Proof!

[Jakob]

[i know... this isn't high fantasy or nothin... but I wanted to share...]

 

"How about you, Doc? Do you believe that there are aliens visiting the earth?" Connie Williams asked.

 

The Christmas party at Dr. Paul Schmidt's house in Clear Lake had been severely dampened by the heavy rain storm which had blown in. Several couples had not shown up, but had called with their apologies, concerned with having to drive on the flooded or potentially flooded streets. Others had arrived but left early, intimidated by the fear of being flooded in. By ten o'clock, only five guests remained of the thirty who had been invited. They were Ed Williams and David McMasters, both Section Managers of Schmidt's department at Cal-Tex Aerospace, Ed's wife Connie, also a Manager in another department at Cal-Tex, David's wife Anne, and neighbor Les Bowman, an employee of another NASA contractor. Les' wife Cathy had not felt well and had decided to stay at home.

 

The group had gathered in the den, where Doc, as he was known by his friends, had built a fire in the fireplace. Though they were not gloomy, none of the group seemed to be in a party mood. Despite the ample selection of alcoholic beverages and mixes, few drinks had been consumed and the elaborate food trays which Doc had purchased had been barely touched. They were discussing the ever-present NASA budget fights and the future of the manned space programs.

 

Connie, feeling she had reached the "glass ceiling" at Cal-Tex, did not want to talk about NASA, NASA Contactors or the space program. She was interested in talking with Anne about Anne's career as a flight instructor. As she turned toward Anne, her elbow hit her glass, spilling it on the end table. A stack of books were threatened by the spreading liquid, and Anne quickly grabbed them up to prevent their damage, while Connie swabbed up the puddle with napkins.

 

When the table was dry, Anne moved to set the books back, looking at them closely for the first time. One was an old copy of Whitley Strieber's 'Communion', still in its protective paper cover. The drawing of the creature on the cover caught her attention, and she looked at it for several seconds. "Did anyone see that 'Alien Autopsy' thing on TV about a year ago?" she asked, still looking at the book cover.

 

Most of the guests answered that they had, and a lengthy conversation began as to the authenticity of the film. While no one was willing to proclaim a belief in life on other worlds, all of them admitted to having been puzzled by the film and having their curiosity aroused immensely, The consensus was that it was very realistic. If it was a fake, they had agreed, it was extremely well done, and would have been very expensive and difficult to create.

 

Les had been in the kitchen, getting a snack and when he returned he asked "You talking about that alien autopsy thing?" When told that they were discussing it, he said "I read an article on the Internet a while back that claimed it was a fake and listed a bunch of discrepencies about it."

 

For several minutes he related the discrepencies that the article had described. "It's unfortunate that scams like this get the publicity that they do, because it hurts those who are sincerely searching for evidence of life on other planets and those who are seeking the truth behind the UFO phenomenon."

 

"Are you saying that you believe there's intellegent life on other planets?" Anne asked him.

 

"I think it's highly possible," he responded.

 

"Well, do you believe that we've been visited by people from other planets?" she asked.

 

"I really don't know," he said. "I've never personally seen anything that would convice me that we have, but there are some interesting things that have yet to be explained. The only thing I am certain about is that 99.99 percent of the so-called alien abduction stories are pure crap."

 

A lengthy discussion followed amongst the guest about visits by aliens. The general concensus was that none of them were totally convinced either way. All conceded that it was possible.

 

Doc had remained silent during the discussion.

 

Then Connie asked her question.

 

Doc was looking in Connie's direction, but not focusing on her. After nearly a minute, he had not answered her, so she repeated the question. "Come on, Doc. We want your input. Do you believe that extra-terrestrials have been visiting Earth?

 

After a long pause he answered in a low voice. "Yes, I do. And I have PROOF."

[Jakob]

Connie blinked. "What do you mean?" she asked in a low voice.

 

He paused for several seconds. "I shouldn't have said that."

 

"But, you said you have proof." Anne said "You can't just leave it like that. If you really have proof of aliens visiting this planet, it could be the most important news in 2000 years. Please, don't leave us in the dark."

