“You and _True_ should consider your moral responsibility, no matter what you find. Even if it’s not actual security, there may be reasons to keep still.” After he left me, I tried to figure it out. If the Air Force was back of this, they must not think much of my intelligence. Or else they had been in such a hurry to get a line on _True’s_ investigation that they had no choice but to use Steele. Of course, it was still possible he was doing this on his own. Either way, his purpose was obvious. He hoped to have us swallow the Soviet-missile answer. If we did, then we would have to keep still, even though we found absolute proof. Obviously, it would be dangerous to print _that_ story. Thinking back, I recalled Steele’s apparent attempt to dismiss the Mantell case. I was convinced now. The Godman Field affair must hold an important clue that I had overlooked. It might even be the key to the whole flying saucer riddle. CHAPTER VI Shortly after my talk with Steele, I flew to the Coast. For three weeks I investigated sightings that had been reported by airline and private pilots and other competent witnesses. At first, the airline pilots were reluctant to talk. Most of them remembered the ridicule that had followed published accounts by other airline men. One pilot told me he had been ordered to keep still about his experience—whether by the company or the Air Force, he would not say. But most of them finally agreed to talk, if I kept their names out of print. One airline captain—I’ll call him Blake—had encountered a saucer at night. He and his copilot had sighted the object, gleaming, in the moonlight, half a mile to their left. “We were at about twelve thousand feet,” he said, when we saw this thing pacing us. It didn’t have any running lights, but we could see the moonlight reflecting from something like bright metal. There was a glow along the side, like some kind of light, or exhaust.” “Could you make out the shape?” I asked. Blake grinned crookedly. “You think we didn’t try? I cut in toward it. It turned in the same direction. I pulled up about three hundred feet, and it did the same. Finally, I opened my throttles and cut in fast, intending to pull tip if we got too close. I needn’t have worried. The thing let out a burst of reddish flame and streaked up out of sight. It was gone in a few seconds.” “Then it must have been piloted,” I said. “If not, it had some kind of radar-responder unit to make it veer off when anything got near it. It matched every move I made, until the last one.” I asked him what he thought the saucer was. Blake hesitated, then he gave me a slow grin. “Well, my copilot thinks it was a space ship. He says no pilot here on earth could take that many G’s, when the thing zoomed.” I’d heard some “men from Mars” opinions about the saucers, but this was an experienced pilot. “You don’t believe that?” I said.