Saucer sages Koehler, Newton, Scully.
Had flying saucers manned by crews three feet . tall actually landed on Earth·? That was the question. This is how TRUE and Mr. Cahn found the answer
or four months, across 4,500 miles and five western states, I tracked down visitors from the planet Venus. F It was a fantastic assignment. The story l was to dig up if I could was the weirdest that any reporter could dream o1 having handed to him. If I found the Venusians, I couldn' t interview them, even if I knew how to speak their language. For they were dead, those strange little beings, from unknown causes half of their number crisped by heat to a dark brown color. They'd come out of the sky in flying saucers. My job was to bring their story down to earth. I got it-their full inside story. And though 1 didn ' t find the dead Venusians, 1 un covered some rather fantastic living charac ters ... .
0 n the crest of the wave of public excite ment about flying saucers in the spring of 1950 came news from the West that topped any of the hundreds of saucer reports that had been recorded up to that time. News papers everywhere printed and reprinted the rumor that, in Denver, several businessmen had been shown pieces of metal, small gears, and a curious little radio set. These things, it was said, had been taken from a fallen flying saucer. A True Book-Length Feature
I I I f I p TlflnTI1TflTrj· TllT INCHES 1
The swit<·h-trick disk at left, a 5¢ piece, and the unknown metal. Leo A. GeBauer ... last link in an investigative ch:iin.
The metal was an unknown stuff that defied analysis. The gears-well� they looked like ordinary gears. The tube less radio set, however, was really something; it beeped _ Flying Saucers and TR l!E every filtcen mmutes, exactly on the quarter hours, with a single brief ethereal tone-note that was seemingly a signal TRUE was the first publication to discuss flying from outer space. saucers logically and comprehensively. In January 1950 the memorable article, The Flying Saucer.� Are Real, announced our rea.;oned conclusion That mu<:h was in the publi<: prints and on the nation's that they were interplanetary in origin. Four broadcast channels. \Vhat 1 didn't know then was that two articles in subsequent issues detailed important TRUE writers already investigating the matter were meetino new sightings. The U.S. Air Force meanwhile dh;. oddly evasive resistance. In Denver, Donald Keyhoe wa� missed the sancers as misinterpretations, hoaxes, having no luck inducing a man named Koehler, who appar: wl of nt i i objects. or hallucinatiom. ently had kno edge the i r gu ng to produce Events strengthened TRUE'.s position. Strang� them for inspection. In California, Richard Tregaskis was sky objects kept appearing. Some sdentists at· permitted by Frank Scully, columnist for the theatri<:al tempted to explain them away as ..sky hook'' newspaper Variel)'• to finger for a few moments a small balloons or, alternatively, light refractions from disk of nameless metal that was pan o[ the same saucer atmospheric layers of warm air-in effect, mirages. loot and to listen-bm no questions, please-to a tale o[ a Neither explanation fitted all the fa(•ts. Recentlv fa!lell sau r s c�etly s en and �xamined by anonymous · . �� � � the Air Force reopened and intensified its sau(·er scienU.its. 1 he mlormat1on that Koehler and Scully shared investigation. -they checked on each other by telephone-belonged to Hoaxes,. as well as mistakes and hallucinations, them, they made �lear; they would divulge only so much there have been and probably will be. When and no more; thCJT sources absolutely had to remain un· r any major hoax is detected, TRUE will expose it identified and protected; Scully would w ite it his own in the pnhlic interest, and to heiJI remove doubt way or not at all. In short, take it or leave it. On such from the responsible, authentic sightings that arbitrary terms, the pick was obvious. Fallen-saucer stpries may someday solve the flying saucer riddle. wereu't, in fact, new even at that time. Back on July 9, 1947, -The Editors only two weeks aher private-ftier Kenneth Arnold had aler �ed the nation �ith his nine disks seen skipping "satl<:er _ . _ hke near Mt. Ra�mer, Southwest newspapers headlined that a raptured ,hsk that had fallen on a .New Mexico
18 ----�
- J i-
®-- ? 'f-o ? /
For the amhor, Silas Newton drew dimensioned sketch of first saucer that landed and diagrammed the "system of 9's.''
ranc:h was a dud., Thflt one, when delivered to the Eighth came a-Hying. It was from the lips of Dr. Gee himself that Army Air Force, was identified as a tinfoil-covered reAector ScuJJy, much later, heard the details. from a weather balloon. The ship was whole and practically unmarred; having The ravaged saucer and its collection of parts persisted evidently made a gentle pancake landing. For two days, the in unverified versions through the spring and summer of scientists hovered around at a safe distance, testing with 1950. Then, on September 8, it came alive with a bang. Geiger counters and photographing. Then they closed in. On that date, the publishing firm of Henry Holt & Com There seemed to be no visible door to the cabin-like pany. ln.-:., released upon a saucer-hungry world a 230- structure in the depressed center of the saucer. Through page book by Frank Scully entitled Behi11d the Fl)'ing a broken porthole window-the only apparent damage to Sflucers. In it, Scully. vouched for by his publisher. un the ship-they could count sixteen bodies of little men. burdened himself of his secret. There wasn't just a single Probing inside with a long pole, they hit a knob on the YOU fallen saucer, but three of them. Four, actuallv.' i I ' opposite wall, and a door Hew open. The scientists entered. wauted to count the one that got away. They carried the li-ttle bodies out and laid them on the Scully categorically announced-no ifs or buts or maybes ground. Dressed alike in a dark-blue uniform garment, the -that he was in coutac:t with personages of high standing saucerians, despite their measurements of 36 to 42 inches. who had not onlv seen the three stranded saucers, but were no misshapen dwarfs; they were as normal in appear examined then:t cl;>sely, and that beyond any question the ance and well-proportioned as any earthling. The only uaft were from a planet other than Earth, presumably thing wrong with them was that their skin seemed to he Venus. They carried full crews of perfectly formed little charred a very dark chocolate color, as if their bodies had men, about three reet tall, all dead on or shortly after been subjected to much heat. arrival. The corpses were taken away by the Air Force. The ship next received the scientists' attention. There whic:h appropriated the sauc:ers: Scully implied that, after was no engine or other means of propulsion. Dr. Gee de some were dissected. most of the lillie men received in duced that it had operated by utilizing the earth's magne decent unburial iu jars of pkkling Ruid. tism, gaining motion by crossing the magnetic lines or The first space ship landed east of Aztec, New Mexico.· force. The controls appeared to be the buttons on an instru Having watched it in the upper atmosphere as it ap ment board. The scientists decided not to try pushing the proached, the Air Force had been able to calculate its lan'cl huttons because they didn't know what would happen. ing place closely and they got there pretty qui<:k. They The material of the ship puzzled them. Very light-two sent out a rush call for a group of eight scientists, specialists or three men together could lift one side of the saucer in secret magnetic research. headed by a top authority in which measured 99 99/100 feet in diameter-it looked like that field of study, a man whom S<:ully could refer to only aluminum but wasn't. In the laboratory it would prove to by the initial pseudonym ''Dr. Gee." The excited scientists resist J.l)() tests and 10,000 deg-rees [Co1zti11ued on page 102]