 

After several minutes of pleading by all the guests, he reluctantly agreed to explain his statement. "It may be a serious mistake talking about this. What I tell you cannot leave this room. I haven't told a lot of people about this because it has caused trouble for everyone I've ever told. Do you all agree? Not one word."

 

They agreed.

 

He moved to the raised hearth, where he took a seat to the left of the fireplace beneath the built-in bookcases. A second set of bookcases were to the right of the fireplace, on which a very complete set of stereo equipment was in place.

 

He removed his glasses, cleaned them with a napkin, and put them back on. "I haven't talked about this with anyone for years, but maybe it's time to get it out in the open. It wasn't always safe to talk about, and most of the people with whom I've talked about this have wished they never met me. But there are five of you here. Maybe there is safety in numbers. If enough people know, they can't keep it secret anymore."

 

He took a slow sip from his drink, and moved slightly farther from the fire.

 

"It happened a long time ago, when I was a kid, back in Minnesota." he began. "Now a lot of you know that I don't sleep a lot. Only about one or two hours a night. Sometimes less. Sometimes only a half-hour or so. And when I do sleep, it's generally sitting in a chair or recliner. It's always been like this. When I was a kid, I'd only sleep half the night. Used to be a real problem for my folks. And after I was about ten years old or so, it got less and less until by the time I was about 14, it got to where I only needed an hour or two a night. So I used to sit up and read or draw or work on model airplanes, or do my homework, anything to occupy the time without making noise. Everyone else in the family needed a full night's sleep, so I had to be quiet."

 

"Frequently I'd listen to the radio, with the volume turned down real low. Sometimes at night, especially in the winter, I could pick up radio stations from all over the country. So, for Christmas in 1956, I asked for a short wave radio. I was taking a Spanish class in school, and wanted to try to pick up some Spanish stations. And I was curious about what was happening in the rest of the world. Well, my Dad found a used Hallicrafter's radio with a dozen different bands. And he got headsets with it so I could turn up the volume to a point where I could hear comfortably without disturbing anyone. I ran an antennae wire across the ceiling in the dining room, which didn't make my Mother very happy, but I promised her that as soon as we got a decent break in the weather, I would move the wire to the attic. I would listen to the radio for hours, trying to see how many different stations I could get. For three weeks, I kept records of each station's call letters, frequency, and the city and country where it was located, at least for those where I could understand what they were saying. Some nights I would hear a lot of traffic in Morse code."

 

"Then one night I picked up a signal that was different. It was not a voice communications or Morse code or anything that I could comprehend. It was just a bunch of different tones, shifting rapidly, with rapid changes of volume. I listened for a minute or so and turned the dial slowly, hoping to pick up something better. That's when I found the second signal. It was less than one megahertz above the first signal. We used to call it a megacycle in those days."

 

He brushed a wisp of gray hair from his forehead, but it only fell back to its chosen place. He continued.

 

"This one was not one that I could turn off. It sounded like a heart beat if you listen through a stethoscope, but slightly different. It was faster than a normal heart beat, and had a little bit different sound. I didn't have any idea what it was. I listened for a couple minutes, then it faded, and disappeared. I tried to go back to the first signal, but it was gone too. I noted the times and frequencies, and tried to find something else. I messed around for awhile, listening to an English station and a station from Lisbon, then I tried scanning for something else. Then, I picked up the second signal again. It was eighty-nine minutes after the signal had disappeared before. I listened for a couple minutes, then turned the dial and picked up the first signal, the one with the tones. I moved back and forth between them several times until they both faded. They both disappeared at the same time, so I concluded they were related. It had been almost seven minutes from the time I picked them up until they disappeared. By that time, I was sleepy, so I took a little nap. I slept for over an hour and when I woke, I immediately began scanning for the signals. Eighty-eight minutes after they had faded, I picked them up again. They lasted for eight minutes. I picked up the signals once more that night, at the same interval, and for the same duration."

