“It might slip off and spin, or spiral down, and a few have even landed themselves. Also, if the plane started down from twenty thousand, the pilot wouldn’t be too far blacked out. The odds are he’d come to when he got into thicker air—admitting he did blur out, which is only an Air Force guess. I don’t see why they’re so positive Mantell died before he hit the ground—unless they know something we don’t.” One of the pilot group put it more bluntly. “It looks like a cover-up to me. I think Mantell did just what he said he would—close in on the thing. I think he either collided with it, or more likely they knocked him out of the air. They’d think he was trying to bring them down, barging in like that.” Even if you accept the blackout answer, it still does not explain what Mantell was chasing. it is possible that, excited by the huge, mysterious object, he recklessly climbed beyond the danger level, though such an act was completely at odds with his character. But the _identity_ of the thing remains—officially—a mystery. If it was some weird experimental craft or a guided missile, then whose was it? Air Force officers had repeatedly told me they had no such device. General Carl Touhy Spaatz, former Air Force chief, had publicly insisted that no such weapon had been developed in his regime. Secretary Symington and General Hoyt Vandenberg, present Air Force chief, had been equally emphatic. Of course, official denials could be expected if it were a top-level secret. But if it were a secret device, would it be tested so publicly that thousands would see it? If it were an Air Force device, then I could see only one answer for the Godman Field incident: The thing was such a closely guarded secret that even Colonel Hix hadn’t known. That would mean that most or all Air Force Base C.O.’s were also in ignorance of the secret device. Could it be a Navy experiment, kept secret from the Air Force? I did a little checking. Admiral Calvin Bolster, chief of aeronautics research experimental craft, was an Annapolis classmate of mine. So was Captain Delmer S. Fahrney, head of the Navy guided-missile program. Fahrney was at Point Mugu, missile-testing base in California, and I wasn’t able to see him. But I knew him as a careful, conscientious officer; I can’t believe he would let such a device, piloted or not, hover over an Air Force base with no warning to its C.O. I saw Admiral Bolster. His denial seemed genuine; unless he’d got to be a dead-pan poker player since our earlier days, I was sure he was telling the truth. The only other alternate was Russia. It was incredible that they would develop such a device and then expose it to the gaze of U.S. Air Force officers. It could be photographed, its speed and maneuverability checked; it might crash, or antiaircraft fire might bring it down, The secret might be lost in one such test flight.