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appearing in the sky from nowhere and then disappearing, seemingly in an instant. Unless some optical trick is involved, the saucers must be capable of truly extraordinary acceleration. Typical of saucer reports, as they appear in the local presses throughout the world, is the object seen cruising along at a few hundred miles per hour and then, suddenly, seen to dash away at what must be thousands of miles per hour. In addition to these extraordinary linear accelerations the saucers seem to outwit inertia in other respects. At very high speeds they appear to make perfect right right angle turns and even reversals of direction, without disastrous results to their structure or their crew - if these exist. At least two of my friends have told me of seeing flying saucers, moving through the sky at very high speeds, make instantaneous right angle turns. Still another good trick they seem able to move through the atmosphere at rates of speed and at levels of air density which clearly are incompatible with any publicly known technology. As an object moves through the air the friction of the molecules striking its surface causes the material to heat. In our very fast jet interceptors cooling systems are necessary. We all know how meteors entering the earth's atmosphere, and nose cones of missiles re-entering the earth's atmosphere, heat to such a point that in many cases they disintegrate or burn up completely. Yet moving at comparable speeds in a denser atmosphere and do not seem to show these effects. To be sure, luminosity often appears about them - especially at night - and occasionally trails of smoke vapor appear, but the machine itself seems to survive. To missilemen this is most curious. At stake, in all these maneuvers, is our understanding of the stubborn laws of inertia which govern our world. Newton first formulated these clearly in his double principle that an object at rest tends to remain at rest unless a force is applied, and if a force is applied it tends to take motion in the direction of the applied force and proportionally to it. These Newtonian laws of inertia still are the basis of much of our scientific world view. But combining them with the known molecular binding forces of matter, which are equally fixed in the order of nature - at least so we think - makes the saucer's behavior very difficult to explain. When the flying saucers accelerate from 0 speed to many thousands of miles an hour in a few seconds, why isn't their internal machinery torn apart and any crew members squashed? Anyone who has taken a curve at too high a speed knows the persistent tendency of his vehicle to continue along the original line of motion against the force of his tires and steering mechanism.