[Jakob]

He paused, took another sip of his drink, uncrossed his legs, then resumed his story.

 

"A buddy of mine had an old wire recorder. It was a predecessor of the tape recorder, and actually recorded the signal on a thin wire. The recording quality was terrible, but tape recorders were not readily available. So, the next day I asked him if I could borrow his recorder. He wanted to know why, so I told him I wanted to record some Spanish newscasts to help me with my Spanish class. He never used the recorder, so he agreed to let me borrow it. He had a Y adapter to allow the simultaneous use of headsets and a recorder input, so I borrowed that, along with eighteen old reels of recording wire."

 

"For four nights I picked up the signals five times each night and recorded samples of each signal. Then on the fifth night, the one that sounded like a heartbeat was getting weak and erratic sounding, sometimes being real fast, sometimes going a few seconds with no sound. Then on the sixth night, it was silent. I knew I had locked in on the signal, because there was no static when I hit it. The other signal, the one with the tones was still there, still strong. It was still there on the seventh and eighth nights, but on the ninth night, it was gone. Only now there was nothing, only static where the signals had been. I felt a strange feeling of loss."

 

"In all, I had recorded sixty-four minutes of the signal that sounded like a heartbeat and thirty-two minutes of the other signal. Each reel of wire could only record twelve minutes, so I had the data split up, using twelve reels. I decided to bring the recorder and one of the reels to school and have my science teacher listen to the signals. Maybe he could tell me what they were. It was a small school and we had only one teacher for the few Science courses they taught."

 

He paused again, stood for a moment, then took a large throw pillow from where it was leaning against the hearth, placed it on the brickwork, and sat on it. He finished his drink, set the empty glass on the hearth beside him, not noticing that he had set the glass directly on the brick, rather than on the coaster he had employed before. "For some reason, I got very nervous about the reels and decided to hide them, except for the blank ones and the one I took to school. I later re-hid them in several locations in the house, and I hid two in the barn and two in the storage shed. We had some old peanut butter jars with the wide lids, and I put the ones that I hid in the barn and storage shed in them. They just barely fit in the jars."

 

"I drove to school the next day, one of the few times I ever did. I didn't have a car of my own, so I used my mother's car. The old recorder weighed about twenty pounds, and I didn't want to carry it. I caught my science teacher in the hall between classes and asked him to listen to the reel during lunch break. He was a great guy and was always willing to help with anything that might stimulate a student's interest in any subject, so he agreed to meet me in the science room."

 

"Well, he listened to the tapes...excuse me, wires, and he couldn't understand them either. He also thought that the one set sounded almost like a heartbeat, but not exactly, and he had no idea what the other was. He said that he had a friend who was a Professor at the University of Minnesota, and suggested that he get him to look at them. The Professor was a Physicist and had access to an extensive electronics lab where he could analyze the recordings. So I agreed to let him take the reel. This was on a Friday and he said he would call his friend and try to take the recording to him that weekend."

 

"On Monday, I asked my teacher how it went, and he said the Professor hadn't been able to determine what it was. They had gone down to the lab on campus and had copied the recordings onto high fidelity magnetic tape, had filtered it to remove some of the static, and had played it several times, without reaching any conclusions beyond what I had reached. The Professor called in a Biology Professor who listened to the one set. He also thought it sounded almost like a heartbeat, but if it was, he couldn't tell what type of animal it was from. He said it sounded different from anything he had ever heard. So the Professor was going to talk to some other people and try to reach some logical conclusion as to what the sets could be. My teacher was going to go back the next weekend and talk to him again. It has raised a lot of curiosity."

 

"On the next Friday, my teacher caught me in the hall as soon as I got there. 'I've got to talk to you' he said, and he pulled me into the Science Lab. 'I don't know what you got on those recordings, but from now on I don't want to have anything more to do with it or know anything more about it. I don't want to even hear about it from now on, do you understand?' He was whispering and he acted as if he was scared to death. I asked him what was wrong and he said 'Two guys came to my house last night and asked a lot of questions about it. They wouldn't show any identification or tell me who they were. But they scared the hell out of me. I shouldn't even be talking to you about this, but I think you should know. They said I was to forget everything I had heard, to forget the recordings ever existed, to forget everything, to not talk to anyone about it. Or else. They didn't say what would happen if I didn't do what they said, but I don't want to find out. So from now on leave me out of this. And do yourself a favor. Destroy the recordings.'"

