Hidden Truth/Hidden Truth.iso/data/space/weirdimages+ufo/alt3-4.txt

Text File | 1996-07-14 | 115.8 KB | 2,646 lines

     Monday, February 2, 1976.  James Riggerford, 42, happily
married with three children, walked from his beachside home
south-west of Houston, Texas, sometime shortly after 3:00
a.m. - two days after resigning as the Operations
Administrator with NASA. His body, found clad in pajamas, was
later recovered from the Gulf of Mexico.
     Tuesday, September 7, 1976.  Roger Marshall-Smith, a 31-
year-old physicist who had recently returned from temporary
attachment to NASA in America, was living with his parents in
Winchester, Hampshire.  They found him just after 1:00 a.m. -
two hours after they had all gone to sleep - in flames at the
bottom of the stairs.  He had apparently, while still asleep,
doused his clothing with turpentine and then set fire to
himself.  The agony of burning had awakened him but it was
then too late to save his life.
     Saturday, January 15, 1977.  James Arthur Carmichael,
35, aerospace technician, hurtled inexplicably to his death
at 4:35 a.m. from a sixteenth-floor hotel bedroom window in
Washington.  Friends said that he had seemed happy and in
normal spirits the previous evening and had gone to bed alone
at about midnight.  He, too, was wearing pajamas.
     Were these three men victims of "telepathic sleep-jobs"?
We do not claim to know but we consider it reasonable to
suggest that the possibility cannot now be discounted.  And
what of the "regional officer" mentioned in the transcript?
The answer to that question was to come, eventually, in the
most unexpected way.
     Benson returned to the production office and Simon
Butler joined Clements in the little room behind Studio B.
"How were things with Fergus?" he asked.
     "Not good," said Clements miserably.  "He wants to junk
Colin's interview with Grodin.  Quite frankly, Simon, the
whole thing looks like it's getting screwed up...unless,
maybe, you can squeeze more out of Gerstein."
     "You mean Alternative 3?"
     Clements nodded.  "That's what it all seems to hinge
     on," he said.  "Gerstein obviously knows about it.  Or,
     at least, he knows the theory..."
     "There's a big difference between knowing and talking."
Butler was remembering how he's been given a sherry when what
he's really wanted was an answer.  "When I say him in March
he was quite definite.  He simply didn't want to know..."
     "Try him again," urged Clements.  "Tell him everything
you know ... what we've got from Grodin and Broadbent ...
tell him the lot ... and then see if you can't persuade him."
     "Well," said Butler.  "I'm prepared to try..."
     Two days later he was back in that book-lined study in
     Cambridge.  And, to his surprise, Gerstein eventually
     agreed to talk about Alternative 3.  At first Gerstein
     was very much on his guard, very reluctant to be drawn,



                             127
     but he listened courteously to all Butler had to say.
     "You people have done your homework pretty thoroughly,"
he acknowledged.  He re-lit his dead pipe and stared
thoughtfully at the desk.  "There doesn't seem any point now
in me not telling you what I know..."
     Here is a transcript of the interview which followed --
as it was presented on television:


GERSTEIN:  You already know about Alternatives 1 and 2 -
     and why they were rejected.  Well ... Alternative 3
     offered a more limited option -- an attempt to
     ensure the survival of at least a small proportion
     of the human race.  We were theorists, remember,
     not technicians ... but we realized we were talking
     about the kind of space travel that - twenty years
     ago - seemed no more than science fiction.
BUTLER:  You mean...go to some other planet?
GERSTEIN:  I mean get the hell off this one - while
     there was still time!  I had no idea whether it
     would, or could, be done.  And I still don't.
BUTLER:  Did you have any ideas about who might go?
GERSTEIN:  I remember we discussed the kind of cross-
     section we'd like to see get away ... a balance
     of the sciences and the arts, of course, and,
     indeed, all aspects, as far as possible, f human
     culture ... The list would never be complete - but
     it would be better than nothing.
BUTLER:  And these people ... where was it visualized
     they might go?
GERSTEIN:  Ah, now that was the big question.  There are
     about 100,000 million stars in the Milky Way -about
     equal to the number of people who have ever walked
     this earth - and as long ago as 1950 Fred Hoyle was
     estimating that more than a million of those stars
     had planets which could support human life...
BUTLER:  So it really was as vague and theoretical as
     that?
GERSTEIN:  In 1957 ... at the time of the Huntsville
     Conference ... yes.  But the situation has changed
     quite considerably since then.  Now the most
     distinct possibility seems to be Mars..."
BUTLER:  Mars!
GERSTEIN:  Yes, I can imagine your viewers raising their
     eyebrows because most people think of Mars in terms
     of little green men with aerials sticking
     out of their heads ... but, scientifically, our
     attitude to Mars has had to be amended more than
     once.



                             128

In the early days of astronomy, Mars was
     believed to have artificially-constructed canals -
     which was taken as evidence of intelligent life on
     the planet.  Later this theory was discredited.  In
     its place we had a picture of a barren,
     inhospitable planet, inimical to the survival of
     any form of life.
          Then, more recently, an interesting idea was
     put forward:  Suppose life did at one time exist on
     Mars...
          As the climate and conditions worsened, any
     surviving life may have evolved into a state of
     hibernation, awaiting the return of more favorable
     conditions.  It has even been suggested that the
     actual atmosphere which used to support life may
     have become locked up in the planet's surface soil.
          There was an occurrence several years ago
     which made this theory very persuasive.  Mars has
     always had a covering of cloud, varying in density
     at different times, until the time of which I
     speak, when the cloud thickened to a degree never
     previously observed.  This happened, and was
     scientifically recorded, in 1961.
          It was obvious that storms of colossal
     proportions were taking place on Mars.  Now...this
     is the really interesting bit ... when the clouds
     eventually cleared, some remarkable changes were
     seen.  The polar ice caps had substantially
     decreased in size, and around the equatorial
     regions a broad band of darker coloring had
     appeared.  This, it has been suggested, was
     vegetation.
BUTLER:  Has anyone explained this happening?
GERSTEIN:  At a conference shortly before it happened,
     I put forward a theoretical suggestion.  I said
     that if the atmosphere of Mars was in fact locked
     into the surface soil, then a controlled nuclear
     explosion might be able to release it - and, of
     course, revive whatever life was in hibernation...
     the only problem was about how to deliver the
     explosion well in advance of arriving there
     ourselves.  That same year the Russians had a great
     space disaster.  Yes, that was in 1959.  Only the
     barest facts are recorded, the rest was kept
     secret.  A rocket blew up at its launching.
     Numbers of people were killed and the area was
     devastated ... what were they trying to launch?
     And did they finally succeed?
          Was that rocket carrying a nuclear device
     which accounted for the devastation it caused?  A
     nuclear device which, on a second attempt, could


                             129
     have reached the surface of Mars to cause the
     dynamic changes recorded in 1961?
     The sudden outbreaks of storms on Mars, the
     dwindling of the ice caps, the growth of what
     appears to be vegetation in the tropical zone ...
     all that is recorded scientific fact.


     The interview, as transmitted, ended at that point.  The
original version, before being edited, contained this
additional exchange:


BUTLER:  But I don't understand ... the pictures relayed
     from Viking 2 on Mars ... they showed little more
     than a plateau of red rock ... the sort of terrain
     that seemed to offer little prospect of survival...
GERSTEIN:  I don't pretend to understand that either.
     But, as you've already told me, there does seem to
     be some sort of cover-up going on.  Maybe you
     should take that up with someone more up-to-date in
     these matters ... someone who is abreast of modern
     developments in aerospace ...
BUTLER:  Yes...maybe Charles Welbourne can help us
     there.  But there's one other aspect I'd like to
     discuss with you, Dr. Gerstein, and that's to do
     with animals, birds, insects and so on.  It's all
     very well talking about transporting man off to a
     new life on a different planet but how much of his
     environment could he, or should he, take with him?
GERSTEIN:  That's one you ought to put to a biologist.
     Stephen Manderson ... Professor Stephen Manderson
     ...was also at Huntsville and he's a singularly
     pleasant man...very approachable.


     Butler telephoned Clements from Cambridge and Clements
instructed Terry Dickson to make the necessary arrangements
with Manderson.  Kate White interviewed him the following day
at his home in Reigate, Surrey.  The interview went well but,
as you may remember, it was not included in the transmitted
program.  Clements has explained that he was forced to omit
it because, despite his pleas, his screen time was severely
limited.  ITN's News at Ten, scheduled to follow that edition
of Science Report, could not be delayed.  And, Harman had
told him, he could not continue after the news because the
rest of the evening had been allocated to programs from other
companies.
     We consider that, in this instance, an exception should
have been made to the rigid pattern of ITV's program-
planning.  Manderson's views were fascinating.  They were
also extremely pertinent.

                             130
     "The Bible concept of taking two of every type of
creature into the ark ... that, in this context, would be
impossible and quite irrational," he said.  "Man, basically,
is a selfish creature.  There's nothing much wrong in that
because a certain degree of selfishness is necessary for
survival.
     "We wear other creatures and make cloths and cosmetics
out of them and, in fact, we use them in all sorts of ways.
So in this Alternative 3 operation - if, indeed, there is
such an operation - it would surely be logical to select only
those we wanted to take with us.
     "Would we want to take rats and mosquitoes, for
instance?  Of course not!  We'd be given the opportunity to
create the ideal environment for ourselves and, for the very
first time, we'd be able to choose which creatures should
share that environment.  It would be a most marvellous
opportunity.
     "But think of the species we could happily do without.
Starlings ... rooks ... pea-moths ... eelworms which do such
damage to crops like potatoes and sugar-beet ... what
possible use are any of them to us?
     "Do you realize that three million species of insects
have already been taxonomically classified and that, because
of the present rate of insect evolution, the total
classification will never be completed!
     "And consider the damage they do!  In India alone
insects consume more food every year that nine million human
beings - and that's in a country where there's widespread
starvation.
     "No ... leave them here and let them perish.  Man
doesn't need them ..."
     Kate White interrupted:  "But surely some of the most
humble creatures are useful to man.  Earthworms, for
instance, aerate the soil and ..:
     "Earthworms, like every other species, would have to be
properly assessed for usefulness," said Manderson briskly.
"Gophers, for example, might prove to be more efficient.  In
the Canadian plains they perform exactly the same function as
earthworms.  Vast tracts there have no worms and it's the
gopher which turns vegetable mould into rich loam ... no, as
I said, each case would have to be scientifically assessed."
     "But what about the sort of creatures we now keep in
zoos?  Creatures like lions and giraffes and elephants?"
     Manderson seemed surprised by her naivety.  "Well, what
about them?  It wouldn't be good economics to shuttle them
off to another planet - even if sufficient transport were
available.  They'd have to die and, quite frankly, it
wouldn't make one iota of difference.
     I beg you, Miss White, not to get bogged down in
sentimentality.  It's fashionable but it really is quite
pointless.


