“Then they tried to sell me on the idea I’d seen a balloon, or maybe a plane, with the sun shining on it when it banked. I told them to go to the devil—I knew what I saw. After seventeen years, I’ve got enough sense to tell a ship or a balloon when I see it.” “Did they believe you?” I asked him. “If they did, they didn’t let on. Two of ’em acted as if they thought I was nuts. The other guy-I think he was Air Force Intelligence—acted decent. He said not to get steamed up about the Aero-Medical boys; it was their job to screen out the crackpots. “And on top of that, I found out later the F.B.I. had checked up on me to find out if I was a liar or a screwball. They went around to my boss, people in my neighborhood—even the pilots in my outfit. My outfit’s still razzing me. I wouldn’t report another saucer if one flew through my cockpit.” Pete Farrell hadn’t encountered any Project “Saucer” teams personally, but he had some interesting angles. Some of the information had come from commercial and private pilots in the Midwest, part of it through National Guard contacts. “I can tell you one thing,” Pete said. “Guard pilots got the same order as the Air Force. If we saw anything peculiar flying around, we were to do our damnedest to identify it.” “What about trying to bring one down? I’ve heard that was in one order.” Pete hesitated for a second. “Look, I told you that much because it’s been in the papers. But I’m still in the Guard. I can’t tell you the order itself. It was confidential.” “Well, I’m not in the Guard,” said Art Green. He lit a cigarette, blew out the match. “Why don’t you look into the Gorman case? Get thc dope on that court-martial angle.” I’d heard of the Gorman case, but the court-martial thing was new to me. Gorman, I recalled, was a fighter pilot in the North Dakota Air National Guard. He had a mystifying encounter with a strange, fast-moving “light” over Fargo Airport in the fall of 1948. “That case is on my list,” I told Green. “But I don’t remember anything about a court-martial.” “It wasn’t in the papers. But all the pilots up that way know about it. In his report, Gorman said something about trying to ram the thing. The idea got around that Air Force orders had said to try this. Anyway, it got into the papers and Gorman almost got court-martialed. If his family hadn’t had some influence in the state, the Air Force probably would have pushed it.” “Are you sure about this?” I said. “You know how those things build up.” “Ask Gorman,” he said. “Or ask some of the pilots at Fargo.” Before I left them, Green double-checked my report on his sighting, which Hilton had forwarded. As in the majority of cases, he had seen just one disk. It had hovered at a very high altitude, gleaming in the sun, then had suddenly accelerated and raced off to the north. “I couldn’t tell its size or speed,” said Green. “But if it was as high as I think, it must have been pretty big.”