[Jakob]

"I tried to ask him some questions, but he refused to say anything more. That night I played the last reel again. I thought maybe I had stumbled onto some secret government communications. I didn't know what was going on."

 

"The next day was Saturday, and we went into St. Paul to do some shopping. In those days, a trip to St. Paul was a major outing, so we would generally leave early and spend the whole day. When we got home about six o'clock, there was a car in the driveway. It was a plain black '57 Ford. A chill went up my back when I saw the government license plate."

 

"My dad told us to stay in the car and lock the doors while he went to see what was happening. He got out, looked around, then went into the house. He came back in no time, maybe two or three minutes, looking scared to death. 'Stay here' he said ''I'm going across the street. I've got to call the Sheriff. There's two dead guys in the house. And Pal's covered with blood.' Pal was our dog, a very large gray German Shepherd. He was devoted to my little brother, Joe, and normally slept on Joe's bed at night or when Joe wasn't there. He was about twelve years old, and deaf as a rock."

 

He grinned and paused. "The dog that is, not my brother. My brother was about ten at the time and had normal hearing. Anyway, Dad ran across the road and called the Sheriff. Then he came back and got us and we went over there because it was getting mighty damned cold in the car. It took about an hour for the Sheriff to get there. He brought a Deputy and they went in and checked everything out."

 

"My Dad went with them. After looking the situation over thoroughly, the Sheriff theorized that the two guys were searching the house for something and when they went up stairs, the dog attacked them. The dog must not have heard them until they got almost to the top of the stairs. When he attacked, he caught them totally by surprise and ripped the throat out of the first guy, knocking him backwards into the second guy. The stairs were very steep and treacherous. Just about everyone in the family had fallen down them at least once. I remember once, my cousin fell down them and broke her nose. But these two guys had gone down backwards. The second guy had broken his neck. The first guy had bled to death. He didn't die right away, maybe lasted a couple of minutes. He had tried to get out the front door. There was blood all over the front entry."

 

Doc cleared his throat and continued. "The Sheriff called the Coroner, who was also the Undertaker, and also ran an ambulance service, to have him come out and do his part in the investigation. They had to drag the Coroner out of a School Board meeting. He was also President of the School Board." He paused. "It was a very small town. Anyway, while they waited for the Coroner, they decided to check the car to try to get some means of identifying the two men. They didn't want to disturb the bodies until the Coroner had seen them. None of them had noticed the government license plates on the car before this, maybe because of the angle at which the car was parked. And when Dad pulled into the driveway, he had blocked the rear of the car from view."

 

"When they saw the license plates, the Sheriff and Deputy got very nervous and decided not to touch the car or do anything until the Coroner arrived. Then they would check the bodies for ID and decide what to do next."

 

"When the Coroner got there, they explained what they theorized had happened, and asked him to take as many pictures as possible. When they told the Coroner about the government plates on the car, he looked at my Dad and asked him what the hell he was into. But my Dad had no idea what was going on. I hadn't told him or my Mother about the recordings or about giving one reel to my teacher or anything that had happened since."

 

"The Coroner had no real forensic experience. He was elected every two years because no one ever ran against him. He decided that this might be more important than anything he had ever done before, so he called the town doctor for help and asked him to get out there as fast as he could. The doctor made the two mile drive from his house in less than three minutes. He took temperature readings of the two bodies and temperature readings in the entry way and helped gather what other information he could, including samples from the pool of blood. Then they decided to check the bodies for identification. The man who had broken his neck had an FBI ID card. They didn't touch the other body. They just went across the street and called the FBI."

