As I went down the gangway I suddenly realized something. My last vague fear was gone.
It had not been a personal fear of the visitors from space. It had been a selfish fear of the impact on my life. I realized that now.
It might be a long time before they would try to make contact. But I had a conviction that when it came, it would be a peaceful mission, not an ultimatum. It could even be the means of ending wars on earth.
But I had been conditioned to this thing. I had had six months of preparation, six months to go from complete skepticism to slow, final acceptance.
What if it had been thrown at me in black headlines?
Even a peaceful contact by beings from another planet would profoundly affect the world. The story in True might play an important part in that final effect. Carefully done, it could help prepare Americans for the official disclosure.
But if it weren’t done right, we might be opening a Pandora’s box.
CHAPTER XVI
That morning, at True, we made the final decisions on how to handle the story. Using the evidence of the Mantell case, the Chiles-Whitted report, Gorman’s mystery-light encounter, and other authentic cases, along with the records of early sightings, we would state our main conclusion: that the flying saucers were interplanetary.
In going over the mass of reports, Purdy and I both realized that a few sightings did not fit the space-observer pattern. Most of these reports came from the southwest states, where guided-missile experiments were going on.