19 system. Which one? Dr. Gee decided Venus. In agreement with one school of thought among astronomiull researchers, he felt the there was more likelihood of human habitation on Venus than on Mars. The little men's size pointed that way, too; if they had come from Mars, they would probably be three or four times as large as people on Earth. It '"'as exceedingly interesting to the doctor that the diameters FLYING of the saucers were exactly 99 99/100, 72, and 36 feet, that the measurements of the large ship's cabin were 18 feet across and 72 inches high and that its top projected 45 inches above the level of the disk edge, which was elevated 27 inches from the saucer base line, and that the cabins and disk slant of the smaller ships were in· relative proportion to the figures for the large SAUCERS ship. For all these measurements were divisible by 9. That indi cated to the scientists that the Venusians used a mathematical incthod, not unlike ours, known as the "system of 9's." But the doctor and his group were to have little chance of and the pressing their inquiries further. The Air Force took m·er the ships and sent them presumably to the government laboratories at \-Vright Field at Dayton, Ohio-except the little ship, which rested for awhile in the doctor's laboratory and then was dis mantled and sent to join the others. The doctor and his col leagues had hoped, in time, to work out a plan whereby they MYSTERIOUS wuld make certain tests with the different push buttons on the instrument boards and so gain clues to the secret of magnetic propulsion. When he next saw the instrument board of the large ship, it had, to his amazement and chagrin, been broken up and all of the inner workings torn apart. Since Air Force souvenir hunters had already lifted a number of items, he said, LITTLE MEN he grabbed a few things himself-not as trophies, but to use for research. All he had to show for his labors on the saucers was a tubeless radio receiver about the size of a cigarette pack age, some gears, some small disks, and other items that could be carried in the pocket. [Continued from jJage 19] Shortly thereafter, in July 1949, Dr. Gee separated himself from the government service. For the tremendous work he had done as leader of a billion-dollar magnetic-detection research of heat in scientific efforts to determine its compositiOn. Dis program that, during the war had knocked out the Japanese mantling the ship turned out to be a pr:oblem. There were submarine menace, he had received $7,200 a year. He quit to $35,000 no rivets, bolts or screws, and its structure defied turn his knowledge to the use of industry where he could make worth of diamond drills. After a long study, it was found to be a more profitable income. As a specialist in geomagnetics, he be assembled in segments, fitted in grooves and pir;tned together came a consultant to a wealthy oil man, himself a geophysicist, around the base. Disassembly disclosed a gear completely en who was using instruments of his own design to make a micro circling the bottom of the cabin that fitted a gear around the wave survey of the underlying formations of the Mojave Desert. sal!Jer base. Evidently the saucer rim spun around the cabin The oil man was an old friend of Frank Scully; through him, not for any aerodynamic lift or thrust, Dr. Gee surmised, but as Scully heard something of the fallen saucers and came to meet a sort of gyroscopic balancing device. Dr. Gee on at least two occasions when the scientist visited Cali There were other intriguing matters-little watchlike time fornia from Phoenix on business. The scientist talked freely of pieces in the crew's clothing that measured off a 29-day magnetic the saucers to the oil man and Scully-this was in the fall of '49- month, food wafers that amply nourished laboratory guinea and on a later visit brought along the tiny radio, the gears, and pigs, and heavy water for the crew's liquid intake. But the some photographs. crucial factor-the means of magnetic propulsion-Dr. Gee was not to have the opportunity to solve, then or later. The second saucer landed near a proving ground in Arizona. Came the beginning of 1950 and, in the opinion of Scully, Its door stood open when it was found and its sixteen dead the reign of "error" and. repression: the Air. Force put its crewmen were not burned or browned. The scientists concluded 11rojcct Saucer underground, denied e'·erything, and by· so that they had died after the door was opened, from the sudden doing set up between the people and the government a double exposure to Earth air in their cabin which was probably either standard of morality. Security became a dread threat. Scientists vacuumed or pressurized t� the atmosphere of their planet but knew better than to talk. Furthermore, scientists have to have not ours. This ship was smaller than the first, measuring 72 feet government-controlled materials for research, which might not in diameter. be made available to those who refuse to cooperate. The third ship alighted in Arizona's Paradise Valley, right But Scully, in possession now of the data, would have none above Phoenix, and it was different from the otht;rs in being of this bureaucratic muzzling which, he said, stifles free inquiry only a 36-foot two-seater and having-a three-point landing gear and breeds fear. Though "Dr. Gee's" identity had to be safe· consisting of steel balls rolling in sockets. One little man lay guarded, neither Scully nor the oil man was so bound, though . half out of an escape hatch; the other still sat in a bucket scat the latter, being involved with the government on some top before the control board, his head slumped on his chest. Both secret deals, had to tread carefully. To test p blic receptivity to the saucer ·revelation, the oil dead. They brought the total toll to thirty-four. � _ Several other saucerians were more fortunate-or the lesson man-geophy�ICIS� appeared as an anonymous guest lecturer of their predecessors' deaths had been learned. These visitors before a University of Denver elementary-science class on March arrived in a fourth saucer which members of Dr. Gee's research 8, 1950, escorted by George T. Koehler, who is a salesman for group came upon, lying empty, near a government proving Denver radio station KMYR. The lecturer told in de.tail of ground. The scientists returned to their car for cameras and Dr. Gee's findings and drew some blackboard diagrams. News equipment and as they approached the ship again they saw of the lecture leaked, of course, beyond the cloistered walls several little men hop into the saucer, which instantly disap and the how-come of university sponsorship raised a locai peared-not flew away, but vanished as if it had dissolved into tempest tha� blew off the lecturer's cloak of anonymity. His . air. name was Silas Newton. The I portant thing was that · . �- � 50 . Where. had the saucers come from? Operating on magnetism, 1�ercent of his listeners were convmced by his lecture-a con which is an effect of electricity-which travels, like light, at a SJder�bly b�tter fig�re �han the 26 percent of the people rate of 186,000 miles a second-thcv could have made short uesuor1cd m a nauon-wtde public-opinion poll who believed q _ work of the trip from any of the n�arcr planets in our sol;1r that Aymg saucers were real.