 

"The FBI had to come from Minneapolis. Four agents showed up. It must have been about forty-five miles, so it took them over an hour to get there. They were the most surly bastards I had ever encountered. We were treated like @#%$. Pardon my language, but there's no other way to describe it. My Dad wanted to know what two FBI agents were doing prowling around our house, but he was told to shut up, that they would ask the questions. They yelled at him, belittled him, threatened him, blamed him for the two agent's getting killed, and scared the crap out of him. They threatened to throw him in jail, to destroy him and our family. He was shaking, he was so scared. I had never seen him like that before, or since. I got angry and started to get up, but one of them caught me with a back-hand across the face that liked to loosen my teeth. They told me to sit down and shut up. I did as I was told."

[Jakob]

"The Sheriff tried to intervene, but he too was told to sit down and shut up. When he protested, they told him that the investigation was their responsibility, that they would ask the questions, and if he didn't shut up that he would be arrested for interfering with their investigation. One of the agents had his hand at his holster. When the Sheriff noticed that, he sat back and didn't say anything else."

 

"They asked the Coroner if there was an ambulance service around, and when he said he had the only ambulance service in the area, they commandeered his ambulance. It was really only a station wagon with lights on it. One agent went with him while he got the vehicle. Then they loaded the two bodies into the wagon and one of the agents found our mop and mop bucket and proceeded to clean up the blood. The blood had started to dry and there was a lot of it, but when he got done, you couldn't tell there had ever been any."

 

"Then they got everyone together over at the neighbor's house. They told everyone that we were not to talk about this. It never happened. They put the fear of God in us. They took all the evidence. All the photographs, the blood samples, and the notes the Doctor and Coroner had made. Then they took my Dad and me outside. They told me they wanted the recordings. All of them. My Dad didn't know what they were talking about so they let me explain briefly. My Dad told me to give them to the agents. So I did. All of them."

 

"Except for one in the house, the two in the storage shed, and the two in the barn."

 

"It was nearly one o'clock before they left, and before they did, they said that if I ever told anyone about this, that I would wish the hell I had never been born. I already did."

 

"Three days later, the dog disappeared. Never saw any trace of him again."

 

"The next Saturday we had to go into Minneapolis for a wedding. When we got back, I thought someone had been messing with my stuff. So, I got out the one reel of recordings that I had hidden in the house and played it again. It was blank. Then, late that night, I slipped into the barn, got the two tapes that were hidden there, took them back to the house, and played them. They were okay. I did the same for the two tapes in the storage building. They were okay, too. When I took the tapes back to the storage building, I decided to make sure they would never be found. I opened the peanut butter jar that held the two wire reels and filled it with small nails. I made sure the lid was on real tight. I opened a can of paint that was left over from when we painted the house that summer and dropped the jar into it. The paint covered it completely. The nails were to keep the jar from floating. I closed the can back up and put it on the shelf. The jar stayed there for five years. I put the other two tapes back where they had been in the barn."

 

"Needless to say, no one talked about that night, but when I saw the neighbors or my science teacher, they averted their eyes from me. I never did figure out how the FBI found out about the recordings. I became quite paranoid about 'Big Government', visualizing a vast network of spies, with people reporting on their neighbors or co-worker or classmates. But I concluded that somewhere along the line the Professor must have talked to the wrong person or persons. Sure would have liked to have talked to him."

 

He picked up his glass to take a drink, noticed it was empty and set it back down, this time on the coaster, then continued.

 

"I graduated that spring, and after a couple of useless minimum wage jobs, I decided to go into the Air Force. I was still only seventeen, so I needed my parent's signature, but they thought it might be a good idea. I ended up in electronics, and went to Tech school in Biloxi, Mississippi. From there I went to Lincoln, Nebraska. I got there in the summer of '58."

 

"In order to work on the aircraft, I needed a security clearance. It was only a secret clearance, but I was real nervous about it. The paperwork brought back a lot of unpleasant memories, and I wasn't sure I would get a clearance. I had visions of doing KP duty for the remainder of my tour, because without that clearance, I couldn't do the job for which I had been trained. Normally it took two to three months for the clearance to be approved. Mine came back in less than three weeks."

