Steve was quickly on the defensive. “I haven’t bought it yet, but it’s not as crazy as it sounds.” Without mentioning names, I told him about the aircraft designer and the airline pilots. “They’re in good company,” said Steve. “You know the Air Institute?” “Sure—the Air Force school down at Montgomery.” “Six months ago, I was talking with an officer who’d been instructing there.” Steve looked at me, deadly serious. “He told me they are now teaching that the saucers are probably space ships.” CHAPTER IX Three days after my meeting with Steve Barrett, I was on a Mainliner 300, starting, a new phase of the saucer investigation. By the time I returned, I hoped to know the truth about Project “Saucer.” As the ship droned westward, fourteen thousand feet above the Alleghenies, I thought of what Steve had told me. I believed, that he had told me about the radar tracking. And I was fairly sure he believed the Air Institute story. But I wasn’t so certain the story itself was true. It would hardly be a gag; Steve wasn’t easily taken in. It was more likely that one Institute officer, or perhaps several, believed the saucers were space craft and aired their personal opinions. The Institute wasn’t likely to give an official answer to something that Project “Saucer” still declared unsolved. If it were possible to get an inside look at Project “Saucer” operations, I could soon tell whether it was an actual investigation or a deliberate cover-up for something else. Whichever it was, the wall of official. secrecy still hid it. As a formality, I had called the Pentagon again and asked to talk with some of the Project officers. As I expected, I was turned down. The only alternative was to dig out the story by talking with pilots and others who had been. quizzed by Project teams. I had several leads, and _True_ had arranged some interviews for me. My first stop was Chicago, where I met an airline official and two commercial pilots. I saw the pilots first. Since they both talked in confidence, I will not use their right names. One, a Midwesterner I already knew, I’ll call Pete Farrell; the other, a wartime instructor, Art Green. Pete was about thirty-one, stocky, blue-eyed, with a pleasant, intelligent face. Art Green was a little older, a lean, sunburned, restless man with an emphatic voice. Pete had served with the Air Force during the war; he was now part owner of a flying school, also a pilot in the Air National Guard. Green was working for an air charter service We met at the Palmer House. Art Green didn’t need much prompting to talk about Project “Saucer.” After reporting a disk, seen during a West Coast Right, he had been thoroughly grilled by a Project “Saucer” team. “They practically took me apart,” he said irritably. “They’ve got a lot of trick questions. Some of ’em are figured out to trip up anybody faking a story. The way they worked on me, you’d think I committed a murder.