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13 "The thing's starting to climb," Mantell said swiftly. "It's at twelve o'clock high, making half my speed. I'll try to close in." In five minutes, Mantell reported again. The strange metallic object had speeded up, was now making 360 or more. At 3:08, Mantell's wingman called in. Both he and the other pilot had seen the weird object. But Mantell had outclimbed them and was lost in the clouds. Seven minutes dragged by. The men in the tower sweated out the silence. Then, at 3:15, Mantell made a hasty contact. "It's still above me, making my speed or better. I'm going up to twenty thousand feet. If I'm no closer, I'll abandon chase." Minutes later, his fighter disintegrated with terrific force. The falling wreckage was scattered for thousands of feet. When Mantell failed to answer the tower, one of his pilots began a search. Climbing to 33,000 feet, he flew a hundred miles to the south. An A.P. account in the New York Times had caught my attention. The story, released at Fort Knox, admitted Mantell had died while chasing a flying saucer. Colonel Hix was quoted as having watched the object, which was still unidentified. But there was no mention of Mantell's radio messages--no hint of the thing's tremendous size. Though I knew the lid was probably on, I went to the Pentagon. When the scare had first broken, in the summer of '47, I had talked with Captain Tom Brown, who was handling saucer inquiries. But by now Brown had been {p. 17} shifted, and no one in the Press Branch would admit knowing the details of the Mantell saucer chase. "T've sighted the thing!" he said. "It looks metallic--and it's tremendous in size!" The C.O. and Woods stared at each other. No one spoke. It was his last report. But the thing that lured Mantell to his death had vanished from the sky. Ten days after Mantell was killed, I learned of a curious sequel to the Godman affair. "We just don't know the answer," a security officer told me.