 

"My NCOIC made a comment about how fast it came back. I almost said that it's a lot faster when they have an open file on someone, but I held my tongue. I was surprised at first, but when I thought about it, I suddenly realized how incredibly important a security clearance was. Every job application I had ever seen had a question to the effect 'Have you ever had a security clearance revoked or refused?' You can't get a decent job if you answer 'Yes' to that question. Certainly the only jobs open wouldn't be worth having."

 

"I knew then why the clearance had been granted and why it had come through so quickly. They had the perfect tool to keep me totally in line. One slip and my clearance was gone, along with all hopes of any future career. Needless to say, I vowed to keep a low profile, keep my nose clean, and do my job to the best of my ability, then get out as soon as I could. I wasn't about to do anything to risk my clearance or my enlistment. I had no desire to be a dish washer or fry-cook for the rest of my life."

 

"I decided to get as much as I could out of my enlistment, so I got permission from my NCOIC to enroll at the University of Nebraska and started taking courses that fall. They were real nice about letting me work shifts that wouldn't interfere with my courses, but because of regulations, I couldn't take more than six hours per semester."

 

"I was supposed to get out in October, '61, but I got involuntarily extended due to the Berlin crisis, when they built the Wall. But it worked out okay, because I was able to go to school for an additional year. It gave me enough for my Associate's Degree. I didn't have anything out of the ordinary happen to me while I was in the service. As I said, I just tried to keep my nose clean and do my job. But still I had a feeling that occasionally someone was going through my stuff. I wasn't able to find anything obvious, but I had that feeling."

 

"My extension was canceled in June of 62, and I headed back to Minnesota. I had saved up a lot of money during my enlistment. The government had reimbursed me for my schooling at the end of each semester, and I kept myself too busy to spend a lot of money. My one big vice was playing poker, and I was successful at it. I wouldn't have been a real good poker player if I hadn't found the secret to why most people lost at the game. The people who lost big would all drink while they played. The more they drank, the more they lost. I stayed sober and won. I never won big off anyone, always leaving them with something. It helped prevent them from getting into serious money trouble, but it kept them coming back."

[Jakob]

"When I got out, I had enough money to finance my way through college to get my Bachelor's degree.

 

I got my degree in December of 63, got married two days later, and took a job with Control Data Corporation, which was the hottest computer company around. Normally, degreed people wouldn't go into the field. They'd stay in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in one of CDC's Engineering Groups, but that wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to get into the space program. I told management that I wanted to do field work for two years before settling into the design and development arena. It took a lot of arguing, but finally they agreed to let me do field work for one year. I spent six months in their internal schools and ended up on a state-of-the-art system which was used for analysis of telemetry data."

 

"That's how I ended up in Houston. We came down here in January of 65. We pulled a six foot U-Haul trailer which contained all of our worldly possessions. Including a large can of Crisco and a gallon can of white paint. Each contained a peanut butter jar with two wire reels. In order to keep my wife from using the Crisco, I had to tell her what it contained. She was scared to death. But until her death in 75, she used only corn oil for cooking."

 

"In the fall of 65, I hired on with Cal-Tex Aerospace." He paused in reflection. "Damn, it's been over 30 years now. The next spring I started on my Master's degree at the U of H. When the Clear Lake campus opened, I went on to get my Ph.D. During that same time, I acquired a lot of electronics equipment. I had a spare bedroom which I used as a lab. I picked up two old wire recorders at a flea market, and using parts from each, and a lot of other parts, was able to get one which worked. I copied the wire reels onto magnetic tape and using filters which I designed and built, I was able to clean the signals up considerably. I removed most of the static and amplified the signals to the point where they were pretty good quality. But I never discussed it with anyone."