                             131


     "The dinosaurs lasted on this earth for a hundred
million years - fifty times as long as man has been around --
but the world goes on very well without them.  And it's been
the same with so many other creatures.  How many people,
would you say, have ever been in mourning for the dinomys?"
     "Dinomys?  I'm sorry...I don't quite follow..."
     "Precisely!  You're an educated young lady but you've
never even heard of them, have you?  Dinomys ... rat-like
creatures which grew as big as calves ... used to flourish
in South America.  Polar bears and ostriches ... they'll be
the same one day ... people will look blank, just as you did
a moment ago, when their names are mentioned."
     He smiled, and ruffled his finger through his hair.  "I
could give you example after example - just to show how
narrow the conventional view-point really is..."
     "But creatures like bears ... they seem so, well, so
permanent..."
     "So did the onactornis."
     "Onactornis?"
     "Carnivorous bird...eight feet tall...couldn't fly but
terrorized smaller creatures for millions of years."
Kate White was anxious to divert the interview into more
positive channels.  Clements, she knew, would hardly thank
her for wasting so much film footage on a philosophical
discussion about prehistoric monsters.  That, in her
experience, was one of the troubles with experts.  They often
got carried away with their own cleverness.  They liked, in
fact, to show off.  "But if on assumes that the basic premise
is correct, that men are colonizing Mars, wouldn't they have
to start from scratch with stocking an entire new world?  And
wouldn't that be a almost unsuperable task?"
     "Not when you understand the facts or life," said
     Manderson.  "You've heard, of course, about the
experiments which have resulted in the creation of test-tube
babies..."
     "Yes, but..."
     "But do you realize that enough female eggs to produce
     the entire next generation of the human race could be
     packed into the shell of a single chicken's egg?"
     "Goodness!  I' no idea."
     "And the same convenient compactness, Miss White,
     applies to other creatures.  A mother cod, for example,
     can lay up to six million eggs at a single spawning.
     Fortunately most of those eggs are destroyed before they
     develop into fish...or else there'd be no room for
     people to paddle off our beaches.  If they all survived
     the seas of our world would be solid masses of cod by
     now - and they could all survive if nurtured in the
     right conditions.


                             132
          "There was a ling caught, not so long ago, which
     was carrying more that 28 million eggs!  So you can see
     right away how easy it would be to stock any seas there
     may be on Mars..."
          "That's assuming there's nothing already in those
seas."
     "Granted - and there may well be for all we know."
     "But what if tiny things in the Martian seas - or on the
     Martian land for that matter - were harmful to man or
     were a nuisance to man?"
     "Then we'd have to use our initiative to balance the
     ecology in our favor.  It's been done often enough
     before, y'know.  Sparrows, for instance, were first
     imported into New York in the middle of the nineteenth
     century - simply to attack tree-worms..."
          "But wouldn't that automatically bring other
problems?  What about the creatures that live on the
creatures you'd have to introduce to strike this ecological
balance?"  She paused, trying to grasp for a good example.
Manderson, she'd decided by this time, was a cold and
unlikeable man.  He seemed to lack soul and she couldn't
resist the temptation to bait him just a little.  "Like
hedgehogs?" she said triumphantly.
     "I beg your pardon?"
     "Hedgehogs," she repeated.  "I heard somewhere that they
get withdrawal symptoms and become quite neurotic if they are
deprived of their fleas..."
     Manderson smiled indulgently.  "I'm sorry," he said.  "I
don't pretend to be an authority on neurotic hedgehogs and I
do feel we're starting to get in rather deep.  Can I help you
in any other way?"
     "Just on last question.  In this new world - as you see
it, Professor Manderson - is there any room for creatures
that people simply enjoy ... creatures like squirrels and
nightingales?"
     "Not unless their productivity value were proved," said
Manderson.  "No room at all."
     "You know something," said Kate.  "I find that very,
very sad."



     Charles Welbourne, interviewed on screen by Colin
Benson, agreed that there was an obvious conflict between the
description of Mars offered by Gerstein and the pictures
which had been released by NASA.
     "Many people have also wondered why NASA should
apparently have been so stingy on its photographic budget,"
he said.  "Particularly when you consider how important the
pictures are supposed to be."
     "Why should people wonder in that way?" prompted Benson.


                             133
     Welbourne pointed to a blow-up photograph of "familiar"
Martian terrain which was mounted on a board in the studio.
"That picture there almost says it for me," he said.  "We're
told that they spent all that money putting that probe on
Mars and then what do they do?  They equip it, if you please,
with a camera which can focus only up to one hundred meters.
And that, as somebody observed, is about the size of a large
film studio.
     "It doesn't start to add up.  If they'd really wanted
good pictures of Mars they would have fitted a vastly
superior camera system  Better cameras are available - make
no mistake about that - but the one they used ... well, it
was almost as if they'd deliberately fitted blinkers to the
whole mission."
     "You mean they were determined that we should see only
what they wanted us to see?"
     "That could well be.  You've got to remember that all
these pictures we get come in through NASA - they're simply
passed on to the rest of us.  So if they tell us it's Mars
... well, we have to believe them.
     "It's exactly the same soundwise, of course.  I mean, we
don't hear everything that's said between Mission Control and
the spacecraft.  There's a second channel.  They call it the
biological channel ... "
     "We did learn a little about that from Otto Binder,"
said Benson.
     "Sure, Binder the former NASA man ... I remember he did
blow the gaff on that after Apollo 13 ... well, this
biological channel is officially just for reporting on
medical details.  In fact, though, they switch to it whenever
they have something to say they don't want the whole world
listening in on ..."
     Welbourne paused, looked thoughtfully at the Martian
picture.  "I've just had a crazy thought," he said.  "How
about if that picture wasn't taken on Mars?  Look at it
closely ... don't you agree that could have been shot in some
studio in Burbank?"
     We should stress that Welbourne had been told nothing of
the other pictures which we know were "dummied-up" in a
studio - the ones of people like Brian Pendlebury which were
an integral part of The Smoother Plan.
     He had no idea then how near the mark he was with his
"crazy thought".
     The proof came unexpectedly.  It came from Harry
Carmell's girlfriend Wendy - the one who had ordered Benson
and his crew out of that derelict house in Lambeth.
     And Wendy was very frightened.






                             134
                       SECTION   ELEVEN



     Wendy had not gone  back to that house in Lambeth - not
since the day Harry had disappeared.  She had returned on
that morning with the bandage and antiseptic and, realizing
that Harry had gone, she had panicked and fled.  He couldn't
have managed to get out on his own, not in the state he was
in, so someone must have taken him.
     Obviously he had been found by them - those mysterious
men he'd sworn were determined to kill him - and she knew
then, deep down, that she'd never see him again.
     She had to get away.  Far away.  She had to hide.  Or
they might find her and kill her too.  An hour later she was
thumbing a lift to Birmingham.  There was no special
attraction in Birmingham.  It just so happened that that's
where the lorry was going.  And it seemed a long way from
London.  They would not find her in Birmingham.
     However, she had taken no chances there.  She had kept
on the move, rarely staying in one place for more than a
couple of nights, for she had a frightening feeling that,
somehow< they might catch her just as they had caught Harry.
She also, as she has since told us, felt guilty.  She felt
she had let Harry down.  For she kept remembering that small
box which he had considered so important, the one he had
hidden under floorboards in the derelict house, and she knew
that she should have retrieved it.  She'd forgotten all about
it in the flurry of leaving but Harry had wanted so
desperately to get it to the television people.  It held the
key, he'd told her, to something important ... to some tape
which had been made by the dead man Ballantine.  She felt she
ought to get that box to that colored chap Benson.  She ought
to do that because Harry had been good to her and she owed
him that much.  But now it would mean going back to the
house.  And she dreaded stepping back into danger ...
     She finally made up her mind on Thursday, June 9.  She
took a train to London and travelled by bus across the city.
And by 3:30 p.m. she was at number 88 - walking between the
posts where the front gate had once been.
     Now there was no rubbish in the front garden and the
boarding at the windows had been replaced by glass.  Other
attempts had been made to brighten and improve the terraced
house.  The steps at the end of the cleared path were freshly
scrubbed and the door, slightly ajar, had recently been
painted in bright canary yellow.
     All the neighboring houses looked just as she remember
them but number 88 had been dramatically transformed.  It was
a building which had been snatched back from decay.




                             135
     Through the windows of the front ground-floor room she
could see a group of young people - all in their late teens
or early twenties - who were kneeling silently, with their
eyes shut, in a circle.
     Wendy hesitated, anxious and disappointed.  She had
expected the house to be empty, just as it had been when she
and Harry had first found it in February.  She had
anticipated merely walking in, of going quietly to the first-
floor room where the floorboards were loose, of hurrying
away, unseen, with the box.  Now it couldn't be like that at
all...  The youngsters were still kneeling, trance-like,
apparently lost in some communal meditation.  They might not
notice her, she thought, if she were stealthy enough and fast
enough.  But, on the other hand, there might be more of them
in other rooms.  There might be some in the room where Harry
had hidden the box...
     She tapped with her knuckles at the door - tentatively,
at first, and then harder.
     Footsteps approached across the bare boards of the hall.
Then the door was opened wide by a tall and immensely scrawny
man with long hair and an unkempt ginger beard.  His feet
were bare and he was wearing tattered blue jeans patched with
bits of floral curtaining.  His eyes - dark and deep-set and
staring with fierce intensity - were oddly disconcerting and
he was older than the people in the front room.  In his mid-
thirties, maybe, or even nudging forty.
     "Good afternoon sister," he said.  "Jesus loves you."
His voice was deeply resonant and his accent was strongly
east London.
     "Who are you?" asked Wendy.
     "Eliphaz," he replied solemnly.  "Eliphaz the Temanite."
     "Look ... I used to live here ... a few months ago I was
living here and I left something important behind ..."
     "The only thing that is truly important is Jesus.  Has
He entered your heart?  He is waiting - waiting for you to
invite Him in ..."
     "So I was wondering if I could just pop in and collect
it ..."
     The man stepped back, gestured for her to follow, and
Wendy noticed for the first time that he was holding a small
Bible.  "Here in the Temple everyone is welcome," he said.
     Could this, Wendy wondered, be a trap?  Harry had never
told her what they looked like.  Could this bizarre character
- this Eliphaz or whatever he called himself - be one of
them?  Questions raced through her mind.  Would she, if she
went inside, disappear like Harry?
     She had a great urge to run away, to forget the whole
thing.  Why should she go further into danger ... it really
wasn't her responsibility ...
     "Come on in ... Jesus is here," said the man
encouragingly.  "And you need Jesus."


                             136
     Wendy pointed to the youngsters who were still kneeling
in their silent circle.  "What are they doing in there?" she
asked.  'All you people ... who exactly are you?"
     "We are the Children of Heavenly Love," said the man.
"We were sinners and we lived in the bondage of the flesh but
Jesus Christ, the greatest revolutionary of them all, has
entered our hearts and saved us from sin."  He closed his
eyes, screwed up his face in apparent anguish, held his Bible
high.  "Thank you, oh thank you, Lord Jesus," he said.  He
opened his eyes, smiled, extended a hand in invitation.
     "Eliphaz ..." said Wendy.  "Is that your real name?"
     "It became my name when I entered into the love of
Christ," he said.  "Before I found the Lord I was called Jack
- Jack Perkins.  But now I am saved and the old me, the
wicked me, has gone for ever ..."
     No, she decided, he wasn't acting.  No-one could act
like that.  Not unless he was someone like Michael Caine.
This one just had to be a genuine Jesus freak ...
     "That thing I mentioned," she said.  "I left it upstairs
...under the floorboards for safety..."
     "You are more than welcome to come in," said the man.
"Here in the Temple we do not wish to keep things which are
the possessions of others."
     She followed him through the hall and up the stairs.
And she was amazed by the transformation.  The place had been
cleaned and the walls had been painted.  And the entire
building had a curious atmosphere of tranquillity.
     All three doors on the landing were open.  Wendy
indicated the front room.  "In there," she said.
     The man stopped, put a hand on her arm.  "I forgot to
ask your name."
     Instant suspicion.  "Why do you need to know it?"
     He smiled, shook his head sadly.  "There is fear in you,
sister.  You should accept the Lord and let Him help you..."

     "Why is my name important?" persisted Wendy.
     Another smile.  "So that I can introduce you to my
brothers," he said.  "They will expect me to introduce you."
     Then Wendy noticed there were two young men in the room.
Both, she would have guessed, were about eighteen and both
were dressed in the style of the man called Eliphaz.  There
was no furniture, not even the old sofa which had been there,
and the two of them were seated on the bare boards.  They
were studying Bibles, mouthing words silently as if trying to
memorize them.
     "Wendy," she said quietly.  "My name is Wendy."
     Both youngsters immediately looked up and scrambled to
their feet.  They were smiling broadly and welcomingly.
     "This is Wendy," said Eliphaz.
     He took Wendy's elbow, eased her firmly into the room.