102 Frank Scully then wrote his book, ackn�wledging the role of Traffic in the Scully living room usually consists of two or . Newton but shielding Dr. Gee, and settmg forth everythmg more of the five Scully children, ranging from college to cradle . that these two eminent men had told him about the captured ages, their friends, two poodles, l\Jrs Scull . who is necessar_ily _ y a fast-moving and harned perso , S ull hims lf, a':d a woman saucers and the little men from Venus. · . � � y � The book sold some 60,000 copies at $2.75, was digested by a of all work.At times even Scully s p1ercmg voice failed to carry magazine of large circulation, reprinted and widely sold as a over the bedlam. paper-bound 25-cent volume, and discussed in newspapers The Scully household, if a ·little difficult on the _interviewer, abroad. It affected, in some degree, one way or another, the is otherwise normal and commonplace.It seemed mcongruous thinking of millions of people. as a center of flying-saucer knowledg�- . . . The fact that it was a loudly bad book was beside the po_mt. Sitting in his easy chair and holdmg the baby m one arm _ _ Reviewers' opinions ranged from am'!sedly tolerant to sti_ngmg, while he fended off poodles with the other, Scully told me very much the same story about the saucers that he set down in his a few reaching indignation. With a pitchm�n's sha�low glibness, _ Scully garbled scientific concepts, contradicted lumself m de book. tails, and committed rudimentary errors that would shame a Although the oral version was �ot one whit clear�r, it was c�m high-school freshman. Yet the impact of his staggering story and siderably more vehement, particularly the portwns dealmg its basic implications were there. with government officials who deny the existence of the saucers. As he talked, Scully gave me the impression that he had only the vaguest idea of what he was talking about but he believed nless ... this was � gigantic oke? Fran Scully's last previ U. j � every word he was saying. ous literary prommence, asid� from his weekly col mn of . . � With very little prompting, he supplemented h1s story With comment in the show-business Vanety, ;was the authorship of a letters he had received in response. to his book. Some of them book called Fun in Bed, a harmless collection of anecdotes, denounced him; others praised him mightily; one asked with games, and other amusing trivia for convalescent�- But i� Behind _ superb naivety, "I hear your story is a hoax. Ple�se write and the Fl)•iug Saucers was �ongue-�n cheek humor, It was m pr�tty _- tell me if you are a hoax." Hundreds of them sp!lled over t�e bad taste.It accused milltary·offioals of our government of bemg desk in his cluttered study, ample proof of the Impact of his a pack of liars and blackmailers. !hat wasn't funny- _ . book. Some of the letters contained pictures. Then ... was it a hoax? Granting, m a chapter m his book At one point Scully hauled out a pair of photographs sup· devoted to them, that scientific hoaxes of all sorts had been posedly taken by an amateur astronomer.Certainly they �ere pulled off in the past and present, Scully specifically sta ed in � taken by an amateur photographer. They were murky views his earnest-sounding preface, " ... I have never partic;Jpated of the sky bordered at the bottom by what seemed to be the in the perpetration of a hoax on flying saucers." And his pub roof of a small building. One of the prints showed a jagged lisher, the long-established and reputable firlll of Henry Holt & streak across the sky as if someone fumbling around in the Company, saw fit to preface Scully's preface with a note of their darkroom had spilled something on it by mistake. The other own at the beginning of the book that said, " ... we are as had a large blot on it. convinced as any thoughtful publisher can be that Mr.Scully Scully eyed the two photographs somberly. "There's a per has approached his subject with probity and has interpreted fect control factor," he said pointing vaguely at something in the facts and figures given him with care and caution." In view· the pictures."Saucers, most likely, both of them. I get this sort of the demonstrably low quality of some of Scully's facts and of thing all the time." figures, whatever moved the editors of Henry Holt & Company to make such a statement is beyond understanding.But \Veb ince nothing in either picture was CO£?�rehensible, i� was a ster's Dictionary defines "probity" as: "Tried virtue or integrity; S little hard to get what Scully was dnvmg at. He said that moral and intellectual honesty; rectitude; uprightness." If Holt the negatives could be produced for inspection. I thought took the trouble to go on record as saying that their author privately that inspecting them hardly seemed worth the effort. approached his subject with moral and intellectual honesty, Even if the negatives were unaltered, they wouldn't prove any certainly there must be something to it. thing. The fascinating Case of the Little Men from Venus couldn't Nor, for that matter, would Scully. be laughed at and it couldn't be ignored. There remained the Stoutly maintaining that he was pledged to secrecy. he re vital question, bigger than ever: fused to name his chief source of information, Dr. Gee. He had Was it true� promised Dr. Gee not to reveal any more of the story than he If it wasn't, then a great many honest people were being had set down in his book, and by God, he wasn't going to break diddled, deceived, and deluded. If it was, then one of the great that promise. If the government cracked down on Gee. it _ est stories in the world was being smothered.Eithe� way, a pub wasn't going to be Scully's fault. lic service would be· accomplished by finding out the truth. Nor would he produce any of the objects taken from the A newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, and a magazine, saucers-the little radio, the gears, or the disks of unknown TRUE, particularly wanted to know. And that was where I, as a metal. Scully claimed that all this material was now out of his special reporter, came into the picture. . . hands. m Aside from Scully. there were two people dealt wuh the As for his one other source of information named in the book who could definitely clear up the question, if they wanted book, Silas M. Newton, Scully was very cagey about producing to or could be persuaded to. him, eit)1er. Scully had written that Newton was "one of the One of them was Silas M. Newton, the oil man, from whom great geophysicists of the oil industry, with