Page Content (OCR)
101 The most likely star was Wolf 359--eight light-years away. I thought for a minute about traveling that vast distance. It was almost appalling, considered in terms of man's life span. Of course, dwellers on other planets might live much longer. If the speed of light was not an absolute limit, almost any space journey would then be possible. Since there would be no resistance in outer space, it would be simply a matter of using rocket power in the first stages to accelerate to the maximum speed desired. In the latter phase, the rocket's drive would have to be reversed, to decelerate for the landing. The night before my appointment with Redell, I was checking a case report when the phone rang. It was John Steele. "Are you still working on the saucers?" he asked. "If you are, I have a suggestion-- something that might be a real lead." "I can't give you the source, but it's one I consider reliable," said Steele. "This man says the disks are British developments." {p. 119} The saucers, his informant said, were rotating disks with cambered surfaces--originally a Nazi device. Near the end of the war, the British had seized all the models, along with the German technicians and scientists who had worked on the project. The first British types had been developed secretly in England, according to this account. But the first tests showed a dangerous lack of control; the disks streaked up to high altitudes, hurtling without direction. Some had been seen over the Atlantic, some in Turkey, Spain, and other parts of Europe. The British then had shifted operations to Australia, where a guided-missile test range had been set up. (This part, I knew, could be true; there was such a range.) After improving their remote-control system, which used both radio and radar, they had built disks up to a hundred feet in diameter. These were launched out over the Pacific, the first ones straight eastward over open sea. British destroyers were stationed at 100-mile and later 500-mile intervals, to track the missiles by radar and correct their courses. At a set time, when their fuel was almost exhausted, the disks came down vertically and landed in the ocean. Since part of the device was sealed, the disks would float; then a special launching ship would hoist them abroad, refuel them, and launch them back toward a remote base in Australia, where they were landed by remote control. "I could use a lead right now," I told him. This was a new one. I hadn't considered the British. Steele talked for over half an hour, expanding the idea.