                             137
"This here is Lazarus, one of our brothers from America," he
said.  "And our friend over here used to be called Arthur.
But now he's filled with the Spirit and he's become Canaan.
Canaan the Rechabite."
     "Jesus loves you, Wendy," said Lazarus politely.
"Praise the Lord!"  He spoke with the warm and homely drawl
of the Deep South.  On the knuckles of his right hand was
tattooed the word "love".  A matching tattoo on his left
knuckles said "hate".
     "Yes, Jesus surely loves you," said Arthur who had
become Canaan.  Wendy could immediately identify his
Birmingham origins.
     They stared at her, now waiting for her to take the
initiative, and their solemn sincerity made her feel oddly
uncomfortable.  "Thank you," she said.  It sounded
ridiculously inadequate and there was an awkward silence.
She indicated the section of the floor where the sofa had
been and turned to Eliphaz the Temanite.  "It should be just
there," she said.  "Under the loose boards."
     He nodded.  "You need help?"
     "No...no, thank you...I can manage."
     They watched while she went down on her knees and
started trying to prise up one of the boards.
     "Wendy...do you know Jesus?"  Lazarus put the question
casually.  He might almost have been asking about the
weather.
     "Sure."  She has pre-occupied with her work and she did
not look up.  "Sure I know Him."  The board was fixed more
firmly than she'd expected.
     "I mean really know Him." said Lazarus more vehemently.
"There's a whole heap of dudes out there in the systemite
world, in all them fine churches an' all, who reckon they
know Jesus but they wouldn't even recognize Him if He stopped
them in the street..."
     The board was now rising from the floor.  Wendy wormed
her fingers under it and started to tug.
     "I tell ya...He was an unwashed hairy hippy from the
slums of Galilee...but, ya gotta believe me, that cat was for
real," said Lazarus.  "And he still is today..."
     Loud creaks as the bit of wood bent and finally burst
away from the retaining nails.  Wendy peered down into the
darkness, put a hand down to grope around.  Nothing.  She
must have picked the wrong board.
     "...yes, He's here with us today...He's right here in
this room...and, I tell ya, He's here with us today...He's
right here in this room...and, I tell ya, He's a mind blower.
     Maybe it was a bit nearer the window.  Yes, now she came
to think of it, the board had been just behind the sofa.  She
moved across, started again.




                             138
     "He's the ultimate trip, Wendy...and you wanna get right
there with Him because there ain't much time left..."
     This board was much looser.  She jiggled it a little to
get a better grip and then lifted it.
          "...it's all right here in the Bible...how the
seven vials of the wrath of God will be poured over the
nations..."
     There it was!  She snatched up the box, got to her feet.
"Thank you," she said.  "I'm sorry to have interrupted you."
     Eliphaz, she now realized, had placed himself squarely
between her and the door.  His face was coldly resolute and
his arms were folded across his chest.  "That box is yours
and whatever is in it is yours...but I have to ask you one
question," he said.  "Does it contain drugs?"
     Suddenly he seemed bigger than before.  Bigger and more
powerful.  And her old fears about them came flooding back.
She had been a fool to return to this house...
     Lazarus and Canaan the Rechabite seemed to be closing in
on her, one on either side, and her stomach was churning with
panic.  "I've got to go now."  She was struggling to control
her voice, to stop it going all squeaky.  "Please let me go."
     "It's all here in the Book of Revelation."  Lazarus
appeared to be unaware of what was happening in the room.  He
was preoccupied entirely with his own thoughts, with his
convictions about the imminent End of Time.  "Listen to
this...the Bible gaves facts and details...it don't mess
about..."and the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the
sun...and power was given unto him to scorch men with
fire..." "
     Eliphaz held out his hand.  "Give the box to me," and
blasphemed the name of God..."
     "No!" she shouted.  "It's nothing like that!"
     He stood aside to let her pass.  "Please forgive me for
being suspicious."  Now his manner was contritely apologetic.
"We would have taken them if they had been drugs.  We would
have taken them and destroyed them.  You have to realize that
many of our brothers and sisters here were damaged by
drugs...in their days of fleshly bondage."
     "Then you're letting me go?"
     "Of course - but please come back to see us again," said
Eliphaz.  "All God's children are welcome here in the
Temple."
     "Let Jesus into your heart, Wendy," said Lazarus as she
walked to the landing.  "He loves you real good."
     "Hallelujah!" added Canaan the Birmingham Rechabite.
     Eliphaz escorted her to the front door.  "Don't forget,
sister, that you do need Jesus," he said.  "God be with you."
     She ran from the house, along the street around a corner
to a telephone box.  She dialled the number for Sceptre
Television.  "Please may I speak with Colin Benson?"
     "Hold on," said the operator.  "I'm just putting you
through..."

                             139
     Terry Dickson had prepared a background-information
sheet about Mars for Clements so that some of the details
could be fed into the program's links.  It said:


     Mars has a diameter about half that of Earth and is
officially classified, together with Mercury and Venus,
as one of the inferior planets in our sun's family of
planets.
     It is our nearest neighbor among the planets -
being 12.6 light minutes away from the sun, compared
with our 8.3 light minutes.  You will see this in
perspective when I point out that Neptune and Pluto are
250 and 327 light minutes from the sun respectively.
     The principal significance of this is that Neptune
and Pluto, together with the other giant planets, Saturn
and Uranus, would be far too cold to support life as we
understand it.
     Conversely, Mercury and Venus - 3.2 and 6 light
minutes from the sun respectively - would be too hot.
     Mars is appreciably cooler than Earth, of course,
but scientists have long been agreed that temperatures
there could be endured by man: the problems, while
serious, should not prove insurmountable.
     The actual distance between Earth and Mars varies
considerably - being anything from 35 million miles to
60 million miles.  This is because Earth moves in an
almost circular orbit while the orbit of Mars is much
more eccentric.
     The predominant red color which has given Mars its
popular name comes from regions very similar to many of
the deserts known on Earth.  Like, or instance, the
Painted Desert of Arizona.
     Green patches which vary in size and shape from
season to season are believed to be caused by the growth
of plants similar to rock lichens.  I am advised that
lichens can survive at lower temperatures than most
terrestrial plants and require very little moisture.
However, pioneering work in the deserts of the Middle
East has proved that more valuable crops can be grown if
a region is properly irrigated and tended.  That could
apply equally well to the desert regions of Mars so
making it possible, at least in theory, for man to
become self-supporting there.
     ere is no shortage of water or potential water.
It has been known for thirty years, as a result of work
done at Yerkes Observatory near Chicago, that the polar
caps of Mars are composed of snow.  This snow could be
converted into water which could then be channelled as
required.



                             140
     The one question which has apparently still not
been satisfactorily resolved is that of atmosphere.
     Does Mars have air which we could breathe?  The
answer, quite frankly, is that no-one really seems to
know.  I've now spoken to a number of scientists who are
confident that appreciable quantities of free oxygen
probably did exist there at one time.  It may well be
that, as Gerstein has suggested, life supporting
atmosphere has been locked in the surface soil but I
have been unable to find any other expert who is
prepared to publicly endorse that suggestion.
     Obviously the whole question of the possible
colonization of Mars, the central question you asked me
to investigate, depends on the certainty that the planet
has an atmosphere similar to Earth's.  There appears to
be no such certainty.  Gerstein is being decried by most
of his contemporaries in Britain and abroad and, without
wishing to be rude about the man, I wouldn't fancy
sticking my neck out professionally on his say-so.
     In short, Chris, it's a fascinating theory but it
doesn't quite add up.


     Clements read the last few paragraphs through for the
second time and snorted impatiently.  "Well, Terry love, it's
my neck that'll be sticking out - not your," he said.
"Gerstein's got me convinced and I'm prepared to gamble on
him."
     But he didn't need to gamble, not as it turned out.
For, at that moment, Wendy was waiting to talk to Colin
Benson...

     Memo dated June 13, 1977, from Leonard Harman to Mr.
Fergus Godwin, Controller of Programs:


     I have returned to the studios today after a week's
sick leave and I am astonished to learn that it is
apparently your intention to allow the screening of that
interview with the former astronaut Grodin.
     We have already discussed at length the unethical
circumstances under which the interview was conducted
and which resulted in Grodin expressing extravagant
views.  We agreed, I thought, that Grodin's statements
could not possibly be substantiated and that, if
dignified by being included in a program purporting to
be serious, they could do considerable harm.
     The whole of this particular Science Report
program, as I have told you on numerous occasions, is a
blatant example of irresponsible sensationalism which
will reflect adversely on the company's image.


                             141
     Are companies in the rest of the ITV network and
those abroad aware of the troublesome and, indeed,
unsavory background to this production?  I can only
assume not for, otherwise, I am certain they would not
be prepared to buy it.
     Once again, I urge you most strongly to withdraw
this program from the schedules.

Memo dated June 14, 1977, from Fergus Godwin to Leonard
Harman:

     I can no longer agree with you over the remarkable
"brain-drain" investigation which has been mounted by
Clements and his team.
     I grant that it is highly controversial and even
frightening.  It will also cause embarrassment in
certain high places.
     However, I have assessed the evidence which is now
in the program - the product, I might add, of diligent
research and impressive dedication - and I feel we would
be failing in our public duty if we were to suppress
what appears to be the unpalatable truth.
     Since we last spoke I have had the opportunity of
studying Simon Butler's interview with Dr. Gerstein.
Gerstein is a man for whom I have the greatest respect
and no-one of his stature would lend his name to
anything which, in your words, savoured of
"irresponsible  sensationalism".
     Three have been times, as you know, when I have
been perturbed by the unexpected directions in which
this investigation has moved.  I now feel able to set
all my reservations aside.  Clements has my unqualified
support.
     I do not propose to reply in more detail to your
query relating to networking and overseas sales for I
consider that to be irrelevant in light of my present
feelings.

     Memo dated June 15, 1977, from Leonard Harman to
Mr. Anthony Derwent-Smith, Managing Director.

     You are already aware of my severe misgivings in
relation to the Science Report program, scheduled for
network transmission on June 20, in which it is
suggested that there is an international conspiracy to
transport intellectuals and others to life on another
planet.
     I have made my opinions known on many occasions and
I commend your attention, in particular, to the minutes
of the Senior Executives' Meeting held on April 8.  I
warned then against what I recognized as a policy of
expensive folly.

                             142
     I am taking the unusual step of enclosing herewith
copies of all correspondence between the Controller of
Programs and myself on the subject for I feel that, in
view of the damage this production could do to the
reputation of the company, this is a matter in which
you might see fit to intervene.
     I cannot urge too strongly that under no
circumstances should this program be screened.


     Memo dated June 15, 1977, from Anthony Derwent-Smith to
Fergus Godwin:


     See the attached note and pile of bumph which
reached me by hand today from Mr. Harman.
     It is not my practice to become entangled in
differences of opinion between my Controller of Programs
and any of his subordinates - particularly when I am
approached in what I consider to be an underhand manner,
with no copy of the note having apparently been sent to
you.  Nor did I intend to start intervening on this
aspect of program policy which I consider to be entirely
your territory.
     Please deal.


     Godwin re-read the note and the one sent to Derwent-
Smith by Harman.."Cheeky bastard!" he said.  He dialled on
his internal telephone.  "Harman...be in my office within two
minutes.  I'm going to mark your bloody card!"

     Katherine White took the call in the Science Report
office.  "No...Colin Benson's popped out for a coffee...who's
this calling, please"
     "I must speak to him quickly," said Wendy.  "It's
urgent."
     "Can I take a message?  Ask him to call you back?"
All Wendy wanted now was to get rid of the box.  She
anxiously scanned the faces of people loitering near the
telephone box.  Every wasted minute, she felt, put her in
greater danger.  If only she knew what they looked
like..."Could you find him?  It is desperately important."
     "I'll see if I can catch him in the canteen.  Can I give
him a name?"
     "Tell him it's the girl who was with Harry," said Wendy.
"Tell him I've got what Harry wanted to give him."
     "Hold on..."
     "Look...I'm in a pay-box and I'm right out of change..."
     ""Give me the number of the box and then replace the
receiver," said Kate.  "I'll call you right back."


                             143
     Wendy obeyed.  She waited, her back to the door of the
booth.  And she was unaware of the man until he jerked the
door open.  He looked angry and beefily pugnacious.  She gave
a small scream, cowering away from him.  He glowered at her
with distaste.  "You planning on spending the day in here?"
     "I won't be more than a minute...I'm waiting for a
call."
     "Yeah?"  He grabbed her arm, started to pull her.
"Well, I'm waiting to make one.  So come on...out of it."
...Please, this won't take long, really..."
     "Lady, this is a public box and I'm not hanging around
all day while..."
     "At that moment the bell rang.  Wendy shook away the
man's hand, snatched up the receiver, heard Benson's voice.
"Yes, that's right...I was the girl with Harry," she said.
The man muttered aggressively, stepped out of the box and
positioned himself immediately outside.  Wendy spoke quietly,
convinced that the man was trying to eavesdrop.  "I must meet
you," she said.  "Harry had something he wanted to give you
and now I've got it.  But I've got to be careful in case they
are looking for me..."
     They met an hour later at the spot where Benson had
first seen Harry Carmell - outside the fruiterer's in the
street market near the studios.
     "You said they might be looking for you," said Benson.
"Who are they?"
     Wendy shrugged, pulled a face.  "Who knows?" she said.
"Goons, heavies ... Russians, Americans, Germans, Outer
Bloody Mongolians ... what difference does it make?"  She
discreetly gave him the box.  "That's what Harry wanted you
to have - he said something about it helping you see what was
on some tape made by Ballantine.  That make sense to you?"
     "Not much," said Benson.  "Wait here ... I'll have a
shufti inside the box."  He hurried to the nearby men's
lavatory, locked himself in a cubicle and opened the box.  It
contained a square printed circuit and he gave a low whistle
of surprise.  "Well, I'll be..."He put it back in the box,
re-joined Wendy.
     "I've just remembered," she said.  "Harry said you fit
it to an IC40 of something and then you get a juke-box.  Does
that mean anything to you?"
     "I must get back to the studios right away," said
Benson.  "See what sort of tune we can get out of the juke-
box."
     "You don't need me any more?"
     "Where'll you be?"
     "Not sure - but not in London.  There's too much heat in
London."
     Benson tapped the box.  "Surely you'll want to know what
all this adds up to...where can I contact you?"



                             144
     "I'll contact you," she said.  And, as Harry Carmell had
done months earlier, she hurried away and disappeared in the
crowds.
     Technicians at the studios had never before been
presented with such a problem.  They puzzled and experimented
for the best part of an hour before finally getting it right.
And then, in the darkness of the preview theater, Clements
and Benson watched in amazement as the pictures suddenly
started spilling across the large screen.
     "I don't believe it! said Clements.  "Good God...I
simply don't believe it!"










































                             145
                       SECTION   TWELVE



     Every seat in the preview theater was filled. All
members of the Science Report team had been summoned there -
to see what Clements and Benson had been watching only a
little earlier.  Fergus Godwin was also there, sitting next
to Clements, and so were many other executives of the
company.
     Clement's eyes were sparkling with excitement when the
house lights eventually came up.  "Well, Fergus?" he asked.
"What d'you think?"
     Godwin frowned and nibbled at his bottom lip, baffled
and reluctant to commit himself.  "What the hell can I
possibly think?" he countered.  "If what we've just seen is
authentic, if it isn't just an elaborate fake, then the human
race has been conned rotten and we've got the most incredible
television scoop ever.  But...I mean...that can't have
happened - it can't possibly be true!"
     "But it fits in, doesn't it?" persisted Clements.  "It
fits with everything else we've got..."
     "Have you checked with Jodrell Bank?  With people who
worked with Ballantine?"
     "Well, no..."
     "Then do it.  Do it now.  And put the whole thing to
NASA as well.  If we used that in the program and it turned
out to be a stumer ... there'd be the most God-awful blow-
back.  And, I give you fair warning, Chris, I'm not prepared
to carry the can."
     "But NASA are certain to deny it," protested Clements.
"That stands to reason..."
     "Let me know when you've spoken to them."  Godwin got
up, started to leave the theater.  "And I also want to hear
what Jodrell Bank have to say."
     Hendlemann, the man at Jodrell Bank, was friendly and
eager to be helpful.  But, when he heard Benson's description
of what was on the tape, he was utterly sceptical.  "Sir
William never mentioned a word about it," he said.  "And
something of that magnitude ... he'd never have kept it to
himself."
     Benson tried to smother his disappointment.  "But did he
ever say anything to you, or to anyone else, about meeting a
man called Harry something-or-other when he was at NASA last
year?"
     Hendlemann was apologetic.  "Not a thing.  I'm afraid
I'm not being much use to you, Mr. Benson..."
     "Would you ask around?  Maybe he did mention this Harry
to someone else at Jodrell Bank.  I assure you, Mr.
Hendlemann, it really is important."
     "You said earlier you thought it might throw some fresh
light on Sir William's death..."

                             146
     "It's just possible.'
     "Hm, in that case I'll do all I can.  There was
something about that crash which didn't quite add up, as far
as I was concerned.  Now I'm not promising anything , mark
you, but I will ask around."
     "And if you do discover anything..."
     "I'll call you back either way.  That is a promise."
     The NASA official, who refused to give his name, took a
very different attitude.  "I heard some freaky notions in my
time but this one sure caps the lot," he said.  "You better
face it, son...someone's been pulling your leg."
     "Then you are stating categorically that the tape must
be a forgery?"
     "How could it be anything else?  That must be the most
stupid question I've heard this year."
     "And the information on it is not accurate?"
     "Son, do me a favor, will you?  I've been very patient
but I'm a busy man and I really think this joke's gone on
long enough..."
     "I'm taping this conversation and I want you on record
as saying that the information is inaccurate - if it really
is."
     "I'm sorry...I've wasted more than enough time on this
already.  There's absolutely nothing more to say."
     Benson was left with the dialling tone.  The anonymous
man in Houston had replaced his receiver.
     "Blast! said Benson.  He was tempted to dial again, to
try speaking to someone different at NASA.  Not that it would
be likely to make any difference.  All the official spokesmen
had presumably been briefed to trot out the same sort of
line.  Laugh the idea right out of court - that seemed to be
the tactic.  And Benson was sure it was no more than a
tactic.
     He felt he had detected some hint of uncertainty under
the man's brash derision.  And he felt, more strongly than
ever, that the tape was genuine.  But proving it - or, at
least, proving it enough to satisfy Goodwin - that was
another matter.
     He put the receiver back in its rest and was
contemplating going for a canteen coffee when the bell rang.
Hendlemann again.  And this time with excitement in his
voice.
     "I've discovered something quite astonishing, Mr.
Benson," he said.  "Sir William did meet somebody called
Harry at NASA.  He made a note about it in his diary while he
was in America.  I've been checking through that diary and it
really is quite remarkable.  He doesn't mention this Harry's
surname but, listen, I'll read you the extract:





                             147
     " "Harry gave promised help but is now frightened.  Told
me today - These bastards would kill us if they knew what
we've just seen.  Take a word of advice, friend, and destroy
that damned tape." "

     "There! added Hendlemann.  "Now what are we to make of
that?"
     "Anything else in the diary?"
     "Nothing that appears to be relevant."
     Benson thought fast.  "The tapes you use at Jodrell
Bank...is there anything distinctive about them?"
     "In what way?"
     "Could you, by studying this tape, establish if it
belonged to Jodrell Bank?"
     "No...but I might well be able to establish that it did
not belong to us."
     "And if you couldn't do that ... it would, at least,
reduce the chances of it being a fake..."
     "Most certainly."
     "Is it possible, Mr. Hendlemann, for you to come to
London?"
     "I'll leave immediately," said Hendlemann.  "I'm very
anxious to see exactly what is on that tape."
     Benson met Hendlemann at reception and took him to the
preview theater where Clements was waiting.  The tape was
laced-up ready for viewing once again.  They sat in silence,
watching and listening.
     "Incredible!" said Hendlemann eventually.  "Absolutely
incredible!"
     "You think that might have originated at Jodrell Bank?
asked Clements.
     "Let me examine the actual tape," said Hendlemann.
     Clements led the way to the projection box and
Hendlemann produced an eye-glass through which he minutely
studied the tape.  He became so absorbed in his examination
that he appeared to be oblivious of the men with him.  "Why?"
he asked.  "Why didn't he tell me?"
     Clements signalled to Benson not to interrupt.  They
waited while Hendlemann checked frame after frame.  Then he
closely scrutinized the leader section of the tape and
finally he nodded his head emphatically and put his eye-glass
back in his waistcoat pocket.
     "Well?" asked Clements.  "What do you think?"
     "I'm almost afraid to tell you this - but I have to,"
said Hendlemann.  "I do believe, Mr. Clements, that this is
the genuine article."
     They hurried him across to Godwin's office where he
repeated his belief - and the reasons for it.
     "Give me just one minute," said Godwin.  "I'd like to
have the Managing Director in on this one."  He dialled
Derwent-Smith's internal number, briefly explained the
situation, replaced the receiver.  "He's joining us," he
said.
                             148
     Derwent-Smith listened while Hendlemann again repeated
all he had said.  "Fascinating," he said.  "And this diary of
Sir William's - may we see it?"
     Hendlemann nodded.  "It's outside in my car."
     "Well, Fergus," said Derwent-Smith.  "You're Controller
of Programs..."


     "Yes, but this is different," protested Godwin.  "This
is one where I want your help - because if we put one foot
wrong here there's going to be such a stink..."
     "You mean you might want me to share the blame."
     "No, I just..."
     Derwent-Smith stopped him.  "I think we should talk
a little more to this mysterious girl," he said.  "The one
who so conveniently supplied us with the printed circuit."
     "But we don't know where she's gone," said Benson.
"She refused to tell me."
     "And you just let her walk away.  That doesn't sound too
clever, does it?"  Derwent-Smith turned to Clements.  "And
what's you opinion?"
     "Well, the girl...the tape.  Are you still keen on using
it?"
     "Absolutely," said Clements.
     "Good," said Derwent-Smith.  "Fergus?"
     "In view of what Mr. Hendlemann says, I'm for going
ahead."
     "Fine," said Derwent-Smith.  "I'm with you all the way."



     That particular week, although the Sceptre Television
team did not then realize it, was an extraordinary one for
disappearances - the sort of disappearances which might have
been linked with Batch Consignments.
     New Zealand - Monday, June 13, 1977.  At 10:30 a.m.
accountant Miles Thornton drove into the caravan-park near
Tauranga in the North Island's Bay of Plenty.  With him were
his wife and two young sons - all looking forward to a break
of a few days.  This was one of their favorite spots, a place
where they'd spent many holidays.
     Thornton found, to his surprise, that there was no-one
on duty in the prefabricated building which served as
a reception center.  And, even more surprising, there was no
sign of anyone in the park.  There were cars there.  Plenty
of cars.  But the whole place was completely deserted.
Normally there'd have been people sprawled out on loungers,
children playing ball-games between the rows of caravans.
"But the only living thing to be seen was a dog," he said
later.  "It was weird."



                             149
     More weird, in fact, than he realized at the time.
Records later found in the abandoned reception center shower
that more than 200 people should have been there that
morning, including twelve employees of the caravan park.
There were no signs of violence, no signs of any struggle.
But not one of those people has been seen since.
     America - Tuesday, June 14.  At 3:00 p.m. two coach-
loads of young trippers - average age 19 - set off on a sigh-
seeing tour from Casper, Wyoming.  They were last seen
heading in the direction of Cheyenne.  Seven hours later the
vehicles were found empty by the side of a lonely road.
     In the sand around the coaches there was a confusion of
footprints.  But they seemed to lead nowhere.  A camera, a
pair of binoculars and a girl's handkerchief were found.
But, like the people in New Zealand's Bay of Plenty, those
seventy-six youngsters were never seen again.
     At 4:30 p.m. that same day a small passenger-cargo
vessel, the Amelio, left Barcelona with 165 people on board.
Intended destination:  Tunis.  The Amelio was last seen
steaming into a light sea mist south of the Balearic Islands.
There was virtually no wind and the water was calm.
     The mist was a comparatively small patch, covering
little more than about two square miles, but there is no
record of the Amelio ever having come out of it.  And
of the area resulted in a complete blank.  Not even a bit of
wreckage has ever been found.  As one coastguard official put
` it:  "This is on of the absolute mysteries.  It is just as
if the sea had opened up its mouth and swallowed her."
     So there it was.  More than 440 people disappeared in
the oddest combination of circumstances during those two
days in June.
     It would be irresponsible for us to state that those
people have now become "Batch Consignment Components" for we
have no absolute proof.  We do suggest that, however, as a
distinct possibility.


     The Ballantine tape was, of course, the most astounding
feature of that television production.  It was authentic.
Absolutely and startlingly authentic.  But, as Godwin had
feared, it did bring the most "God-awful blow-back."
     Simon Butler introduced it and, as viewers will recall,
all that could be seen at first was a haze of colors and
uncertain shapes.  There was a whirling blur of confusion -
multi-colored dust dervishes glimpsed crazily through a
tumbling kaleidoscope-and nothing, nothing more.
     Then the picture cleared and the camera seemed to be
skimming low over a wild and barren landscape.  No
vegetation, no suggestion of life.  Just mile after mile of
wilderness and brown-red desolation.



                             150
     Sounds of static.  Then, faintly, of men cheering.  And
finally there were the American voices - from the Space
Control Room at NASA:

     FIRST VOICE:  Okay...try to scan.
     SECOND VOICE:  Scanning now.
     FIRST VOICE:  The readings...where are the readings?


     At that moment, superimposed over the scanning of the
alien landscape, viewers saw the computer-printed word
"temperature." And, almost instantaneously, that word was
duplicated in Russian.  Now there was a great outburst of
Russian voices.  Excited, jubilant.  And then, once again,
the second American voice came through with great clarity:
"Wait for it...w-a-i-t for it...Come on, baby, don't fail us
now...not after all this way..."
     Computer figures appeared alongside the words on the
screen.  The temperature, they showed, was four degrees
Centigrade.  More printed words - "Wind Speed" - in American
and then Russian.  And the first American voice was shouting
triumphantly:  "It's okay...it's good, it's good."  A russian
voice, equally ecstatic, carried the same message.
     Then the computer print-out started giving the most
vital information of all - information, in English and
Russian, about the atmosphere of that strange and distant
territory.
     The words and letters were appearing with agonizing,
nerve-shredding slowness.  As though they were being formed,
uncertainly, by some retarded, mechanical child.  There was a
great silence of anticipation and of dread.  Then from the
screen came the shrieks and whoops of joy.  The first
American voice could be heard shouting over the din:  "On the
nose!  Hallelujah!  We got air, boys...we're home!
Jesus...we've done it...we got air!
     His yells of excitement, and similar ones from his
Russian counterpart, were drowned by the crescendo of
cheering.  And, during a lull in that cheering, the second
American voice could be heard saying:  "That's it!  We got
it...we got it!  Boy, if they ever take the wraps off this
thing, it's going to be the biggest date in history!  May 22,
1962.  We're on the planet Mars - and we have air!"

     That was it.  The end of the Ballantine tape.  And
millions of viewers, in many parts of the world, briefly
wondered if they had misheard.  Man on Mars in 1962?  No,
surely, that was not possible...
     Simon Butler, his face sombre, assured them that it was
more than possible.  Here, from a transcript of the program,
are his actual words:



                             151
          We believe that to be an authentic record of the
     first - and secret - landing on Mars by an unmanned
     space probe from Earth.  We also believe the date given
     - May 22, 1962 - to be accurate.
Clearly, the blanket of  total security by which this
information has been covered could have been maintained
only through the active participation of governments at
a very high level.
     Equally clearly, there must have been some powerful
reason why the true conditions on Mars< suitable as they
appear to be for human habitation, have been kept
secret.  Indeed, the effort which has gone into
persuading the world at large that the opposite is true
argues that some operation of supreme importance has
been going on beneath this security cover.
     We believe that operation to be Dr. Carl Gerstein's
Alternative 3.
     Whether a human survival colony has by now been
established on Mars, or whether preparations are still
in hand for its transportation from the Moon to Mars, we
do not know.  But we put out this program tonight as a
challenge to those who do know to tell us the truth.

He paused after spelling out that challenge, one hand
resting on a model of the Earth and the other on a model of
Mars, to underline its significance.  The program was over
and the gauntlet had been thrown down.  The next move was up
to the government.  And the governments of other countries -
particularly those of the super powers.
     Butler knew, of course, about the behind-the-screen
doubts and anxieties.  He knew how Harman had tried to neuter
the program and, indeed, how he had come close to
succeeding.  He was only too aware that the company had taken
a calculated risk in persisting with this program, that what
had been revealed would very likely be emphatically denied,
that there could be ugly repercussions for Clements and
Fergus Godwin.  And, of course, for himself.
     He was the anchorman, the man who - as far as the public
was concerned - was right at the center of the entire
investigation.  He was well-known and well-respected and
that, from the official viewpoint, made him doubly dangerous.
It would be remarkable if attempts were not made to discredit
him, to prove that, far from being a responsible commentator,
he had been party to an ill-conceived hoax.
     At no time, however, had he considered opting out.  He
has always believed in the truth.  He had always presented it
professionally.  And this particular truth was far too
important to be suppressed.
     He concluded with these words:




                             152
     We regret if the implications of what you have seen
are less than optimistic for the future of life on this
planet.  It has been our task, however, merely to bring
you the facts as we understand them - and await the
response.


     The response started almost before he finished speaking.
Switchboards at newspaper offices and regional television
stations were flooded with calls from frightened people, from
people desperate for reassurance.
     Those people got their reassurance.  They got it because
of the statement drafted by Harman.  But that statement was a
lie.







































                             153
                      SECTION   THIRTEEN



     There is nothing new, of course, in the concept of men
using the moon as a launch-pad for a new life on Mars.  H.G.
Wells, who correctly anticipated so many technical triumphs
which seemed ludicrous to most people in his day - was
expounding it back in 1901.
     Here, from his classic The First Men In The Moon, is a
segment of dialogue between two space travellers:

          "It isn't as though we were confined to the moon."
          "You mean -?"
          "There's Mars - clear atmosphere, novel
     surroundings, exhilarating sense of lightness.  It might
     be pleasant to go there."
          "Is there air on Mars?"
          "Oh, yes!"
          "Seems as though you might run it as a
          sanatorium..."


     So Wells, once again, has been proved right.
A number of leading journalists, maybe remembering Wells and
his track-record as a prophet, did not automatically believe
the Harman denial.  They were puzzled by it, and were
possibly thrown a little by it, for it had the ring of
authenticity.  And after all, they reasoned, what possible
motive could a reputable television company have for claiming
they had just presented a tissue of untruths?  And yet...Alan
Coren, writing in The Times of June 21, was one of the first
to throw doubts on the validity of the Harman statement:


          The seeming preposterousness of the story, on the
     other hand, was totally acceptable.  The
     preposterousness of the times have seen to that.  Why
     should the madness of the NASA program not be linked to
the madness of Watergate, to create a Nasagate in which
life is discovered on Mars, but the information is
suppressed for governmental ends?


     That was a shot in the dark by Coren - a shot guided by
instinct as much as by insight.  But, as he will realize
today, it was uncannily on target.
     But, in the final analysis, it was all to make little
difference to Harman.  Remember what was said at the meeting
of the Policy Committee on August 4, 1977:



                             154

A TWO:  But what about the regional officer concerned?
A Eight:  You're right there.  He should have stopped
     that television crap.  He's proved himself to be
     utterly unreliable.  He failed and failed badly
     and, what's worse, he could let us down again.  The
     man, without any question, is a liability and I
     propose an Expediency.
R TWO:  Seconded.
R EIGHT:  Those in favor? ... Then that is unanimous.
     The method?
A THREE:  How about a telepathic sleep-job ... maybe
     with a gun...
R EIGHT:  That seems sensible ... it's too soon after
     Ballantine for another hot-job...



     Harman, on that day in August, was being sentenced to
death.  The date of his death, however, was not so easily
settled.  That, as Dr. Hugo Danningham has now explained,
would depend on Harman's biorhythmic sensitivity  cycle-on
the unseen assault being synchronized with his moments of
extreme vulnerability.
     James Murray of the Daily Express is another level-
headed and highly-experienced writer who does not readily
accept the obvious - particularly when it is given to him in
the form of an official Press statement.  He has a reputation
for seeking the facts behind the statement.  And so, despite
the "Knock-down" treatment being given to the program on the
front page of his own newspaper, he courageously stuck to his
assessment of Butler, Benson and the others:

     They plausibly linked natural phenomena and real
events in space to come to the inevitable conclusion
that there was a monumental international conspiracy to
save the best human minds by establishing a new colony
on Mars...So all these scientists and intellectuals
slipping abroad to the "Brain Drain" were really being
shipped to Mars on rockets via the dark side of the
moon.


     Murray, in other words, recognized the truth even though
he did not have the facts completely to substantiate that
truth.
     Men like Coren and Murray worried Harman.  They were
helping to perpetuate the doubts and suspicions he had tried
to smother.  And he was frightened that they might start
digging deeper, that they might eventually be able to present
the full and horrendous truth.  Just as we are now doing in
this book.

                             155
     The men of the Policy Committee had put no great
priority on this particular murder.  Alternative 3's chief
executive officer in Britain had already been instructed to
suspend Harman from his secret regional duties - and to
recruit is successor.  Harman would die.  They knew that with
certainty.  He would die without revealing what he knew.  And
that was all that really mattered.
     Other men, for other reasons, were disturbed by the
realization that the Alternative 3 sensation was not to be
swiftly buried.  They were particularly unhappy about Philip
Purser's Sunday Telegraph suggestion that the investigation
might have been a Fiendish double bluff inspired by the very
agencies identified in the program".
     They were among the Members of Parliament, the
overwhelming majority, who were not privy to the facts about
Alternative 3.  Some have since claimed that they suspected
the truth but they certainly did not know it.  Yet they had
the task of coping with much of the terror which spread so
insidiously after that television transmission.
     Most people, as we have said, were only too eager to
believe Harman's denial.  But a sizable minority appreciated
the full significance of what had been revealed.  These were
people, in the main, who had already been uncomfortably aware
of the sort of people who were only too aware of the mammoth
cover-up which the 1968 Condon report had provided for so-
called Flying Saucers.
     There were those who vaguely remembered what the Evening
Standard had said about the $500,000 Condon study:

     It is losing some of its outstanding members, under
circumstances which are mysterious to say the least.
Sinister rumors are circulating...at least four key
people have vanished from the Condon team without
offering a satisfactory reason for their departure.  The
complete story behind the strange events in Colorado is
hard to decipher...

     The validity of the suspicions in that Evening Standard
article suddenly seemed to be confirmed by other statements
later made public - quite apart from President Carter's
apparently remarkable about- turn on the subject of Flying
Saucers.
     Professor G. Gordon Broadbent:  "At the very highest
levels of East-West diplomacy there has been operating a
factor of which we know nothing."
     Would a man of Broadbent's caliber make a statement of
that nature lightly?
     Apollo veteran Bob Grodin:  "The later Apollos were a
smoke-screen...to cover up what's really going on out
there...and the bastards didn't even tell us!"
     Why, if there was nothing to hide, should he make such a
curious statement?