a record of successful ·Scully had originally heard the story. . . exploratory operations that was surpassed by _none ... a great The other was the mysterious Dr. Gee, the supersoentist athlete in his college years ... a golf champiOn ... the man who confirmed it and was forced into anonymity and silence, who rediscovered the great Rangely oil field in Colorado ... ;1 Scully implied, by the threat of government interference with patron of the arts .... " Newton had set up an independent oil his supply of essential research materials. company in Denver, of which he was still pre�ident. He was ;1 . The first move, however, seemed to be to talk things over with very busy man, Scully told me, and was contmually travel1ng Scully himself. on important, secret, government business. His Los Angeles At first glance, Frank Scully is a reassuring person.He is a telephone number was unlisted. Scully would not divulge it nor large, friendly man of striking appearance. He is ke_enly would he say where Newton lived. aware that in profile he rather resembles a Stuart portrait of And thus ended my first interview with the author of Behiud George \Vashington. His hair is cloud-white and his complexion the F/yjng Satlcers. Getting behind the sat�cers would ha\'e. to ruddy. His voice, particularly when he is excite�. which is wait; I was going to have trouble enough, It appeared, gettmg _ often, is high and harsh and loud enough to do credit to a tram behind Frank Scully. caller. He lives in a middle-aged, comfortable, stucco home that grips the hillsides on on·e of the older residential sections above Hollywood. There is nothing particularly remarkable about the house except perhaps the fire-red color of the front door and the confusion inside. The Scully home is outstanding as being A True Book-Length Feature one o[ the world's worst places to try to conduct a calm, care ful inteniew.
103 bad.But I was too busy, see, with the. top-brass on these govern THE FLYING SAUCERS AND THE ment projects to help Frank out." After s parring with Newton for maybe a half hour I got down MYSTERIOUS LITTLE- MEN to the proposition I had in mind. A fully authenticated announcement that space ship� were landing on ·Earth should have a very healthy effect on hu manity after the shock wore off. If nothing else, such an an nouncement would probably stop the Korean war in the interest For maybe a week of intermittent contacts, Scully and I of global solidarity and that alone would be worth any risk New played games, me trying to find out where Newton was and with ton and his scientists might be taking in breaking the story. Scully trying to keep me from it and neither of us letting on to As a p ublic service. then, would Newton give me the whole the o t her were really doing. what we flying-saucer story-names, photographs and everything Scully we were politely scrimmaging I tried a kind of end-run \Vhile had to leave out of his book to protect Dr. Gee? pla , but it didn't work.I figured that since Newton was such y Newton thought the proposition over soberly. a b1g man in the oil business I should be able to get .to him by Then he gave his decision: he agreed with my idea, but he finding someone else in the oil business who knew him. I tele wasn't sure that the time was right for such an announcement. phoned Curtis .Johnson of General Petroleum; Basil Kantzer At the moment, he and Dr. Gee would have to sacrifice too of Union Oil; Frank Morgan of Richfield and C. W. March much if they told all they knew. I r eceived the impression there and Harry Godde, both of Signal Oil & Gas. was something else involved in the story of the flying saucers None of them had ever heard of Silas Mason Newton. that Newton couldn't even hint at. \Vhat with Scully's description of the man and the trouble I Certainly he would take up the matter with Dr. Gee. If it was having finding him, I began to imagine Newton as a secret sounded at all reasonable to the doctor, Newton didn't see any power, a kind of shadow man, a sort of Sir Basil Zaharoff of the reason why he couldn't arrange for me to see some of the things oil industry. taken from the saucers while the final plans for releasing the In the face of Scully's reluctance to produce him, I might story were being m ade. even have begun to doubt that Newton existed, if it hadn't Newton said he happened to be working at the moment on an been for one factor. That factor was Mrs. Scully. oil-storage problem for the "big-brass" near San Francisco. If l\Irs. Scully is the kind of thoroughly likable, wholesome he got the go-ahead from Dr. Gee, he would meet me there in person of whom you have no doubts. She had joined in several a week. And he would bring along some of the gears, the disks of our conversations and she not only backed up everything of unknown metal and maybe even the little radio if Doctor Scully said about Newton and Dr. Gee but she talked· about wasn't still experimenting with it. ha,·ing discussed flying saucers with them herself. It was abso lutely impossible to think that Scully could have persuaded his wife to discuss conn·rs;Ltions with imaginary people. Mrs. Scully we met in the dignified Palm Court restaurant of the Palace had definitely talked with someone. The question was. who? Hotel in San Francisco. Scott Newhall, an old friend of Suddenly I f ound out. One afternoon Scully casually an mine and Sunday editor of the Chronicle, came along to see nounced that Newton would be at Scully's home that evening what I had dug up so far. Newhall wasn't taking the thing after dinner. If I c ared to drop over, I would be most welcome. very seriously and by this time I couldn't blame him.Scully It was a round for Scully, and the easy way he won it made and Newton had begun to affect me that way. But we had to me feel like a suspicious bumpkin. play it straight. One good laugh and Newton and whatever he had to show would be gone. And there was still just a chance ilas Newton is short and compact in build. He looked, on that the man actually had the greatest story of all time. cost $18.20 S the night I fi rst met him, like a conservative businessman The meal plus tip but it was worth every cent of turned just a shade Hollywood. it.Newton was in fine form. His pale sharkskin slacks were not too pale, his blue su�de He nodded to the waiters, who all seemed to know him. He , loafers did not ha,•e 2-inch crepe soles, the hand-picking on conferred with Adolphe the maitre d'hotel, about an important the collar of his light sport shirt was restrained, his tweed message he was expecting. And he talked saucers. sport coat didn't look as if it had to be curried each morning. Gleaming silYer ships from the chill reaches of the heavens The expensive-looking gold watch on his wrist was held there smoked through the Palm Court that evening to the accompa by a plain, expensive-looking leather strap. niment of the hotel's sedate string ensemble. Bureaucrats in Although he is in his sixties, Newton looks considerably Washington were damned for withholding the story from the younger. He has the sort of face you'd expect to find on a public. Dr. Gee and his astonishing accomplishments with middle-aged elf-tanned, deep-seamed, high-browed and crack microwave equiP.ment in the oil fields urider Newton's super ling with good humor. vision loomed across the background of the conversation. It developed that, like Scully, Newton had never seen a Newton was expansive. Smiles sprang out of the deep furrows saucer. But he retold the stories Dr.Gee had given him i"n a in his tanned cheeks. He was confidential.Squint lines puck firm, convincing voice. He flung scientific terms around in a ered around his pale eyes. But everything he said, though kind of barrage. Unfortunately, they were. the same scientific fresh to Newhall, was the same thing that I'd heard before. Not terms Scully had used in his book, the same saucer stories, and once did he divulge anything that wasn't already made-public the same little men, with nothing added. But coming from in Scully's book. Newton himseU, they sounded good. . As Newton talked I noticed more and more an odd' little Newton was, in general, the epitome of culture, wealth, and habit. He kept tossing in the word "see" when there was no good breeding.He wasn't tdo far off what you'd expect from point that required emphasis. Only if you considered that he the pedigree Scully had given him: graduate of Baylor Uni might be using it as a stalling device while he thought up the. versity and Yale, postgraduate scholar at the University of rest of his story did Newton's "see" habit make any sense. Berlin. "This saucer thing, see. It would keep me going twenty-four The scientific terms he was using so freely reminded me of hours a day if I'd let it. I'm just swamped. I've got my own something. GingerlyI brought up an error in Scully's book.In business to attend to, and this goddamned high-brass, see, describing the preliminary examination by Dr. Gee's group they're after me all the time on these contracts for the mili· of the first saucer that landed, Scully had written: "They studied tary." the ship from a distance for ... two days, bombing it with It was a strange habit for. a man so attuned to the genteel Geiger counters, cosmic· rays, and other protective devices." splendor of the Palace Hotel. In the more scientific reviews of his book, Scully had been se I began to notice that Newton had another strange habit for ver�ly taken to task for that description, and in particular the a man of his background. At this stag dinner, the more he Geager-counter bombardment which is about like saying that a talked, the more he swore.By the time he really got his gauge doctor took a patient's temperature by bombarding him with · up he sounded like a mule skinner ori Saturday night. It wasn't thermometers. I menti oned the slip to Newton. quite in keeping with what I had always expected of an· old "You have to overlook things like that," he said. "Frank, Yale man, and Newton had made quite a point of his degree here, is not a scientific man and he did that book in an awful from Yale. I decided that either I didn't know anything about hurry. If I could have checked the proofs with him I could have Yale men or Newton's manner of speaking had simply been caught a lot of errors like that one that made him look pretty colored by his years in the oil fields-Colorado's huge Rangely,
104 which Newton modestly noted he had rediscovered after it had go ing over .some problems, see, and I run across a great big been abandoned by the major oil compa'nies; the rugged waste thick goddamn pile of blue prints. lands of Wyoming; the Mojave where his crews were even now "I said to Doctor, I said, 'What in the hell is all this stuff?' surveying hidden deposits of natural gas. And he said, see, 'Why, those are the detailed prints on the In the middle of a discussion of magnet ics, Newton glanced air-flow system for the B-36.' · over his shoulder furtively. Then he suddenly leaned over the "He'd been working on all that to p government stuff for the table and fished a smudged and wrinkled handkerchief out of big-brass and I never knew a thing about it. his c�at pocket. Its corners were tied together and it bulged "These scientific fellows, see. You can't tell what they're promisingly. going to turn up with next. Here he has these absolutely top Newton slowly undid the knots, guarding the handkerchief secret plans laying right there on top of the desk." with his hands and glancing around the room to be sure no There were other top-secret items Newton's men had de one was watching. veloped while working on his petroleum-surveying equipment. For the first time in the evening he stopped talking, method Newhall was sitting on the bed, trying to look nonchalant. I ically working on the knots. was sitting on the little desk chair and Newto':l was between us When he finished with them he held the corners of the hand sitting on the edge of a big easy chair. Things were once more kerchief together and lopked at us. getting to the point where I didn't dare look at Newhall except "You ever see anythi�g like this?" he asked quietly and out of the corner of my eye. As far as I could see, Newhall was dumped the co ntents of the handkerchief on the table. The making a detailed study of one of his shoes. Newton was talk presentation couldn't have been more impressively nonchalant. ing, fast and steady, as if he'd just found out they were going F�ur metal objects lay on the smooth tablecloth. Without a to slap on a speech tax in the next ten minutes. word from Newton they seemed to be touched with star dust. I felt my stomach give a lurch and stop working on the roast octor, it seems, had developed a magnetic fog, rain, and beef I had just eaten. D darkness-dispelling screen which, fitted to the windshield Two of the ob_jects were gears, fine-toothed and about the of an airplane. literally turned night into day and enabled a size of pocket watches. The other two were disks, dull-finished pilot to see through the sloppiest kind of weather. and about the size of a nickel. Here at last were the disks of Newton dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. "One of unknown metal. the biggest companies in the country. see. They're testing this Newton scooped up his treasures quickly, as if he were ·afraid th ing right now. Absolutely top-secret. You'd know the name of they might suddenly disappear, and put them back into the the co mpany in a minute if I mentioned it." He peered arbund handkerchief. Then, one by one, he brought them ou't for us the room to make sure no uninvited ears were listening. "You to examine closely. 1 know Norden. the bombsight people? Sec. Well. they're testing The two disks were identical. . There were no marks on them this thing right now." except tiny surface nicks and scratches. They felt incredibly Newton hauled out a slim; clear rod. li§ht. The metal had a powdery-looking finish that did not "Looks exactly like Lucite, doesn't it? Well, it isn't. Better come off with rubbing. . than Lucite. Flexible, shatterproof, and it positively will not Newhall and I looked at each other. Neither of us felt much burn. like laughing now. "Doctor, sec, made this revolutionary plastic stuff for the The gears were not alike. One had a tiny gear fitted into the military. Made it right out of Perelite, a volcanic ash. Cheapest center of it. The other was solid and on a shaft. Newton held material in the world. There's whole hills of it. The military it and tapped it with his knife. A clear, faint, high-pitched tone is using this stuff for cockpit canopies on planes because it blended with the music of the string ensemble. Surprisingly won't burn.'' enough, holding the gear in your hand didn't have any damp And then there was the magnetic disintegrator. ening effect on the ringing note. Of course the big-brass was working on it. But there were "It's magnetized," Newton explained. Just by way of ex problems. The disintegrator, brieflymen tioned in Scully's book, periment I touched the gear to the steel blade of my knife. was so all-destroying that · split-second con trol of it was a vital There didn't seem to be any magnetic attraction between the factor. two pieces of metal. Newton couldn't explain that, but he said It had taken better than a year, Newton said, just to work out Dr. Gee had once explained it to him. the mathemat ics necessary · to make certain the disi ntegrator Both of the gears were blotched and stained. would only operate in a one ten-thousandth-of-a-second flash. "Acid," said Newton. "We've subjected them, see, to 150 tests Even so, in that brief moment, the disi ntegrating beams had in our laboratories. Listen to that note." He tapped the gear shot out twenty miles and spread a swath of total destruction again. "That's the note 'A' on the piano." on the desert proving grounds two miles wide. The big-brass planned to set a chain of these disintegrators ne of the gears was unmarked except for the stains. The around the United States and point them skyward to form an O other had a small fat arrow inscribed on it in outline. impenetrable screen of destruction through which no enemy The arrow pointed toward a figure that looked very much like planes could pass. an ordinary 9. Newton· had no explanation for these inscrip But there was a hitch in the plan. The beams of the magnetic tions. disintegrator, if left on, would reach out and destrov the uni He did, however, have some other things that might be verse. interesting. They were in his room, he said co nfidentially, right And then there was the big flying saucer Newton's men upstairs. thought they had loca ted, crashed in a swamp outside of Mem Newton's room, although it was one of the Palace Hotel's phis. smaller accommodations, look.cd exactly the way you might "The ca ptain, sec, I ca n't tell you his name, was fl ying along expect the hotel room of a busy, wealthy oil executive to one night testing this magnetic windshield screen for Norden look. when he saw this thing circl ing. It went right down into the A saddle-leather suitcase lay open on the luggage rack. Across swamp. it lay a folded geological map-expensive, authentic. "l\Iy people got a fix on it and as soon as the rainy season An honest-looking old-fashioned valis6 slouched in one corner ends down there we're go ing in and take a look at it. r can't of the room, its baggy leather sides scuffed and scarred; a vet tell you any more about it except, of course, it's probably one eran, no doubt, of countless trips into the rugged, dusty oil of the cigar-shaped saucers and probably a thousand feet long." lands. Newton fished into an expensive-looking, hand-stitched Newton bega n talking immediately. His story, tidied up for brief case and slid out a bundle of 8x I 0 pictures. He held them family consumption, centered around Dr. Gee and his col face down in his la p while he re minisced about the days in the leagues whose achievements apparently kept Newton in a per oil fields. the beginnings of the Newton Oil Company in Den petual state of wonder. ver, and the great days of rediscovering the Rangely oil fields "Doctor is down there right now in our labora-tories, see, after they had been aba ndoned by all the major oil companies along the so uth side of the airfield there at Phoenix. You know as worthless. the place. Those buildings that used to be the big government The pictures were held in his lap, still face down. T knew top-secret laboratories. Our people arc in there now. perfectly well that h e was giving them the old build-tlp treat· "Funny th ing. I was down there only a couple of weeks .ago m e nt. hut st ill it was working. It got so bad that I had a hard
105 about this earth or any other planet since Galileo ... [acuity THE FLYING SAUCERS AND THE members ldt the room with their heads spinning." On l\Jarch 9, the day alter the lecture, the Denver Post MYSTERIOUS LITTLE MEN carried an intcn·icw with Fra ncis Broman, the U n iversity ol Denver ins tructor who arra nged for "Scientist X" to address his basic-science class. Questioned about the scientific \'aluc o( the lecture. Broman commented. "Absolute zero." Professor Albert Recht o[ the uni,·ersit,·'s science division noted, "It was time keeping· myself from reaching over and gra bbing them a good yarn ... though he g·;{,·e no documentation." away from him. If he had wa nted to. Scully had plenty of ti me to fheck those Finally he held one of them up, its back to Newhall and me, clippings before his book went to press. Ob,·iously he wasn 't and looked at it lor a long momen t . Then he turned it around interested. As a matter of fact he em barked on a shi fty side slowly. It was a fuzzy shot of some desert real estate. step to an>id the co lumns of the Denver papers that gave the "You sec that?" said Newton, gravely. "That's where the . lecture a bad press and still provide himself with fr iendly news first sa ucer landed." paper cO\·eragc of the e\·ent. To hope he could get away with He turned o,·er two or three more prints of the same so rt o f such a stu n t indicates Scully's incred ible ga ll. thing. In the second chap ter of f1 is book, also devo ted to the lec "These will be ,·ery historica l photographs someday," he ture. Scully wrote: said. "It's too bad 1 am not allowed to let you look at them "It was not the Dem·er papers that gave the best report of closelv." what Scientist X sa id . . ..The ... prize for the best reporting Then he started to slide them back into his brief case. As he would go to the Summersidc ]ounw/, a modest-sized publication did. he paused and looked at us slyly. Then he slipped one quartered on Prince Edward lsland, Ca nada ...at the mouth picture up "from behind the others and immediately slid it of the St. Lawrence Ri,·er." back again. From what 1 could see in that instant, it looked Und isturbed by the unlikely prospect of a small Canad ian like a picture of a large beach uinbrella on its side. paper published only three times a week having a correspond "You didn't see anything. did you?" Newton asked. winking. ent as far away as Den ,·cr. Scully proceeds.: He had ne,·cr been more correct. but the implication was that "This newspa per obviously gu t its story from a Denver cor he had just permi tted a glimpse of a photograph of a fiying respondent, but it recapitu lated what the speaker said so well saucer. that it 's better than a transcript. . . . " Newton grew rcfiecti,·e . There just' might be, he thought, the Scully then quotes the Summerside Journal story. To do this barest chance that he co uld persuade Doctor and his people to he must ha\'c had a copy er clipping of the pape r before him. reve;d the whole story. Perhaps, after all, it might be advisable, Therefore he could not have missed seeing the credit line ·a t particularly if the thing that crashed in the swamp turned out the top of the story. to be a cigar-shaped saucer. "You know," Newton mused dreamily, "a lot of people would pay a d ollar to see a thing like that." he Summerside journal story is credited, "Denver, Colo., Then, suddenly, Newton announced that he had to whisk off TPost." The story is Thor Seversen's Denver Po.st story, word to lV ashi ngton for a con ference with the big-brass. for word. It was Se,·ersen's first story of- the lecture done before Newhall and I stood up. "It's been a very interesting evenillg, anyone knew who the lecturer was and before Seversen was l'vlr. Newton," Newhall said, his voice straining for sel f-control. sure the whole thing was a farce. As a consequence, it is a "You'll be hearing from Ca lm here. We'll talk the whole th ing straight reporting job merely repeating what the speaker said. over and see what we can work out with you." It sui ted Scully's needs admirably. On the few occasions that it There were the usual polite remarks, with Newhall and me didn't, Scully merely rewrote . it. looking down at the carpet, and then we were out in the hall. By removing Seversen's one fa irly friendly story from the Newhall and I managed to hold it until we got down the otherwise unfriendly columns of the Denver Post, and credit corridor and in front of the elevator. There was no longer any ing it elsewhere, Scully had his necessary n�wspaper coverage question about it-the time had come to laugh, and we let go. of the lecture. \Vhcn we could talk again, we tried to figure out what New . By the time Seversen and I had finished diggi ng around in the ton was up to. It was a sa fe bet that he wa sn't as closely in Denver Post morgu�, it had stopped snowing, the sun had come touch with the cosmos as Frank Scully would have had his out and it was fairly pleasant. We thought it would be a good readers believe. But he was up to something. \Vas the whole idea to have a talk with Instructor Broman and see if he had thing, Scully's book and all, a titanic piece of ballyhoo aimed revised his opinions of "Scientist X" and his flying-saucer lec at the day when the big cigar-shaped saucer opened for busi ture. ness on the mi dway at Playland-at-the-Beach? Francis Broman is a sl ight, dark-complexioned man of agree I decided the next move was to go to Denver, Newton's old able manner. His pleasantries with us had a kind of nenous stamping ground, look over the Newton Oil Compa ny, and quality to them which, co nsidering the corner into which the follow up a few other leads from Scully's book. "Scientist X" lecture had wedged him, is understandable enough. n building up Silas Newton as an authority on flying saucers, While working at the university as an instructor, Broman was J Frank Scully provided a respectable academic set ting by also studying for his doctorate there. To do a bang-up job as au devoting the whole first chapter of his book to a description of instructor, Broman had. on his own hook, invited "Scientist X"· the le cture that was given at the University of Denver on to give the flying-saucer talk. :March 8, 1950. The chapter heading· is "The Mystery of the When t�e evetlt g·o t out of hand in the public prints and the University of Denver," the mystery being that the man who university regents found the name of their school firmlv lashed gave the lecture was known a.nly as "Sc ientist X" until Thor up with a lecturer who insisted little men from Ven'us were Seversen, covering the event for the Denver P-tJst, identified dropping like flies on the Earth, an icy academ ic breeze- began him, several days after the talk, as Newton. My first move jn blowi ng in Broman's direction. For awhile, Broman could see Detwer was to hunt up Seversen. his diploma wa fting away in the williwaw. Thor Seversen looks just the way he should to go with a name Having weathered that storm, Broman came to the interview like that; big, well set-up. blond. He is not only a fine reporter, with us prepared to make it very clear that Newton or "Scientist but he is a very understanding gent. It was snowing when I X" and his Venusians were about as welcome at the university pulled into Denver. I was wearing a light gabard ine suit. as a case of pyorrhea at a kissing game. Seversen, tak ing pity on a chattering chump from California. Broman