Ancillary Mercy полностью

Saunders immediately told Low about NICAP’s withdrawal of support. The news upset Low, who asked Saunders to patch things up. Saunders reluctantly said he would try. Meanwhile, on September 25, Low, Saunders, and Condon had another meeting, a brief one at Condon’s home. Nothing new, nothing resolved. Saunders surely must have irritated Condon: this time, he pointed out that the problem with NICAP would not have arisen had Condon abided by his own rule of not speaking publicly about UFOs; it could also be resolved, he continued, by allowing other project members to do likewise. Condon said he understood the point but offered no change. In fact, two days later, the Rocky Mountain News published a commentary by Condon where he debunked UFOs and discounted NICAP’s contribution to the Colorado Project. The article quoted Low in a similar vein. As a result, Low freely predicted Saunders’s resignation from the project and told him privately that if he wanted to return to the administration, he needed to get on the team and work with him and Condon. The staff was understandably upset by the article.⁶⁴

The lines of battle were drawn: it was Low and Condon against everyone else. Saunders probably expressed the majority view when he wrote:

[W]e could no longer doubt that any prospect for successful completion of the UFO project depended on us and would have to circumvent the obstacles of our leadership as well as the complexities of the problem itself.

Indeed, the staff was close to an en masse resignation. On the night of September 27, 1967, project members held a meeting without Low and Condon to decide what, if anything, they would do. Norm Levine was the group’s hard-liner, pushing for mass resignation. Roy Craig, who expressed a “residual faith” in Condon, was the sole dissenter. Saunders essentially sided with Levine but still wanted to explore strategies that were not irreversible. Franklin Roach, his resignation already tendered, thought Condon was tired but ultimately reliable. Several members expressed the concern that Condon’s final word on the subject would be so negative as to stifle further scientific research into UFOs for another twenty years, or even more. They decided, therefore, to prepare their own report, one “so compelling that Condon would be forced to accept it on its merits.” Undoubtedly, a fond, trusting position.⁶⁵

The following day, Condon met with all project members. He expressed some regret over his public remarks—not what he said in them, but that he made them at all. He retracted nothing and explained that the only misquote had been that he was disenchanted with the project. In fact, he said, he had never been enchanted in the first place. Members asked Condon the same question Saunders had recently asked: what would he do if the staff arrived at a pro-ET conclusion? This time, Condon was more diplomatic, albeit noncommittal. If they produced convincing evidence and could therewith convince him, he said, it would be the official project conclusion. The answer satisfied Roy Craig, and probably several others, but directly contradicted Condon’s reply to Saunders and Low just a week before.⁶⁶

Rocky times remained ahead. In early October, the Lorenzens visited the team at Boulder, and were unimpressed. The project’s investigatory methods, they decided, were “sadly lacking” with “no standardized report form, no set method of investigations.” Congress, too, continued to show signs of dissent. On October 17, 1967, Congressman Louis Wyman submitted a congressional resolution for a full UFO investigation, without waiting for the Colorado report.⁶⁷

AN ANIMAL MUTILATION

As if the UFO controversy were not contentious enough, it heated up further after September 9, 1967, with the first publicized animal mutilation case. The victim was a horse named Lady (mistakenly called Snippy by the press), who was found in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. Her body had been stripped of flesh from the neck up, with the rest of her untouched. There was no blood at the site. The cut around the neck was very smooth—perhaps too smooth to have been made with a hunting knife. Her exposed skeleton was so white and clean, that it looked as though she had lain in the sun for days. But Lady had been alive and well only two nights before. Another odd thing was that, according to her owner, who found her, Lady’s tracks stopped about one hundred feet southeast of her body, with no tracks of any kind between her and where she was found.