                             156
     More and more snippets of information started being
remembered and re-quoted - some from old newspaper files,
some from records leaked from NASA.
     Here, for instance, is a verbatim transcript from a
taped conversation which Scott and Irwin had with Mission
Control during their moon-walk in August, 1971:


SCOTT:  Arrowhead really runs east to west.
MISSION CONTROL:  Roger, we copy.
IRWIN:  Right...we're (garble)...we know that's a
     fairly good run.  We're bearing 320, hitting range
     for 413...I can't get over those lineations, that
     layering on Mount Hadley.
SCOTT:  I can't either.  That's really spectacular.
IRWIN:  They sure look beautiful.
SCOTT:  Talk about organization!
IRWIN:  That's the most organized structure I've ever
     seen!
SCOTT:  It's (garble)...so uniform in width...
IRWIN:  Nothing we've seen before this has shown such
     uniform thickness from the top of the tracks to
     the bottom.


     NASA has never explained those tracks - or who made them
- although there are now grounds for the belief that they
were left by a giant Moon-Rover vehicle of American-Russian
design.
     That is just one more example of how information about
real space progress is being kept strictly secret.  Dr. James
E. McDonald, professor of meteorology at the University of
Arizona and senior physicist at its Institute of Atmospheric
Physics, has been a vociferous critic of this secrecy.
     In The Enquirer on February 19, 1967, he said:  "The
U.S. Air Force has been scandalously blinding the public as
to what is really going on in the skies.  The Air Force
investigations have been absurd, superficial and
incompetent...and scientists all over the world had better
stop accepting the ridiculous Air Force reports and start
investigating the problem themselves at once...it's a problem
demanding truly international investigation."
     So, with that sort of background to this latest
television investigation, is it surprising that there were
people not impressed by the denial?  Or that those people
should start demanding information from their Members of
Parliament?
     Michael Harrington-Brice is typical of those M.P.s.  He
says:  "I was put in an impossible position.  For weeks after
that program went out I was getting deputations at the House,
demanding that the government should issue a formal denial.


                             157
I tried to bring pressure for that to be done, for a
government denial would have helped alleviate the
understandable anxieties of my constituents.  However, it was
not possible to pin down anyone in authority.
     "I tried to put down questions about Alternative 3 but
they were invariably blocked and what is particularly odd is
that there now appears to be no official record of those
questions.
     "I also tried to raise the matter privately with
Ministers but I was invariably told that Alternative 3 was a
subject they were not prepared to discuss."
     What, at that stage, was Harrington-Brice's personal
opinion?
     "I formed the distinct impression that something really
unusual was happening behind the scenes, that we in Britain
were on the periphery of some secret venture being controlled
by the super-powers.
     "Nothing specific was said, you understand, but hints
were dropped.  I was obliquely given the message that it
would be sensible for me to stop probing.
     "It would be quite wrong, however, for me to pretend
that, at that time, I had any information to confirm the
accuracy of otherwise of the allegations made in that
program."
     Another Member of Parliament, Bruce Kinslade, was also
seeking an official investigation into the statements made
during the television program - according to his private
secretary.
     On Wednesday, July 6, Mr. Kinslade, as you may recall,
was hit by a lorry while crossing a side street near his home
in Kensington.  The lorry did not stop and has never been
traced.  And Mr. Kinslade died almost instantaneously.  The
inquest verdict was "Accidental death".  That verdict, for
all we know, may have been accurate...
     Letters continued to arrive at Television Center.
Letters which confirmed that more people, having had time to
reflect, had reservations about the denial - or flatly
refused to accept it.
     The President of the prestigious Hampstead H.G. Wells
Society wrote:  "In my experience I would estimate that there
was a lot more truth in your program than the majority of the
public realize."
     A woman living in Southcroft Road, London S.W.16, summed
up the attitude of many in her thoughtful letter:


     With reference to your "Alternative 3" program
which was shown on Monday, 20th June, several newspapers
the following day declared the program to be a hoax, and
your spokesman was quoted as saying,  "Everything was
based on what could happen."


                             158
     I and many other people feel strongly that this was
is ridiculous claim is just another attempt by the
government to hush things up (as seems to be the case
with UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle).  Everyone has a
right to know what is going on; we all have to live on
this planet, and space exploration should benefit us
all.
     It greatly incenses me to be continually kept in
the dark when any discovery is made.  Pressure was
obviously put on you, but it does you no credit to show
up the production team as charlatans.  No, I cannot
believe it was a hoax for the following reasons:
     1.  Would you really have included references to
     Ballantine's death as a hoax - at the expense
     of his family's feelings?
     2.  The ex-astronaut was obviously a highly
     intelligent man and well-educated.  He had seen
     something that caused the dreadful deterioration we
     had to witness.
         Please realize that the majority of your
     viewers are discriminating adults who can think for
     themselves.  Let us have the truth of the matter.



     That July also brought evidence of other aspects of the
disaster looming inevitably nearer for this world.  The
Times, July 26:


     A frightening picture of the accelerating world
population is given in the 1977 World Population Report,
published this week by Population Concern.
     The report points out that if the present rate of
population growth had existed since the birth of Christ
there would now be 900 people for every square yard of
Earth.
     Half the fuel ever used by man has been burnt in
the past 50 years.
     The world's population is now more than 4,000
million and increasing by 200,000 every day.



     Two hundred thousand extra people on this crowded planet
every single day!  That is 73,000,000 a year.  And that will
result, in only three years, in more additional people than
the entire present population of America!
     Those figures emphasize the magnitude of just one of the
survival problems facing mankind - with this planet's water
and other natural resources becoming progressively more
scarce.

                             159
And that is in addition to the inevitable "Greenhouse
Armageddon" described by Gerstein.
     Is it, then, any wonder that the men behind Alternative
3 were anxious to accelerate their operation?  Was it not
obvious to them that time was running out - possibly even
faster than they had earlier anticipated?
     During the autumn of 1977 the subject of Alternative 3
began to drop out of the headlines.  We know from Trojan that
there was mounting activity behind the scenes - and that
there was talk of attempts being made to sabotage the
Alternative 3 operation.  But the public, for a while, was
allowed to forget.
     Then, on Thursday, September 29, Dr. Gerard O'Neill -
the Princeton professor who had given that astonishing
interview to the Los Angeles Times in July - again came
boldly into public prominence.  This time he had been
interviewed by Angus Macpherson, space correspondent of the
Daily Mail, and the headline said:  THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF
2001 IS OUT THERE WAITING.
     Macpherson, respected as one of the world's most
authoritative science-fact specialists, wrote:

     Flying to London today is another scientist who is
perfectly serious about his prediction of what faces the
human race as we approach the start of the 21st century.
But American physicist Dr. Gerard O'Neill holds out the
promise of a totally different future...a brave new
world in space.  The choice, as he sees it, is between
George Orwell's 1984 and Arthur Clarke's 2001.
     "Tell humanity there's no hope and everyone
applauds you.  But tell them there is a way out and they
get furious," say Dr. O'Neill, who has worked for seven
years on a mind-stretching scheme for the emigration of
most of us into artificial colonies in outer space.
     He has been brusquely dismissed as a pedlar of
nonsense by Jacques Cousteau, whom he greatly admires,
and there was hurt as well as humor on the lean face
under its trendy Roman fringe as he told me:  "Jaques is
terribly worried about the pollution of the ocean and
the destruction of its life.
     "He thinks we ought to be doing more about it.  So
do I.  Environmentalists are really very negative.
They're so obsessed with Earth's problems they don't
want to hear about answers."
     O'Neill's own answers are that we not only can
colonize the solar system - but must, if human life a
few generations from now is to remain civilized or even
bearable.
     O'Neill's colonists would get away from the start
from the space suits and cell-like space stations of
science fiction...


                             160
     O'Neill is coming to London to present his
prediction of space colonization to the British
Interplanetary Society.
     The BIS is a legendary forum for glimpses of the
future.  Its members have seen a Moon-landing ship
unveiled, looking eerily like the Apollo LEM, but some
thirty years before it.
     And they were the first to hear Arthur Clarke
outline a visionary scheme for a global chain of
communication satellites.
     This could be a similar bit of history making...
     For most of the generation that gaped at the first
     Moon landings it has become a madly expensive
confidence trick - a game of golf on a useless rockpile
that only two could play and that cost £500 a second.
     All this is desperately myopic, declares O'Neill,
for the denizens of a planet whose 4,000 million
inhabitants fact the prospect of being two to three
times as crowded by the early years of the next century.

     "In fact, we found in space precisely the things we
are most in need of - unlimited solar energy, rocks
containing high concentrations of metals and, above all,
room for Man to continue his growth and expansion...
     "A static society, which is what Earth would have
to become, would need to regulate not only the bodies
but the minds of its people." he told me.  "I refuse to
believe man has come to the end of change and experiment
and I want to preserve his freedom to live in different
ways.
"I see no hope of saving it if we remain imprisoned on
the Earth."


     Macpherson pointed out that O'Neill is "consulted
respectfully - if a shade warily - by Government officials,
Senate committees and State governors."
     The article showed that O'Neill was visualizing the
future along slightly different lines to those approved by
the men of Alternative 3.  It also indicated that O'Neill was
not aware - and possibly is still not aware - that the
Alternative 3 "future" had already arrived.
     Macpherson wrote:

     His colonies are planned as vast cylindrical metal
islands drifting in orbit, holding inside a natural
atmosphere, trees, grass, rivers and animals - a capsule
of a warm Earthlike environment.
     He see them reaching half the size of Switzerland,
ultimately, housing 20 to 30 million people and
sustained by the inexhaustible energy of space sunshine.


                             161
     Yet their construction, he insists, would need only
the technology we already have...

The article finished with these thoughts:

     For most people of the pre-space generation,
probably, the moment when the magic finally went out of
the adventure came a year ago when the dream of life on
Mars was dispelled by the Viking spacecraft.
     But for O'Neill that was another plus for space.
The best thing we could have found was nobody there.
     The colonization of the new frontier can take place
without. repeating the shaming history of the Indian
nation - or even the bison.
     "Perhaps nobody's there, anywhere, after all.
Perhaps there isn't a Daddy to show us how to do things.
     "It's a bit frightening...but it gives us a lot of
scope."


     We discussed the content of that article with M.P.
Michael Harrington-Brice.  What, in view of his own
researches, was his opinion?
     He said:  "Dr. O'Neill is arguably the most brilliant
man in his own line in the Western world and I am certain he
is right in saying the technology is already available for a
project such as he envisages.
     "However, he is apparently working on the assumption
that the information officially released about conditions on
Mars is true and I would certainly hesitate before making
that assumption.
     "If what was shown on the Ballantine tape was the real
truth - and I have seen no evidence which convinces me it was
not - then the whole situation changes dramatically.
     "Obviously it would be far easier and cheaper to
colonize a suitable and empty planet, to which we have got
comparatively ready access, than to build gigantic,
artificial islands in the sky.
     "It would be grossly impertinent of me to say that Dr.
O'Neill is wrong for he is a Pan of immense international
stature.  However, I can't help wondering if the political
facts, the facts of East-West co-operation, have not been
kept from him.  There is certainly nothing in what he says
which convinces me that Mars is not the venue for Alternative
3."








                             162
     Harman, we learned later, read that article in the Daily
Mail.  He read it on the morning of publication - on
September 29.  He did not know then, of course, that he had
exactly 48 days left to live.



