Close Encounters of the Third Kind Read Free Page A

now, still above me and descending.”
    “Can you tell aircraft type?”
    The pilot’s voice was matter-of-fact, considering the information he was about to report. “Negative. No distant outline. The target is brilliant. Has the brightest anticollision lights I’ve ever seen—alternating white to red and the colors are striking.”
    The other sector controllers were now looking and listening. The coordinator reached up, pushed a button, called someone and mumbled indistinctly.
    Harry sat back on his high stool for a moment and eyed the radar scopes. “TWA 517,” he called to the other aircraft. “Can you confirm?”
    A different voice came over the loudspeaker. “Center, this is TWA 517. Traffic now looks like extra bright landing lights. I thought Aireast had his landing lights on.”
    The coordinator said, “What do we have here, Harry?”
    “Say again, TWA 517,” Aireast asked.
    The TWA pilot enunciated slowly and clearly. “Do you have your landing lights on?”
    “Negative.”
    Harry broke in. “TWA 517, Indianapolis Center. Aireast is your twelve o’clock position, fifteen miles same direction and altitude. Ident, please.” He turned to his coordinator, saying, “Aireast claims he has unusual traffic almost at his altitude. I don’t know who it is.”
    The TWA identification appeared on the screen and Harry asked the pilot if he had the Aireast jet in sight.
    “Affirmative.”
    “TWA 517, do you have Aireast’s traffic in sight?”
    “Yes,” the pilot said cautiously. “We have it now and have been watching it.”
    “What does traffic appear to be doing?”
    “Just what Aireast 31 said.”
    Aireast 31 cut in. “He’s in a descent about fifteen hundred feet below me. Wait a second . . . Stand by one . . . Okay, Center. Aireast 31 traffic has turned and is coming right for our windshield. We’re turning right and leaving flight level three fifty.”
    Harry Crain jumped off his stool and everyone in the dim room tensed.
    The coordinator turned and said, “Get on the phone to Wright-Patterson and see what the hell they could be testing up there.”
    “Aireast 31, roger,” Harry said at the same time. “Descend and maintain flight level three one zero . . . Allegheny DC-9, turn thirty degrees right immediately . . . traffic twelve o’clock, two zero miles, Aireast jet descending to FL-310.”
    The Aireast pilot, still remarkably low key, said, “Luminous traffic now in angular descent and exhibiting some nonballistic motions.”
    Harry and his coordinator just looked at each other and said nothing.
    “Okay, Center,” Aireast said conversationally. “Traffic is coming on strong. Ultra bright and really moving.”
    “This is TWA 517,” the other pilot said. “We’re going to go a little right to keep away from traffic also.”
    “TWA 517, roger,” Harry Crain said. “Deviations to right of course approved.”
    “Center, Aireast 31 is out of three one zero and traffic has passed off our ten o’clock, five hundred yards and really moving.”
    The team supervisor, who had moved in the dim room to a point just behind Harry, spoke for the first time. “Ask them if they want to report officially.”
    “Aireast 31, roger,” Harry said. “Report flight level three one zero. TWA 517, do you want to report a UFO?”
    There was only static for several moments. Then: “Negative . . . We don’t want to report.”
    “Aireast 31, do you wish to report a UFO?”
    More static.
    “Negative. We don’t want to report one of those either.”
    “Aireast 31,” Harry Crain persisted. “Do you wish to file a report of any kind?”
    “I wouldn’t know what kind of report to file, Center.”
    Harry smiled and started to relax. “Me neither,” he said. “I’ll try to track traffic to destination.”
    “And show us at level three one zero now,” the pilot said, and then added, almost as an afterthought, “The stews in the back tell me that passengers were snapping pictures of traffic