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of Research and Development because the head of the Research and Development Board had been one of the original members of the group. "| was at the White House when Sarbacher was on the board, General, "| told my boss. "So | can be pretty sure he was in the know. And Hermann Oberth, "| admitted to Trudeau. "He already told me that he believed that the objects we saw popping up on our radar screens at Red Canyon and then disappearing as if they were never there were probably the same kinds of extraterrestrial aircraft that we picked up at Roswell. So he knew, but | don't know how. " "Well, that's good news, at least, " the general said. "I'd rather not be the one authorizing the release of classified information to anyone who didn't know it before hand. And | don't want to put you in the position, Phil, of having to explain to any higher ups why you decided to release top secret information to people without clearances, even in the interest of national security. " | appreciated that, but for our plan to work, we needed the technical and scientific expertise people like von Braun, Oberth, and Sarbacher could bring to any reverse engineering and product development strategies. "We'll have to begin by taking an inventory of all of the defense industry contracts we're currently managing, General, "| said. "Lineup the contracts and systems we're developing with the materials in the nut file to see where they fit in. Then bring in the scientists to consult on making sure we know what we think we have, that is, if they can figure out what we have. " "Let's go through a potential product list first, " the general suggested. "Then see where our contracts line up and where the scientists can help. And you know what happens then, " Trudeau asked. "We're sticking you back in civilian clothes and sending you on the road to visit our friends in these defense contractors. " "| don't want anyone to know, " General Trudeau explained, "that some lieutenant colonel on the CIA's Most Wanted list is traveling to our biggest defense contractors with a mysterious briefcase full of nobody knows what. You might as well wear a sign, "he laughed. "We have to get to work on that list. " That same afternoon | went back to my report on the EBE and his craft and began to list the riddles it contained and the opportunities for the discovery of product it presented to us. The entire event was like an enigma to us because every conventional requirement one would expect to have found at the crash site, in the craft, or even in the EBEs themselves was missing. Where was the engine or the power supply for the craft? It had neither jet engines nor propellers. It had no rocket propulsion like the V2 missiles, nor did it carry any fuel. At Norton Air Force Base, where the craft eventually was hangared, engineers marveled at the thin amalgam of the most refined copper and purest silver they had ever seen that covered the ship's underside. The metal was remarkable for its conductivity, as if the entire craft was an electrical circuit offering no resistance to the flow of current. Yet it was something our military engineers could not replicate. By the 1950s at Norton Air Force Base, at least two prototypes of the alien craft had been fabricated, but neither had the power source of the craft that had crashed. In its stead were crude attempts at nuclear fission generators, but they were ineffective and dangerous. Even the portable nuclear generators that would power the primitive Soviet and American satellites in the 1960s were insufficient for the needs of the replicated spacecraft. So the question remained, what powered the Roswell spacecraft? + The crescent shaped space vehicle also had no traditional navigational controls as we understood them. There were no control sticks, wheels, throttles, pedals, cables, flaps, or rudders. How did the creatures pilot this ship and how did they control the speed, accelerating from a near stationary hover above a given spot, like a helicopter, to speeds in excess of seven thousand miles per hour in a matter of seconds? + What protected the creatures from the tremendous g-forces they would have had to have pulled in any conventional aircraft? Our own pilots in World War Il had to wear special devices as they pulled up out of dives that kept the oxygen from flowing out of their brains and causing them to blackout. But we found nothing in the flight suits of the creatures that indicated that they faced the same problem. Yet their craft should have pulled 46 "How will you approach them?" Trudeau asked. | wasn't sure where he was going to take this. "| don't even get to keep my battle ribbons, "| joked. | reviewed all of my discoveries in a checklist: