“That’s a rather long story, and happened, as I said, before you were born.
“I was just out of college, and had gotten interested in this part of the country; so I decided to see some of it first hand, and eventually found myself here in the hills. I started at Helena, and went on foot up to Flathead, through Glacier Park, west along the border to the Kootenai, and back along the river past Bonner’s Ferry into the Cabinets. It wasn’t a very exciting jaunt, but I saw a lot and had a pretty good time.
“I was crossing the brook we just followed up here, just after I had gotten under way one morning, when I heard the weirdest racket from up the hill. I really didn’t know too much about the neighborhood, and was a bit on the uneasy side; but I had a rifle, and managed to convince myself that I was out to satisfy my curiosity, so I headed up toward the noise.
“When I got out from among the trees, the noise began to sound more and more like spoken language; so I yelled a few words myself, though I couldn’t understand a word of it. There was no answer at first — just this tremendous, roaring voice blatting out the strangely regular sounds. Finally, a little way up the hill from here, on a rather open spot, I saw the source; and at almost the same instant the noise stopped.
“Lying out in the open, where it could be seen from any direction, was a thing that looked like a perfectly good submarine torpedo — everyone was familiar with those at the time, as they played a very prominent part in the first World War. Science-fiction had not come into style then, and Heaven knows I wasn’t much of a physical scientist, but even so I found it hard to believe that the thing had been carried there. I examined it as thoroughly as I could, and found a few discrepancies in the torpedo theory.
“In the first place, it had neither propellers nor any type of steering fin. It was about twenty feet long and three in diameter, which was reasonable for a torpedo as far as I knew, but the only break in the surface was a section of the side, near what I supposed to be the front, which was open rather like a bomb bay. I looked in, though I didn’t take a chance on sticking an arm or my head inside, and saw a chamber that occupied most of the interior of the nose section. It was empty, except for a noticeable smell of burning sulfur.
“I nearly had a heart attack when the thing began talking again, this time in a much lower tone — at any rate I jumped two feet. Then I cussed it out in every language
I knew for startling me so. It took me a minute or two to get command of myself, and then I realized that the sounds it was making were rather clumsy imitations of my own words. To make sure, I tried some others, one word at a time; and most of them were repeated with fair accuracy. Whoever was speaking couldn’t pronounce ‘P’ or ‘B,’ but got on fairly well with the rest.
“Obviously there was either someone trapped in the rear of the torpedo, or it contained a radio and someone was calling from a distance. I doubted the first, because of the tremendous volume behind the original sounds; and presently there was further evidence.
“I had determined to set up camp right there, early as it was. I was going about the business, saying an occasional word to the torpedo and being boomed at in return, when another of the things appeared overhead. It spoke, rather softly, when it was still some distance up — apparently the controllers didn’t want to scare me away! It set-tied beside the first, trailing a thin cloud of blue smoke which I thought at first must have to do with driving rockets. However, it proved to be leaking around the edges of a door similar to that in the first torpedo, and then a big cloud of it puffed out as the door opened. That made me a little cautious, which was just as well — the metal turned out to be hot enough to feel the radiation five feet away. How much hotter it had been before I can’t guess. The sulfur smell was strong for a while after the second torpedo landed, but gradually faded out again.