     A cryptic message from Trojan.  Brief, typed, unsigned:
 "Surprise development rumored.  Sabotage possible.  Will
send details if and when available."
     We puzzled over the message but we did not try to
contact Trojan.  That was the arrangement.  He always took
the initiative.  It was safer that way.








































                             163
                      SECTION   FOURTEEN



     They call it Archimedes Base.  And that's where the
trouble, the really big trouble, flared so violently.
     Archimedes is a walled crater-plain on the western
border of the Mare Imbrium, the Moon's "Sea of Shadows:.  It
has a diameter of about 50 miles and, unlike the nearby
Aristillus crater, it has a relatively smooth ground surface.
That is why, according t. information from Trojan, it was
developed as the principal transit camp on the Moon -the
place from where people were normally lifted for the final
leg of their journey to Mars.
     Man cannot survive in the natural atmosphere of the
Moon.  NASA said so years ago and NASA, in that instance, was
telling the truth.  So most of Archemedes Base was
hermetically sealed under a transparent bubble inside which
air and temperature was controlled to the levels usual on
Earth.  The construction had taken two years and had been a
fantastic triumph of space engineering.
     Conditions under the bubble were similar to those
visualized by Dr. O'Neill for his artificial worlds of the
future.  Men and women could live there comfortably for
indefinite periods - secure inside a domed and gigantic
greenhouse.
     There were two huge airlocks in the southern section of
the bubble.  Shuttle craft arriving from Earth and from Mars
entered through these locks before taxiing to the centrally-
sited Arrival Terminal.  A series of roads the centrally-
sited Arrival Terminal.  A series of roads ran from the
terminal to the stores and service areas and to the three
separate "living-quarter villages" - one for pilots and
resident personnel, one for "designated movers", and one for
"batch-consignment components".  And over it all was a spread
of camouflage, reminiscent of that used during World War Two,
to ensure that Archimedes Base could never be seen by
unauthorized observers on Earth.
     There was another transit camp, the original one on the
Moon, in the crater known as Cassini but that was now
considered too small.  Most of its equipment and furnishings
had been moved to Archimedes.  For Archimedes was the
bustling center of activity...
     Trojan's cryptic message about possible sabotage was
soon followed by this report:

     Stringent security ensures the complete segregation
of Designated Movers from Batch-Consignment Components
until after disembarkation in the new territory.
     They are transported in separate craft and, while
awaiting transportation, they are quartered in different
areas of Archimedes Base.  This is as a result of an

                             164
order from the Policy Committee.
     It is felt that among the Designated Movers there
may be those who initially harbor reservations about the
morality of the mental and physical processing
considered necessary for Components.


     "Components"!  Let us not be confused by the jargon
euphemisms.  Trojan uses them.  Trojan, like most others in
Alternative 3, has been brain-washed into accepting such
words as normal.  He is revolted by what has been done, by
what is being done, but he has unwittingly absorbed the
obscene distortion of language.  So, just for a moment,
forget "components".  Trojan means people.  He is writing
about slaves, about men and women who have been mutilated
mentally and physically, who have been programed to obey
orders.  And who have been condemned to a life of sub-human
degradation.
     His report continued:
          These Designated Movers can have their doubts put
     into "proper perspective", after they have become
     acclimatized to life in the new territory, by
     representatives of the Committee in Residence.  They
     can, according to official reasoning, be persuaded to
     recognize that the ultimate survival of the human race
     must take precedence over the fate of a limited number
     of low-grade individuals.


     Consider the appalling significance of that paragraph!
It means, if "official reasoning" is right, that Ann Clark
and Brian Pendelebury and others like them can be taught to
regard fellow humans as expendable beasts of burden.  It
means, surely, that natural compassion must be systematically
eradicated, that the minds of "designated movers" are also
moulded to match the needs of Alternative 3.  Orwell's vision
of 1984, it seems, has already come to fruition - millions of
miles from Earth.
     Trojans report then went on to detail the curious
circumstances which resulted in Earthly efforts to undermine
Alternative 3.  And which eventually culminated in carnage at
Archimedes Base ...
     Bacteria are far more tenacious than humans when it
comes to clinging to life.  They survive the seemingly
impossible.  They can apparently retreat into a form of
hibernation for centuries.  For millennia even.  Then, when
conditions are right, they wake up, as it were, and they
flourish.  That is apparently what happened on Mars.
     The "dynamic changes" recorded in 1961 and described by
Gerstein provided the ideal conditions.  And across the
silent wastes of the empty planet there was a great awakening


                             165
of the minute unicellular living organisms.  They developed
and they spread.  they were too small to be seen but they
were there, waiting, when Man first arrived...
   These were alien strains of bacteria, pernicious and
voracious strains never before encountered by humans, but
they were not numerous enough noticeably to damage the
imported and carefully-cultivated crops.  Not until late
1976.  That, as we now know, was the time of the great
blight...
     Attempts were made to fight them with bactericides and
even by bacteriophages which involved the introduction of
ultra-microscopic organisms normally parasitic to bacteria.
But the Committee in Residence realized it was a losing
battle.  And that was when the super-powers decided they
needed The German.
     The German, whose name we have agreed to withhold, is
possibly the most imaginatively successful bacteriologist in
the world.  That is accepted by his contemporaries in the
East and the West.  He has probably achieved more than any
other man in his sphere - not only in combating bacteria but
in harnessing them into the service of man.  That was why he
was needed so urgently in the new territory...
     But he refused to go.  He was seen by the Alternative 3
regional officer and, eventually, by the West German Chief
Executive Officer.  They argued with him, offered him every
possible inducement, but he remained adamant.  Certainly he
would respect the confidences he had entrusted to him but he
had work to do, work on Earth, and he had absolutely no
inclination to become involved in Alternative 3.
     They did recruit his principal assistant, an American in
his mid-thirties, who travelled as a designated mover in
February, 1977.  He went willingly, enthusiastically even.
But he is another man whose identity it would be unfair to
reveal for, if he is still alive, he is today being hunted.
He is being hunted by agents of the East and the West.
     He will certainly have changed his name by now, and
probably his appearance as well, but he must know that for
him there can be no permanent hiding place.  He is the man
chiefly responsible for founding the guerilla group known as
Anti-Alternative.  He was also responsible for the eventual
disaster at Archimedes Base.  We call his The Instigator.
     It soon became apparent to the Committee in Residence
that The Instigator, although competent and experienced,
lacked the intuitive flair needed for the new-territory task.
they still needed The German.  But The German was still
refusing...
     Urgent meetings were convended in the Hall of the
Committee in Residence.  there were consultations with the
Policy Committee on Earth, with key men in Department Seven.
And eventually a decision was reached.  The German liked and
respected The Instigator.  He had confidence in his
judgement.  And if any man could persuade The German to

                             166
become a designated mover it was The Instigator.  He should
go back to Earth, they decided.  He should go back to talk to
The German.  That, as it turned out, was their biggest and
most disastrous mistake...
     They had made one serious miscalculation over The
Instigator.  they had failed to realize that he still had not
got the plight of the Components into "proper perspective".
Maybe that would have changed if he had been allowed more
time for there had been others, many others, who had needed
months to become completely accustomed to living with an
enslaved sub-species.  All of them had eventually accepted
that this was part of the essential balance.  But The
Instigator had not been allowed time, not enough time, and he
was tormented with secret guilt.  What right, he wondered,
did he have to be one of the Chosen, on of the Superior
Select?  He was racked with disgust and with doubts and he
knew then that, somehow, he had to shatter the component
system...
     And then they told him they were returning him to Earth.
     There was a stop-over at Archimedes Base on his return
journey and he was temporarily housed with a new group of
designated movers awaiting transportation to the new
territory.  They knew nothing, these people, about the
components - quartered, as usual, in a different "village"
-who were being condemned to spend the rest of their lives as
slaves.  He told them.  He told them exactly what was
happening and exactly what to expect.  He described the
kidnappings and the mutilations being carried out on Earth-
for their benefit and comfort.  And they were not ready for
such horrendous information.  They were normal people, highly
intelligent and sensitive, and they had not yet been exposed
to the skilled and persuasive arguments of the Committee in
Residence.  They were uncertain about whether to believe him.
It all sounded so lunatically outrageous.  Yet this man was
strangely convincing...
      the truth.  They decided surreptitiously to visit the
village he'd described.  And that is what sparked the
holocaust at Archimedes Base...
     The Instigator did not contact The German when he
returned to Earth.  He fled into hiding.  And then, with a
small group of trusted collaborators, he founded his action
group, Anti-Alternative.  This group, unlike organizations
such as the IRA of the PLO, could make no public statements
for such statements could lead to them being rooted out and
destroyed.  They dedicated themselves to disrupting, by
guerilla tactics, all work connected with the exploration and
exploitation of space.  Their actions, they felt, might force
an eventual re-think on Alternative 3.
     On October 1, 1977, the Daily Telegraph carried a story,
written by Ian Ball in New York, which was headlined:
SATELLITE ROCKET No.2 BLOWS UP.  It said:


                             167
     A second communications satellite was reduced to
debris over the Atlantic yesterday after another
spectacular rocket failure at the Cape Canaveral space
center in Florida.
     Within two and a half weeks, the failures have
destroyed communications satellite projects, one
European, the other American, worth a total of $91.4
million (about £54 million).
     An Atlas Centaur rocket, carrying a $49.4 million
Intelsat 1V-A satellite built by Hughes Aircraft, was
destroyed minutes after its launching late on Thursday.
The failure was similar to the September 13 explosion of
a Delta rocket carrying a $42 million European Space
Agency orbital test satellite.
     "We had indications of trouble in the engine area
within seconds after lift-off," said the Atlas Centaur
launch director, Mr. Andrew Stofan.  "At 55 seconds the
Atlas lost control and broke up.  It flipped, broke
apart, and then the Atlas blew up."
     The remainder of the Centaur stage was destroyed by
an Air Force range safety officer, ending the mission
four miles high and four miles down the range.  The
debris from rocket and satellite fell into the ocean.
     The next Intelsat 1V - a launch scheduled for
November 10 - and other Atlas Centaur launches have been
postponed until an investigation into the latest failure
is completed.


     Similar problems were being experienced by Russian
space-teams.  On October 11, 1977, the Guardian carried this
Reuter report from Moscow:


     Two Soviet Cosmonauts failed yesterday to dock
their Soyuz-25 craft with the Salyut-6 orbiting
laboratory.
     Mission commander Vladimir Kovalyonok and flight
engineer Valery Ryumin, thought to be planning a long
stay aboard the new space station, were ordered back to
Earth after abandoning the link-up.

     Tass, announcing the latest in a series of troubles
to affect the Salyut series, said there had been
"deviations from a planned docking regime" during the
approach while the Cosmonauts' Soyuz-25 capsule was 120
yards from the station.  The Soyuz-25 failure has come
as a blow to Soviet space chiefs...





                             168
     So that is what happened.  Did it happen because of The
Instigator?  That is a question we cannot answer.  We simply
do not know.  We do know, however, that the catastrophe at
Archimedes Base can be traced back directly to The
Instigator.  And that was incomparably more devastating.


     Leonard Harman died at ten minutes past two in the
morning on Wednesday, November 16, 1977.  He died, wearing
his pyjamas, in the dining-room at his home.
     His widow, Mrs. Sarah Harman, gave this evidence at the
inquest:

     My husband had been depressed and rather withdrawn
for some time, possibly for six months or more, but he
never confided any reason to me.
     I knew there had been some friction between him and
Mr. Godwin, Mr. Fergus Godwin, at the studios and at
first I thought that was possibly making him feel the
way he did.  But the trouble at the studios, whatever it
was, seemed to pass over and still my husband was no
better.  I urged him on several occasions to see a
doctor but he told me that it was nothing serious and
that I was not to fuss.
     I never, at any time, thought he might be likely to
take his own life.
     On the Tuesday evening, I mean the evening o the
15th of November, we watched television and then went to
bed as usual just before midnight.  I didn't notice
anything particularly unusual about him.  He behaved
just as he normally did.
     We read in bed for a while and it must have been
nearly one o'clock before we settled down for sleep.
     Just before two o'clock I was disturbed by him
getting out of bed.  I assumed he was going to the
bathroom.  But then he seemed to be gone a long time and
I can't really explain why but I began to get rather
worried.  I had a feeling that something wasn't quite
right.
     I called out to him but there was no reply so I got
out of bed.  The bathroom door was open and, because of
the street lights outside, I could see that he was not
in there.
     Then I heard a movement from downstairs.  I called
out to him again but still there was no reply.  By this
time I thought that he must be feeling unwell and that
he'd probably gone down to the kitchen to make himself a
hot drink.  He'd done this once or twice before and it
had always soothed his stomach.




