the bodies of beings who had been born in another world.
The sun was already high, pouring through the cockpit, burning against everything that it touched. Hot, exhaust-filled wind swirled in the sides. The stink of gasoline mixed with the stink of two sweaty men.
Roswell sank away behind them. They were alone now between the sky and the land. It was so big, so empty.
When Will saw the disk he almost choked with excitement. Th
ey swept around it in a long circle, and it gleamed in the sun. It gleamed and glimmered, and beside it he saw two khaki tarps.
They landed in an area that had been roughly marked with some cloth tape. Here the brush had been hacked away, but not enough to make much difference.
A hundred feet away lay the most extraordinary object on the surface of the earth. Will had appropriately large thoughts: the pyramids, the Acropolis, the Colosseum at Rome, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, all the works of man. Among them there was no such work as this.
Our history, too: clambering up from the muck, making the first fire and the first pot, building our cities and our empires, the dreams of sultans and kings, the hoarse chorus of the modern democracies—in all of those thousands of days, there was no such day as this.
And Wilfred Stone was here.
CARSWELL ARMY AIR FORCE BASE PRESS OFFICE PRESS CONFERENCE REPORT
8Jly47
LOCATION: HQ 8AF Ft. Worth Tx.
PARTICIPANTS: Brig. Gen. Roger M. Ramey, CinC 8th AF; Major Donald Gray, S-2, RAAF; Warrant 0. Vinton Yancey, Base Weather Officer, Carswell AAF.
Various newspaper reporters identified herein as "QUESTIONERS."
General Ramey and officer specialists met with members of the press on the evening of July 8 to discuss the misidentification of a rawinsonde (type ML-306) as a so-called "alien flying disk."
GENERAL RAMEY: Thank you, gentlemen, for coming to this conference. I trust that we can rectify some pretty exciting reports that have been circulating about the pile of debris I have here. [Points to debris on desk and floor of office.] With me I have Major Donald Gray who is the expert intelligence officer who originally recovered the material, and Warrant Officer Vinton Yancey of our weather office, who can make a positive identification of the material. Now I'd like to open it up to questions.
QUESTIONER: So this is all it is? A pile of tinfoil?
GENERAL RAMEY: That is correct. Perhaps Warrant Officer Yancey can explain.
W. O. YANCEY: This debris is from a so-called radiosonde. A rawinsonde-type device. It is very familiar to me. We release these sondes as target devices for airborne and land-based radar. It is one of the primary things we do here at Carswell.