Nexus - 0216 - New Times Magazine-pages

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"Shit! How are you going to land blind, down the cockpit ladder, the pilot was over?" approached by the cheerful crew chief: _ “With difficulty, GCI! Ever tried greas- "What was it sir?" ing one of these things onto a runway at "Oh, nothing much, chief; probably a 200 miles an hour with frosted windows?’ weather balloon!" “You are authorised for ejection over the sea, copied?” “Too cold. I'll give it one try at base and if that's a no-go then I'll head back over the sea and eject." "Yes sir, that's very interesting sir." As the pilot staggered away towards the crew room on his shaky, half-frozen legs, an airman standing next to the chief tured "Copied 02. You are to file a classified to him with an incredulous look on his report immediately after landing. Contact f° ; Approach radar; good luck, out.” "Why did you ask him that, chief? You Dropping below ten thousand feet, the ‘now the radio fitters taped the whole mis- pilot unlocked his Taylor-Baxter pressure Sion on their spare UF radio. visor and pushed it away from his face. “Sure they did but the pilot doesn't know Reaching forward he used his white leather that. He's the third in less than a year gloves to scrape some of the frost from the who's got to write a classified report on a bulletproof windshield, finally clearing a UFO. He's also the third to tell me he was blurred space through which he could see scrambled to intercept a ‘weather balloon’." thehorizon, . "Why not just tell them we know about “Approach, this is 02 calling Pan Pan. the UFOs?" Pan, I have limited vision and fuel state is "Become, lad, iwenilidd het wa'd be low. Requesting straight-in priority 4ered not to record the missions and then — “7 vier peel c we'd never be able to keep track of what's oger 02, circuit is clear. Contact going on up there...” id Control A) fi pe mate Aggenth oven tr Sa A group of ground crew fitters ambled "02, copied.” casually across the tarmac to the glistening Lighting. An armourer clambered into the At twenty miles range the pilot extended cockpit, turned the battery master switches ee wtp Lege ters on and selected the Firestreak sensor cir- ing flap and adjusted the trim. Ashe ull Unnoticed by the pilots in the crew- closed to within twelve miles, the undercar- 100m, another armourer walked across the riage lowered with a reassuring ‘clunk' and 8faSS one hundred yards away puffing at a the pilot throttled back still further. cigarette. Looking down from the cockpit "02, this is GCA. You are on the correct the first armourer could see the small heading but slightly above the glide slope. °YyClops infrared eye on each Firestreak Adjust your rate of descent. That's nice 02, missile faithfully tracking his colleague's right on the glide slope; hold it there!" cigarette 100 yards away. Nothing wrong As the flare-path came in sight the pilot with the missiles at all. In turn, the took over manually, squinting through the armourer was replaced by an instrument cleared space of his windshield as the run- _ fitter who plugged in the ground power and way rushed at him through the haze. With switched on the gyros. In less than two his heart in his mouth the pilot rounded out minutes both gyros erected and stabilised. and dropped the Lightning neatly on the Smiling at the small group at the foot of the runway threshold at 175 knots. After slam- steps, the instrument fitter slowly lowered ming the throttles back to ground idle, he the half-ton cockpit canopy and pressurised swiftly moved his left hand upwards and the cockpit from the ground supply. No pulled the brake parachute release. With a problems: the pressurisation was working reassuring jerk the brake chute opened and 4g it always had—perfectl: the Lightning lost speed swiftly. a No doubt about it. Those French weath- Turning off the runway, the pilot 4: hattoons really di ly did have some strange punched the brake chute release button and equipment on board. No wonder the dis- ences Ss Set cata, i a gruntled pilots were forced to keep writing back to squadron dispersal, the canopy ? lassified" 1 : slowly raised itself on its hydraulic jacks “Classified” reports on large bags of helium and the pilot eagerly breathed in the fresh with the apparent ability to completely winter breeze, For the first time he realised CTipple a front-line fighter at will. UFOs? just how cold he was. England in winter Perish the thought—who’'d believe rubbish was hot by comparison with the tempera- _ like that anyway! tures at the edge of space itself. Climbing © by Otto Jewell, 4 August 1993 A New Zealand spiritualist who com- munes with departed souls has complained that terrestrial signals may interfere with his afterlife line. The US telephone company BellSouth is to erect 34 antennae in and around Wellington for a cellular phone network. The company surveyed the locals for reac-’ tions to the plan but probably didn't bargain on the clairvoyant's complaint. His case was that his contact with the departed friends and loved ones Of his clients would be adversely affected by the ‘antennae. BellSouth took his concerns seriously enough to send a staff member around to “talk through his concerns". Perhaps they picked up a few tips in the process. In any case, it appears the soothsayer has been soothed and BellSouth is reportedly confident he won't be taking the matter to a higher authority. (Sources: Sunshine Coast Daily, The Australian, 24 August 1993) Just when you thought sex-starved Norwegian bears were the ringleaders in the cattle mutilation stakes (see "Twilight Zone" vol. 2, no. 15), along comes alarm- ing fresh evidence from Alabama (so it couldn't have been the bears after all, unless they've been mysteriously transport- ed to the USA!—Ed.) In the six months to April, 32 cattle mutilations were reported in two northeast- em counties . Of one such mutilation, rancher Jimmy Pope of Geraldine, Alabama, said, "The cow's udder had been cut off cleaner than you could cut it with a razor. ...I'd be will- ing to bet my life it was no predator." The cow, found in a pasture 500 feet from his house, "had an oval-shaped cut on her shoulder where skin and had been removed; there was no blood nowhere, and the mouth had been cut in an oval shape and the teeth had been removed surgical- ly," Mr Pope said. Denver pathologist Dr John Altshuler examined under the microscope some tis- sue samples from another Alabama cow. These showed that the blood around the cut tissue had been "cooked", indicating that temperatures of at least 300 degrees had been used to make or cauterise the cuts. Police officer Ted Oliphant of Fyffe, Alabama, reported traces of a chemical substance found at the scene of a cattle mutilation. 60°NEXUS AFTERWORLD ANTENNA ANGST COWABUNGLE! OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 1993