                             169
     I decided then to go down and make the drink for
him.  But he wasn't in the kitchen.  The house was
completely silent.  I called out to him again but there
was still no reply.  I was a bit frightened by this time
because I couldn't possibly imagine what he could be
doing.
     There weren't any lights on, not until I switched
on the one in the hall, and my husband had never done
anything like this before.  He'd never walked in
his sleep or anything.
     Then there was a sort of scuffling noise from the
dining-room.  I went in and he was standing there in the
darkness in the middle of the room.  I switched the
light on and spoke to him but he didn't seem to hear.
His eyes were open - they were staring straight at me -
but he didn't seem to be aware of me or of anything
else.  It was as if he was in a trance.
     He had a gun in his hand, a little pistol, and he
put the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger.  And
that's all that happened.  The next second he was dead.


Mrs. Harman also told the coroner that her husband had
not owned a gun, that he'd never had one in the house.
But the coroner reached his own conclusion.  Wives, in
his experience, didn't necessarily know everything about
their husbands.
     The verdict was "suicide".


     Disaster hit Archimedes Base on a cataclysmic scale.
The Arrival Terminal ... the service centres ... the
buildings of the three villages ... they were all ravaged and
wrenched from their foundations by the sudden and cyclopean
clash of uncountable tornados.  They crumbled and
disintegrated, these buildings, as they juddered and
somersaulted high in the air.  And people spilled from them.
The living and 'he dead - they all looked the same in that
great spasm of destruction.  They were all flailing limbs and
buckled, distorted bodies.  Many of them exploded far above
the ground and bits of them whirled around in the dust and
the debris before being sucked out into the eternal blackness
of space.
     And all of it, we now know, had been sparked by a gentle
and compassionate marine biologist called Matt Anderson.  He
had meant well.  He had been inspired by the highest motives.
By consideration and humanity, by raw and spontaneous pity.
And he had unleashed a nightmare.
     That is clear from documents analyzed by Trojan.  Very
little else, however, is certain.  there were few survivors
and their accounts were so disjointed and confused.  The full
facts, now, will probably never be known.

                             170
     Here, however, is what we have been able to piece
together:

     Anderson, a thirty-three-year-old single man from Miami,
Florida, was one of the designated movers at Archimedes Base
who listened to The Instigator.  He was one of the small
group who secretly visited the segregated Components Village.
He talked to the people there, heard enough to realize that
The Instigator had been telling the truth.  It was grotesque
and barbaric but it was, unquestionably, the truth.
     That whole party of designated movers was scheduled for
transportation to the new territory that night.  And
everything would have been different if they had all gone.
there would have been no disaster.
     They would certainly have posed a bigger "conscience
problem" to the Committee in Residence but, in time, the
Committee would have converted them into accepting the
necessary realities of Alternative 3.
     But Anderson did not travel with the others.  He
stumbled on the return journey from the village of the
slaves.  He stumbled and hurt his spine.  And it was decided
that he was not fit to travel, that he should stay for a
while at Archimedes Base.
     Ten days later he slipped unseen from his room and again
visited that village.  It was not difficult for there were no
guards.  There was no need for guards around the village.
The people temporarily there had been instructed to remain
their quarters.  And they had been programed to obey,
unquestioningly, every order they received.
     Anderson wanted to talk to them at length, to understand
them, to see if he could possibly help.  And that was when he
got his great shock.  By then there was a new Batch
consignment in the village and in that Batch was a man he
knew, a man who, years earlier, had been a colleague at
school.
     The man recognized him, could obviously think fluently
and intelligently, but all the vital personality had been
gouged out of him.  His bearing and his attitude showed that
he knew and accepted his position.  He was a slave.  That was
when Anderson knew he had to take action...

Trojan's report says:

     Two of the Components who did survive have revealed
under interrogation that they heard Anderson talking to
the man of two occasions, on that first day and later
when he returned with details of the plan for the
intended evacuation.  This is principally how Department
Seven has been able to establish much of what did happen
before the disaster...



                             171
     There was an aerospace technician in the latest group of
designated movers, a highly-qualified man who had been
trained by NASA, and Anderson, it seems, sought him out and
explained the whole situation.  He told this man of the
atrocities to which they were all, unwittingly, a party.
He elaborated on how they had been lured towards a debased
and de-humanized future, on how they would be battening for
the rest of their lives on the misery of the mutilated
slaves.  He convinced him it was their duty to rescue the
people from the village, to return them to their families on
Earth - and to ensure that this traffic in human life was
stopped for ever.

     Trojan's report continues:

     The main depot for craft on the Earth-run was south
of Archimedes Base on the far side of the mountain range
known as Spitzbergen.  Most long range vehicles were
maintained and parked there and smaller craft were used
to convey passengers to and from Archimedes, rather in
the style of airport buses on Earth.
     There were invariably a number of these smaller
craft on the tarmac at the Archimedes Arrival Terminal
and the plan was for Anderson and Gowers, the aerospace
technician, to steal one of these craft and use it to
evacuate as many of the Components as possible.
     Another sympathetic designated mover, briefed on
the technicalities by Gowers, would operate one of the
airlocks in the southern section of the bubble to allow
them through.  They would then travel to the main depot
where by force if necessary, they would commandeer a
vessel in which to make the journey back to Earth.


     So that, apparently, was what was meant to happen.  But
it all went wrong.  Horribly and hideously wrong.  Gowers
found a suitable craft and he checked it, established that it
was fuelled and ready for flight.  And Anderson was in charge
of discreetly marshalling the people in the village of
slaves, of supervising their march to the Terminal.
     Everything went well at first.  There were a hundred and
fifty-five slaves in the village at that time and the small
craft could accommodate only eighty-four of them, so Anderson
selected the youngest, including his former schoolmate, for
in his opinion they ought to have priority.  When he returned
to Earth and publicly exposed this sick side if Alternative 3
there would be such an international outcry that the other
slaves would also be returned to their homes.  Yes, and those
who had already been taken to the new territory.  The vast
majority of human beings would never tolerate the obscenities
being committed in their name.  That, according to the
evidence from Trojan, is what Anderson really thought.

                             172
     There was no problem in sifting aside those who were not
to immediately saved, although all the people in the village
now knew exactly what was being planned, for, of course, the
slaves had been programed into automatic obedience.

     Trojan's report went on:

     One of the surviving Components later interrogated
said that Anderson told them:  "There are few guards and
so it is unlikely that any serious attempt will be made
to prevent us leaving this Base or, indeed, this planet.
     "However, those of you chosen for repatriation must
remember that, in these circumstances, it is better to
kill than be captured.  The lives and freedom of many
people depend on us getting back to Earth and so you
must be prepared to kill anyone who tries to stop you.
that is an order."



     In fact, six of Alternative 3's resident personnel were
soon killed.  They were trampled down and kicked to death by
the slaves, near or in the Terminal, when they tried to stop
the party reaching the craft.  They were left broken and
bleeding on the ground and the slaves, with no show of
emotion, walked over them and climbed on board.  Then the
engines fired into life and Gowers, seeing the opening-lights
winking around the airlock on the left, eased them upwards.
     The craft hovered briefly in the still air, thirty or
forty feet above the tarmac, and then the inner lip of the
airlock rolled aside like a transparent stage curtain.
their path was now clear and Gowers depressed a switch to
start the forward thrust.  the horror, at that moment, was
just seven seconds away...

     Trojan's report picks up the story:

     A senior technician at Archimedes Central Control,
one of the permanent staff who did survive, has made a
statement in which he describes how he was alerted by
shouting and screaming from the direction of the
Terminal.  the angle of his view prevented him from
observing what was happening there but then he did
notice the unexpected opening of the airlock door.  He
knew that if the outer door were also to open, possibly
because of some malfunction in the equipment, the Base
would be subjected immediately to acute decompression.
     He saw no traffic and no traffic was scheduled for
departure.  So, assuming there was a serious fault and
that the shouts were probably ones of warning, he



                             173
pressed a master-control button.  This was on a board
designed to activate a fail-safe system, over-riding all
other, and his action resulted in the airlock door
snapping instantly back into position.
     An experienced pilot could have coped with the
problem by taking avoiding action and returning his
craft to the Terminal but Gowers was not an experienced
pilot...


     Gowers, in fact, was almost at the door when it closed.
Suddenly, straight ahead of him and all around him, there
was a transparent domed wall.  He felt trapped like a fly
under an upturned tumbler, and he panicked.  He swerved the
craft violently upwards to the left and then, in desperation,
he over-compensated and jerked it into a fast and erratic
zig-zag course.  the craft, now bucking viciously, surged
towards the roof.  Gowers, hopelessly out of control,
snatched wildly at the control stick, sending the craft into
a lethal whiplash dive.  It exploded into one of the walls of
the dome, spewing fire and wreckage and blazing bodies, and
it smashed a devastating hole in the transparent surface.
     The entire base, where the air was artificially
maintained at Earth pressure, immediately decompressed.  It
was as if some mammoth and malignant vacuum-cleaner was
greedily sucking everything into its mouth.  Litter-cans and
small vehicles and the six men who'd been trampled to death.
And the savagery of the maelstrom shattered heavy objects
against the dome, rattling them and bouncing them until they
too punched their way through and were swirled out into the
outer blackness.  And the new holes brought new snatching
whirlwinds.  And the buildings groaned and surrendered and
shot up, disintegrating, in that monstrous cannonade of
     havoc.  That day brought death to every Designated
     Mover at Archimedes Base.  There were twenty-nine of
     them -scientists, technicians and medical specialists -
     mainly from America and Russia.  And not one survived.
     They were brilliant men.  Carefully selected men.  Today
     they are mere particles of dust.  Drifting through the
     uncharted wastes of eternity.
     However, as we have indicated, there were survivors.
Two of the people known as components lived through the
holocaust and so did five of the resident staff.  If they had
perished the events of that terrible day at Archimedes would
probably have remained a mystery for ever.  There would
possibly have been reports from observatories of a strange
and momentary flare of activity on the moon - activity which
might have been presumed to be the result of some unknown
natural phenomena.  And that would have been all.  But
because of these seven survivors, because of the information
they gave to Department Seven and which Trojan has passed to
us, the truth can be recognized.

                             174
     These seven lived because at the time of the devastation
they happened to be insulated in rooms where the atmosphere
was independently maintained - and they escaped to the
obsolete base at Cassini.
     Cassini Base, we understand, is now being redeveloped.
It will once again become the principal transit camp on the
moon.  The Alternative 3 operation suffered a serious set-
back at Archimedes but it has certainly not been abandoned.
     No voyages are being made from Earth at the moment for
there is much work to be done at Cassini but people are still
being watched and assessed as potential Designated Movers.
And, according to Trojan, plans are being made for the
imminent round-up of more Components.
     Maybe there are men and women in your town, possibly on
your street, who will disappear, suddenly and inexplicably,
in the near future...men and women already ear-marked for an
astonishingly different existence on that far-distant plan-t.
     They would already have gone, those people, if it had
not been for the obstinacy of The German.  And for the
concerned compassion of The Instigator.  They would already
have joined those who, if biologist Stephen Manderson is
right, are now on a planet where no squirrel will ever
scamper.  And where no nightingale will ever sing.
     There is just one final point for us to make.  On the
back cover of this book you will note one word which you may
consider puzzling: "speculation".
     Why "Speculation"?  That is a valid question ...
especially in view of the fact that so much of our evidence,
particularly that quoted from newspapers, was already a
matter of public record.  Well ... we did mention that
politicians tried to suppress this book, that two in Britain
sought injunctions to prevent its publication.  And we did
explain that we were forced into a "reluctant compromise".
     Need we say more?








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