 

"In the summer of '70, I was doing some backup work for Apollo 14. By then I was a group lead, and normally didn't do any night shift work, but two of my people were sick so I was filling in. I spent a lot of time in the data acquisition section at Mission Control. One of the people there was monitoring the astronauts heart and respiration. He had a headset there plugged into one of the signals, but wasn't listening to it. I asked him a few questions and found out what it was hooked into and asked him if I could listen to it for a few seconds. He shrugged and handed me the headset. After I listened to it for a while, I asked what other types of telemetry sounded like. 'Just sounds' he answered. I asked him what kind of sounds and he unplugged the headsets moved to one of the panels on the cabinet behind him and plugged the headsets into a jack and handed them to me. It sounded like the same sounds I had recorded, though at much lower frequencies."

 

He paused. "My throat's getting pretty dry. I need to get something to drink. I'm not used to talking this much." He got up, went to the bar, poured himself a soft drink, took a long drink, burped, excused himself, refilled the glass, and returned. He did not sit, but stood on the hearth, leaning against the brick of the fireplace.

 

"I decided to run the signal that sounded like a heartbeat through an EKG system. I had thought of using NASA equipment, but decided that if I did, I would have to answer too many questions. So I went to a company that buys and sells used electronics equipment. I got two old units and built one good one. All I needed was one good trace. I didn't have any schematics on the unit and made a guess about what kind of signal it could handle as an input. I hooked it up to my pre-amp output, put on my tape, and blew the EKG unit up. So I rebuilt it again, built an amplifier with a gain of less than one, and tried again. It overdrove the unit a little, and the trace was inverted, but after a few more little modifications to the system, I tried it again. This time it worked perfectly. I got a very good trace output. Then I had to figure out what the trace meant."

 

"I got some books on analysis of EKGs and some books on heart disease and studied them. I thought I could decipher the signal, but each time I looked at it, the trace just looked wrong. It had an extra pulse."

 

"So I decided that I needed someone else to look at it. So I took it to an acquaintance at NASA. This was in 73. He was one of the astronaut's doctors. He was also a Ph.D. Biologist. I asked him to look at the trace, and told him that he couldn't talk about it to anyone. I told him that I could get into trouble if he discussed it with anyone, and maybe he could get into hot water too. He was hesitant, but I told him that as long as it never went beyond him and me, there was no danger."

 

"Well, I had strongly aroused his curiosity, and he looked at the trace. He studied it for a long time. 'It's a heartbeat' he said, 'but not of any creature that I am familiar with. It seems to have five chambers in its heart. Now I don't know of any creature on earth with five chambers. I know of creatures with one chamber, and two chambers, and three chambers, and of course four chambers. But I don't know of any creature with five.' He wanted to know where I had gotten the data. When I told him that I couldn't give him that information, he got pissed. But I told him he would be in danger if I told him. He insisted, and I eventually told him, warning him about telling anyone else."

 

"I was out of town for the next week, and when I returned, I decided to stop by and see the doctor on the way home from the airport. I had a few more questions and wanted to know if he had reached any conclusions. By this time, I had lost all doubts about the origin of the signal. I was completely convinced that it was of an alien, trapped in a near earth orbit, perhaps in a crippled vehicle, and that this alien had eventually died. I wanted someone to agree with my conclusion."

 

"I went to his office, but the sign on his door had a different name. When I asked for him, they told me he didn't work there anymore. He had been transferred. He had not shown up one day, and the next day, the word had come down that he had been transferred to another NASA site. But no one knew where."

 

"I left and headed to my office. When I got there, it was apparent that someone had searched my office. It was almost as I had left it, but there were enough tiny changes so that I knew it had been searched. I felt they wanted me to know it had been searched. I went home without talking to anyone at work. My lab had been searched. My EKG runs had been replaced with normal human EKGs. I got the tapes out from where I had hidden them and played them. They were blank. I had eight tapes which I thought I had hidden very cleverly. They got them all except for one. And I still have it."

 

He paused briefly. "I eventually got a card from the Biologist. It said 'I screwed up. Talked to the wrong person. Sorry' and it just had his initials."

