“It could turn faster than any pilot could stand,” said Redell. “Of course, a pilot’s cockpit could be built into a large disk; but there’d have to be some way of holding down the speed, to avoid too many G’s in tight maneuvers.”
“Most of the disks don’t make any noise,” I said. “At least, that’s the general report. You’d hear ordinary jets for miles.”
“Right, and here’s another angle. Ram jets take a lot of fuel. Even with some highly efficient new jet, I can’t see the long ranges reported. Some of these saucers have been seen all over the world. No matter which hemisphere they were launched from, they’d need an eight-thousand-mile range, at least, to explain all of the sightings. The only apparent answer would be some new kind of power, probably atomic. We certainly didn’t have atomic engines for aircraft in 1947, when the first disks were seen here. And we don’t have them now, though we’re working on it. Even if we had such an engine, it wouldn’t be tiny enough to power the small disks.”
“Anyway,” I said, “we’d hardly be flying them all over everywhere. The cost would be enormous, and there’d always be a danger of somebody getting the secret if a disk landed.”
“Plus the risk of injuring people by radiation. just imagine an atomic-powered disk dropping into a city. The whole idea’s ridiculous.”
“That seems to rule out the guided-missile answer,” I began. But Redell shook his head.
“Disk-shaped missiles are quite feasible. I’m talking about range, speed, and performance. Imagine for a moment that we have disk-type missiles using the latest jet or rocket propulsion—either piloted or remote-controlled. The question is, could such disks fit specific sightings like the one at Godman Field and the case at Fargo?”
Redell paused as if some new thought had struck him.
“Wait a minute, here’s an even better test. I happen to know about this case personally. Marvin Miles—he’s an aviation writer in Los Angeles—was down at White Sands Proving Ground some time ago. He talked with a Navy rocket expert who was in charge of naval guided-missile projects. This Navy man—he’s a commander in the regular service—told Miles they’d seen four saucers down in that area.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t kidding Miles?” I said. Then I remembered Purdy’s tip about a White Sands case.