Ancillary Mercy полностью

Not all the interesting sightings were in America. On January 19, 1966, an important crop circle event occurred in the town of Tully, North Queensland, Australia. George Pedley, aged twenty-seven, was driving his tractor at 9 A.M., when he heard a high-pitched sound and saw a gray-blue object rise from a swampy lagoon, then depart. According to Pedley, “It was all over in a few seconds; it moved at terrific speed.” At the site was an area of flattened swamp grass, swirled in a clockwise direction, with a diameter of about thirty feet. Pedley soon brought others to the site, and before long, many investigators had come to see and verify the claim. One of the investigating bodies was the Royal Australian air force intelligence. Investigators actually found a variety of circles in the area, ranging in size from eight to thirty feet in diameter. Within each circle, however, plant roots were pulled completely out of the soil, as if the ground had been subjected to an intense rotary force. There were rumors that blamed the Soviets for the landing, but investigators learned that dozens of people in the area had seen strange saucer-like craft, many before Pedley’s sighting. It didn’t seem to be the Soviets.⁸³

February was a quiet month. Not so, March. On the fourteenth at 3:50 A.M., two deputy sheriffs in Dexter, Michigan, saw several disc-shaped objects maneuvering above the town. Three other police agencies had already reported similar sightings. Selfridge AFB confirmed tracking objects on radar at extreme speeds and maneuverability. However, the incident received no publicity. At midnight on March 17, in Milan, Michigan, another law enforcement officer saw a UFO. This time, a policeman saw what he thought was a plane about to crash, although its silence puzzled him. When he tried contacting headquarters, his transmitter malfunctioned. The object did not crash. Instead, it approached the patrol car to within about seventy-five feet, followed him for about half a mile, then flew off. It appeared to be about fifty feet in diameter, with lights spinning at the periphery.⁸⁴

Something was going on in Michigan. At about 8 P.M. on March 20, near Dexter, Michigan, Frank Mannor and his son, Ronald, saw a luminous object hovering over a swamp. It was brown, cone-shaped, and had bluish lights that turned red. At once, the object lit up with a yellowish glow and flew away rapidly, making a whistling sound. That night, several lights were reported moving around in a swamp area. More strange lights were reported the next evening, near Hillsdale, Michigan. Civil defense director William Van Horn, and a group of students, saw a pattern of lights on the ground, the source of which appeared to maneuver for about two hours.⁸⁵

Although the sightings of the past two nights had not been the most compelling of the recent Michigan sightings, they received national attention. To calm everyone down, and to stem the flood of calls to the Pentagon, the air force sent Hynek to Michigan to investigate. Hynek was pleased, as he had wanted to investigate the events there but the air force had not been interested until now. What happened next was disaster. Hynek arrived in Michigan and almost immediately gave a press conference. Unable to explain the UFO reports, he called for a thorough investigation but focused on the ground lights, suggesting they could have been marsh gas caused by decaying vegetable matter in the swampy areas. In other words, swamp gas.

Clearly, this was a greatly premature statement, and the press ridiculed Hynek and the air force. To those who had followed Hynek’s longtime support of the air force position, it was a moment of poetic justice. Hynek, however, later said he had intended to conduct a serious investigation and did not learn until after his arrival in Michigan that this was not to be the case. Instead, the air force merely wanted a public relations ploy to defuse the situation. Hynek’s job, said the air force, was to hold a press conference immediately and explain. This may be true; certainly Blue Book was not in the habit of pursuing UFO investigations energetically. Perhaps Hynek bungled it because the air force rushed him. Even so, Quintanilla offered a contradictory view later that year while in Colorado. According to him, Hynek was convinced he had solved the Michigan sightings (“This is it!”), and as a result, received permission to give the press conference.

Whether it was Hynek or the air force who pushed, the air force never looked so incompetent and duplicitous on the matter of UFOs as it did at that moment. Hynek’s press conference all but destroyed Project Blue Book’s image.⁸⁶