Backus guided the FBI to an abandoned sawmill, some two miles inland, where the X-15 had been taken apart, minutely photographed, and then sunk in the old log pond.
The men who had hired Backus and dismantled the X-15 had left the area several weeks earlier. They were remembered with friendliness by the residents of Trinidad Bay, who described them as "real nice guys and good fishermen, too." They had told Backus they would be back in the late autumn for the steelhead run, and perhaps would have some more hauling business for him at that time.
The FBI offered Backus one chance for life. He accepted it, with abject eagerness.
Beyond this point, there are no more available records on the case of Dr. John O'Hara Smith, and Eddie, the educatable computer. But several items, not apparently related in any way, make interesting speculation.
On January 3, 1956, the Air Force reported that a Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile, launched from Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, had been destroyed when it appeared to be wandering off course.
About the same date, a Panamanian freighter, riding the gulf-stream toward the West Indies, radioed a report of sighting a massive oil slick and a scattering of debris, some of it bearing Russian insignia. No survivors were found.
The U.S. State Department solicitously inquired of the Soviet Union if any of its vessels had been lost in the winter storms of the Caribbean. The Soviet Union testily replied that no Soviet vessels could have been lost, since Soviet vessels, as a matter of sound international principle, confined their operations to their own territorial waters.
During Easter Week of 1956, the FBI announced the arrests of four men on charges of espionage: A druggist in Tucson, Arizona; an importer in San Francisco; a retired real-estate operator in Los Angeles; an obscure trucker in northern California. All pleaded guilty in order to escape the gas chamber. The details of the charges against them were not disclosed, except to members of a Federal Grand Jury.
Two other published items are worth noting: