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days each from Lafayette to Yaukon, and no harm has come to the Pegasus thus far. “Within a month our application for the patents for a parallel plane airship will be filed simultaneously at Washington and the European capitals. The ship is propelled by steam and is lighted by electricity, and has a carrying power of 1,000 pounds.” So now there were two airships—the noble Pegasus and the Saratoga. This second note confirmed what the contactees claimed they were being told—that it was a secret invention and soon patents would be filed and the whole world would know. Even today it would be difficult to build a steam-powered lighter-than-air-craft. For steam you need lots of water— well, apparently the airship crews were draining wells all around the country—but you also need lots of fuel: heavy coal or wood with which to heat the water. And if your airship can lift only 1,000 pounds, you wouldn’t be able to carry much of either. No, the story has the smell of dead fish to it. The very day after the Grand Rapids Evening Press published the above, a new message from the airship turned up—in Grand Rapids. A man named C. T. Smith, an employee of a furniture company ‘“‘who has always been considered honorable and truthful,”’ was on his way to work at 6:15 A.M. when he found a piece of stiff wire about five inches long. At one end was attached ‘‘one of the iron combination stoppers and bottle openers commonly used to open beer bottles,”’ apparently as a weight, and on the other end an envelope was fastened. ‘From the Airship Travelers” was scrawled on the outside, and it contained a piece of notepaper bearing a new message written in purple indelible pencil. It read: To whoever finds this: [We are] 2,500 feet above the level of the sea, headed north at this writing, testing the airship. Afraid we are lost. We are unable to control our engine. Please notify our people. Think we are somewhere over Michigan. Aethue D Canto T Arthur B. Coats, Laurel, Mississippi C. C. Harris, Gulfport, Mississippi C. W. Rich, Richburg, Mississippi April 16, 1897. 9 P.M. 88 / Operation Trojan Horse The Grand Rapids paper added: That the airship is a wonderful reality is now assured, and that it