In Chicago, two astronomers spiked guesses that the disks might be meteors. Dr. Girard Kieuper, director of the University of Chicago observatory, said flatly that they couldn’t be meteors. “They’re probably man-made,” he told the A.P. Dr. Oliver Lee, director of Northwestern’s observatory, agreed with Kieuper. “The Army, Navy, and Air Force are working secretly on all sorts of things,” he said. “Remember the A-bomb secrecy—and the radar signals to the moon.” As I went through Purdy’s summary, I recalled my own reaction after the United Airlines report. After seeing the Pentagon comment, I had called up Captain Tom Brown, at Air Force Public Relations. “Are you really taking this seriously?” I asked him. “Well, we can’t just ignore it,” he said. “There are too many reliable pilots telling the same story—flat, round objects able to outmaneuver ordinary planes, and faster than anything we have. Too many stories tally.” I told him I’d heard that the Civil Air Patrol in Wisconsin and other states was starting a sky search. “We’ve got a jet at Muroc, and six fighters standing by at Portland right now,” Brown said. “Armed?” “I’ve no report on that. But I know some of them carry photographic equipment.” Two days later an airline pilot from the Coast told me that some fighters had been armed and the pilots ordered to bring down the disks if humanly possible. That same day, Wright Field admitted it was checking stories of disk-shaped missiles seen recently in the Pacific northwest and in Texas. Following this was an A.P. story, dated July 7, quoting an unnamed Air Force official in Washington: “The flying saucers may be one of three things: “1. Solar reflection on low-hanging clouds. [A Washington scientist, asked for comment, said this was hardly possible.] “2. Small meteors which break up, their crystals catching the rays of the sun. But it would seem that they would have been spotted falling and fragments would have been found. “3. Icing conditions could have formed large hailstones, and they might have flattened out and glided a bit, giving the impression of horizontal movement even though falling vertically.” By this time everyone was getting into the act. “The disks are caused by the transmutation of atomic energy,” said an anonymous scientist, supposed to be on the staff of California Tech. The college quickly denied it. Dr. Vannevar Bush, world-famous scientist, and Dr. Merle Tuve, inventor of the proximity fuse, both declared they would know of any secret American missiles—and didn’t. At Syracuse, New York, Dr. Harry Steckel, Veterans Administration psychiatrist, scoffed at the suggestion of mass hysteria. “Too many sane people are seeing the things. The government is probably conducting some revolutionary experiments.” On July 8 more disks were reported. Out at Muroc Air Force Base, where top-secret planes and devices are tested, six fast-moving silvery-white saucers were seen by pilots and ground officers.