[Jakob]

He paused and Connie, who had a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electronics, asked skeptically, "If people from another world are advanced enough to be able to travel between planets or between solar systems, wouldn't they have telemetry and communications systems far more sophisticated than what you've described? What you've described sounds like it's only slightly more advanced than ours."

 

"I asked myself that same question," Doc answered, "but I concluded that they didn't have to be thousands of years more advanced than we are. Perhaps only a few decades more advanced. Or maybe only a single decade. All it would take for us to achieve the same level of travel would be a single breakthrough. When you look at where our technology was thirty years ago, especially in our field of computers, and where we are now, it is possible that they had made advances far more rapidly in one area than we did, and be only slightly more advanced in others. I concluded that they could have found some means of space travel that is beyond our comprehension, but be only slightly more advanced in telemetry and communications than we are. It is also possible that they may be behind us in some other technical areas."

 

"What they would use, if anything between planets or solar systems, I cannot imagine, but obviously, such a system as what I monitored would be of no use for communications between solar systems. But, it could be used during launch, landing, and orbital phases. It is my guess that the signals were automatically initiated when the vehicle came within proximity of the earth. I haven't discussed this aspect with anyone else before tonight, but I am open to any suggestions."

 

No one had any other ideas.

 

"How come they never came after you, like they did the biologist?" Ed asked.

 

"They did threaten me. After he disappeared, they came around and told me they wanted the rest of the tapes. I told them that they had them all. I'm not sure they believed me. They said that if I talked to anyone else about this, that I would end up wishing I hadn't. I demanded to know what they did to the Doctor, and they said he had been transferred. He wanted to tell the world about it and ended up in a dead end job in the boondocks. They said he was okay, but his career was dead and they had taken every asset he had. I told them if they ever came after me, I would tell the world, they wouldn't shut me up. I said that I'd talk until I was dead, that I'd let the world know about the tapes and what the government had done to hush it up."

 

"I guess they believed me, because they said that if I talked to anyone they wouldn't come after me. Instead they would come after anyone I talked to about this, like they had against the Doctor. They said I was responsible for destroying his career and I'd be responsible for whatever happened to anyone else. It's a mighty heavy hammer to hang over someone's head, to know that I had destroyed the career and finances of at least one good person and that I could destroy others, just by telling the truth."

 

He continued. "As a result, I haven't talked about this with anyone for years. But, I think people have a right to know. I think we can deal with it. The government is keeping a tight lid on this. Not just what I have talked about, but there have been a lot of other things happen which have been covered up. Roswell for example. And a lot of other events. I think that if a group of people know, that we will have a lot more strength. If we can pry the lid off, maybe just a little at first, we'll find that there is a lot of strong evidence of extra-terrestrial visits to the Earth."

 

He paused and looked at his audience. "I may have placed you all in jeopardy by what I've said and that jeopardy may get heavy if you hear the tape. So if any of you don't want to stay and hear this, I won't blame you if you leave. You don't have to face the risks that might come from staying. If you leave, I'll think no less of you and nothing will ever be said about you having heard what I've told you so far. But, if you do want to hear the tape, then stay. And, you will KNOW, as I do, that we have INDEED been visited by creatures from another planet."

 

No one left.

 

"Thank you" Doc said, after a pause.

 

He turned and took a thin box from the shelf. "I hid the last tape in a place where no one would look. In plain sight. Right here. With my music." He showed the front of the box. It contained a picture of Doris Day. He moved to the other side of the fireplace and began turning on equipment. He opened the box, removed the tape, and placed it on the supply reel of the Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder.

 

"Now, you'll be the first people other than me to hear this in over 23 years. I've listened to it several times in that time, but no one else has heard it."

 

He moved the control lever to "Play" and turned to face his audience, a slight smile of triumph on his face.

 

But his smile froze, then disappeared, replaced by an expression of disbelief as he heard the strains of Doris Day singing "Que Sera, Sera". He slumped, stepped back, almost tripping on the hearth. He sat on the bricks and buried his face in his hands.

 

"The bastards," he muttered. "The dirty bastards. It's over. They've won."