Strangers From The Skies - Brad Steiger-pages

Page 83 of 128

Page 83 of 128
Strangers From The Skies - Brad Steiger-pages

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"Laura's (Mrs. Fernandez) story was so confused that at first," said Manuel Fernandez, "I thought she had found a Cardinal's hat in our courtyard. But high church dignitaries usually do not have the, habit of walking in our courtyard and forgetting their hats there. "| reckon the thing was about 400 meters (one-fourth mile) distant from us. Just as my wife said, it looked like a Cardinal's hat. It had a dark, round brim and a brilliantly-lighted, orange-colored round top, which gave us the impression that it was lighted from the inside. "At one point on the brim, exactly on the side closer to the airport, there was a red, intensely-flickering light. That 'thing,' which looked to me more or less like the descriptions of flying saucers we have been reading about in the papers for the last 20 years, appeared to be almost still, just above the treetops. It was leaning alternatively on either side very slightly. "It's difficult to say how big it was," Fernandez said later in the account. "It was still dark, though the night seemed strangely clear. Maybe it was the result of that orange light. | don't know. When | saw the thing, it was still just over the treetops, and when | stretched my arms out in front of me to get an idea of its size, there was a distance of about 50 centimeters (about 20 inches) between my hands, each of them being pointed at an end of the flying saucer. | imagine that at that distance, about 400 meters, it should have been a rather huge saucer, don't you think? "We do not know how long the object stood there. | had left my wristwatch behind in the bedroom and, even if | had taken it with me, | was just too busy looking at that unbelievable thing. We think it remained over the woods for about three minutes after 4:30. Then it headed north at full speed. What surprised me most was its start, because it went off without any warning. There was no apparent acceleration before it moved northward. | mean it stayed over the treetops and suddenly was moving straight on - just like a bullet from a rifle muzzle. "There is one thing that | didn't think was very important at the time. When the thing sped off to the north, the radio set in our room suddenly stopped making that horrible noise, and we could hear the music | had been listening to when Laura got me up. | can't help thinking that there may be a relation between the departure of the saucer and the fading away of the interference. It failed to impress me at the tune because the saucer was speeding away before my eyes, and the radio noise was fading away behind my back. | went to Oporto last year and saw a motion picture where the sound seemed to reach the audience from all sides of the theater while we watched the picture. Well, it was like that."