Ancillary Mercy полностью

Some of the most active researchers believe not in aliens, but covert human activity, as the key to the mutilation mystery. The theory is that the mutilations are occurring as part of a covert, random sampling of cattle to test for excessive levels of radiation contamination. The area of northern New Mexico, which was the hotspot of mutilation activity during the 1990s, happens to be downwind from the nuclear test site in Nevada, possesses several active uranium mines, was the scene of many nuclear detonations in past decades, and also has two major nuclear research laboratories. Over the years, an estimated 1,000 kilotons of radioactive dust fell on New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. Perhaps, in order to carry out necessary, albeit illegal, monitoring of dangerous levels of radiation, a covert operation is behind the phenomenon. As to the technologies required to undertake the job, they could be well within human means. The air force possesses an in-house surgical laser probably able to make the cuts described in so many cases of mutilated cattle. The device was developed by Phillips Laboratories, located in northern New Mexico, to conduct medical surgery in the field of battle.

The mutilation mystery, like the UFO mystery, is real enough. Moreover, it, too, receives no official acknowledgment from authorities. The National Livestock and Agricultural Association, the New Mexico Livestock Board, and similar official bodies deny the phenomenon exists at all. Whether the cause of the mystery derives from UFOs, covert ops, or some other source, has yet to be determined conclusively.¹⁹

AN UNDERWATER THESIS

Neither the decline of UFO reports nor the results of the Condon Report prevented UFO authors from continuing to publish their books. As in all fields at all times, much was disposable; other works were more valuable. One of the most intriguing, original, and intelligent of the books has also been among the most forgotten. In 1970, biologist Ivan Sanderson published his second and last UFO book Invisible Residents. His subtitle, a charming archaism, read A Disquisition upon Certain Matters Maritime, and the Possibility of Intelligent Life under the Waters of This Earth. Sanderson obtained several degrees in the biological sciences, taught zoology at Cambridge University, went into field work on behalf of the British Museum and other such institutions, and mounted nine expeditions to collect specimens.

Sanderson developed an interest in UFOs during the 1950s, and even reported a personal sighting to Project Blue Book (unexplained). He was also an ex-navy man, a fact of some significance, considering his thesis: that the UFO problem is not necessarily one dominated by the appearance of mysterious aerial objects. Indeed, the term unidentified flying object was misleading, he argued, as a great deal of strange activity was going on beneath the waters. He offered the perhaps startling claim that, “by actual count, over 50 percent of all so-called ‘sightings’ of UFOs have occurred over, coming from, going away over, or plunging into or coming out of water.” He not only described scores of intriguing water-related UFO sightings, but offered the opinion that these need not involve the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence, but possibly an indigenous intelligence that evolved independently in the oceans. Or perhaps, he suggested, there were many reasons why others arriving here might choose the oceans as more hospitable than dry land.

To Sanderson the biologist, the idea of an indigenous, possibly ocean-based, intelligence behind UFOs was not really so outlandish as might seem to those untrained in his field. The Earth itself has “more than enough ‘environment’ available for the evolution of an almost endless variety of intelligent life-forms.” To those who think smugly that it would be impossible for an intelligent life-form to have developed independently on this world without our knowledge, Sanderson wrote:

We really know very little about our world or its environmental setup. What is more, the world that we do know, or think we know, is extremely limited.... We have only the vaguest notion of what lies more than a hundred feet under our feet, on land, though geologists are doing pretty well, at least in general terms, down to a few miles. We are fairly good under water down to about five hundred feet around the periphery of the continental land masses and islands, but we know practically nothing of the great body of ... “hydrospace,” which includes all seas and oceans from the surfaces down to their bottoms.

Moreover, “we know that the nature of living things on this planet alone ranges from man to ultra-filterable viruses that may produce inanimate generations. So why should we balk at the suggestion that elsewhere it could range much further?”