Saucer: The Conquest Read Free

said we will never know, because he was joined by four of his colleagues, and they were instantly lost in a discussion of the wondrous things they saw about them.
    Newton Chadwick, on the other hand, found the latches to the machinery compartment hatch, figured out how they worked and scuttled through. From his pocket he produced a small flashlight. With it on, he closed the hatch behind him. The scientists standing shoulder to shoulder in the cockpit paid no attention.
    • • •
    The discussion that evening in the mess hall was curiously antiseptic, Newton thought. During dinner the scientists had been animated, filled to overflowing with wonder and awe at the things they had seen that day. They chattered loudly, rudely interrupted each other and talked when no one was listening. When the mess trays were cleared away and mugs of coffee distributed by soldiers in aprons, the senior man pulled out a message pad and pencil and laid them on the table before him. The conversation died there.
    “What should we tell Washington?” he asked, all business.
    His colleagues were tongue-tied. None was ready to commit his ideas to paper and be held accountable by his professional peers into all eternity. “We don’t know enough,” Fred muttered. He was the unofficial spokesman, it seemed to young Newton, who sat in one corner watching and listening.
    Chadwick had said nothing during dinner. As a young man he had learned the truth of the old adage that learning occurs when one’s mouth is shut. He had listened carefully to all the comments, dismissing most, and collected the wisdom of those who had a bit to offer.
    He had no intention of opening his mouth, so he was startled when the senior man said sharply, “Chadwick, you were scurrying around inside that saucer today like a starving mouse. What do you think?”
    Young Newton pondered his answer. Finally he said cautiously, “I don’t think the Germans made it.”
    “Well, fiddlesticks! I think we can all agree on that.” The senior man surveyed the faces around the table over the top of his glasses. “Can’t we?”
    “Maybe the swastika burned off when it entered the atmosphere,” some spoilsport suggested.
    They wrangled all evening. At ten o’clock the senior man left, thoroughly disgusted, and trekked through the Nevada night to the radio tent. There he wrote the report to Washington. He read it through, crossed out a sentence in the middle and corrected the grammar. Finally he signed the form and handed it to the radio clerk to encode. He took solace from the fact that the message was classified and would never, ever, be read by his faculty colleagues at the university. He paused to light his pipe as the clerk read his composition.
    “Can you make that out?” he asked gruffly.
    The clerk looked at him with wide eyes. “Seems clear enough, sir.”
    The senior scientist left the tent in a cloud of tobacco smoke.
    This is the message the encryption clerk read:
    “Team spent day examining the flying saucer, which appears to be a spaceship manufactured upon another planet, undoubtedly in another solar system, by a highly advanced civilization using industrial processes unknown on earth. Appears to be powered by some form of atomic energy. No weapons found. Recommend that extensive, thorough examination continue on a semipermanent basis. Knowledge to be gained will revolutionize every scientific field.”
    The encryption clerk whistled in amazement and went to work with the code book.
    • • •
    In the darkness outside the sleeping tent, Newton Chadwick sat in the sand and fingered the headband he had “borrowed” from the saucer. The magic wasn’t in the headband, which was merely a fabric that contained thousands of tiny wires, each thinner than a human hair. This headband, Newton believed, was the way the pilot of the saucer communicated with the electronic brain of the machine. That electronic brain was the heart of the saucer. True, there was a nuclear