showed us a copy of the introductory statement he suggested we might spend some time profitably in the nice, had made to his class before the lecture began. In it he had warm officeof the Post go ing over the clips of the stories about pointed ou t that the whole purpose of the lecture was to gi,·e the University of Denver lecture. It was a good idea. It not his class an exercise in evaluating material presented by a only kept me from shivering myself apart at the seams. but it speaker. Broman had even given his students a summary of the proYed that Frank Swlly wasn't very much interested in doing scientific method of evaluation they had been studying and a good reporting job in Behind the Flying Snttce1·s. asked them to see if the saucer lecture stood up un der it. Scully's book, pl}blishcd six mo nths after tqe Denver lecture. Naturally. in view of the spectacular nature of the talk. a little described the event as "pro bably the most sensational lecture- th ing like Broman's introduction was overlooked in the follow-
106 ing news stories, and certainly thete was · no mention of it in wasn't on the tape. As far as the talk itself-went, it was pretty Scully's book. There were, however, a couple of c arefully much the same thing I had heard in the Palace Hotel from the thought-out devices used by Scully to make the lecture sound lips of the master himself. like a weighty scholastic event. Koehler had some pretty interesting yarns to spin about the One of them was Scully's sentence, "On that day at 12:30 great Dr. Gee. In the m,iddle of one ?f t�em he fished out a _ m p. m., 350 students of the University of Denver skipped lunch brown rod atidut .a quarter of an mch d1 GEORGE KOEHLER WAS EVER ON DEARS' ROSTER IF SO WHEN. M r. Brizzolara replied: Do NOT HAVE RECORD OF GEORGE KOEHLER PLAYING WITH BEARS. (signed) CHICAGO DEARS FOOT· BALL CLUB. From that point on I wasn't counting heav i l y on anything Koeh ler offered. He was correct, however, in claiming that he was pretty close to Newton, for he and his wife, who was once Newton's nurse, live in a house that turned out to be rented by Newton and is filled with Newton's gol fing trophies and other memorabilia, and he drives a Cadillac that is registered in the name of Newton Oil Company. · Koehler played a tape recording of the University of Denver lecture which was interesting only beca use it didn't in clude Broman's telltale introduction. Koehler, not knowing I had spoken to Broman, glossed over the importance of zn case." the missi ng introduction, althoug·h he "Let's ask, anyn,ay-jusl ne\:cr co uld satisfactorily explain why it 107 see any po int in winding up in a fist fight or a lawsuit or both THE FLYING SAUCERS AND THE if I cou ld help it. By the time 1 got back to San Francisco 1 thought I had a MYSTERIOUS LITTLE MEN pretty good plan for ge tting one of the disks. I hadn't figured out yet how I was go i 11� to smoke out Dr. Gee, but I decided to let that wait until I got to it. aying hold of one of Newton's specimens of unknown metal Denver I checked out two more leads that turned up in Scully's turned out to be bo ut as easy as getting a passkey to fort book and Newton's conversation . L a Knox, but 1 didn't know it when 1 started. I looked up the Newton Oil Company in the p�one book, My first 1110\'C was to hunt up a good re liable labora tory that half expecting that it wouldn't be there at all. But It was. And would cooperate on such :t project. Stanford Research Institute, the offices lis ted actually existed. They didn't however, exactly in Menlo Park, California, is one of the best commercial labs in jibe with the picture of roari ng activity conjured up by Scully the area and perhaps in the country. Dr. J. E. Hobson, director when he wrote, "Silas 1\Jason Newton, president of the Newton of the institute, agreed to go along with me. Dr. Hobson not Oil �ompany ... a man who never made more than $25,000,000 only thought the whole pro_ject was pretty fu nny. but he also nor lost more than $20,000,000 . . .." saw the value of knocking over what certa inly was shaping up .-\s fa r as I cou ld see, the whole Newton Oil Company con as a full-sca le national sricntific hoax. All I needed to do now sisted ol two oftices connected by a little waiting room. When was get one of the disks and SR 1 would do the rest. 1 dropped in saying that 1 was a friend of Mr. Newton's and My first mo\'e was HaL-footedly to ask N<::wton he'd permit just thought I'd look him up, the only activity in the place was if an analysis of a disk. He laughed it off. His stand was that his a mild con ,·ersa tion go ing on between a man who introduced own laboratories had already submitted the disks to 150 tests, himself as the secrct;1ry of the compa ny and the receptionist. discovered that they would withstand I 0,000 degrees of heat, For an organization that had, as both Scully and Newton presumably Fahrenheit, although he didn't quite remember, claimed, red iscovered the mighty Range ly oil field, the opera and he didn't see any point in further testing. As far as Newton tion see111ed. a little puny. My next move was to check on the was concerned the stull was unknown 'to Earth and what was Rangely story. the use of doing any more tests when you didn't know what Richard D. 'White, explora tion superintendent for the Cali you were testing for? It was a tricky piece of logic, but had fornia Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil of California, 1 to go along with it for fear of tipping my hand. gave me a com plete fill-in on Rangely. Mr. White is in a good position to know wh;1t he is talking about, for the Ca lifornia My next suggestion, that no one would really believe hi!' Company controls a vast majority of the leases at Rangely. story unless he submitted the disks to an impartial laboratory . almost ended in disaster. The offices of the California Company were the real th ing. Newton puckered up his eyes and began spewing at me. You could have lost the whole Newton Oil Company in ·the reception room. "You've been chasi ng me down here for two months. I'm a busy man. I haven't got a bit time to spend on this I got out a co py of Scully's book and showed White this goddanm<:d of thing. Now I've been courteous as hell to you, see. And I'm sentence that appears on page 33: "He (Newton) hunted for just not interested in bothering with the damn th ing any oil with instruments which had cost a fortune and were a closely longer. Now how does that suit you?" �uarded secret. With them he had rediscovered the Rangely oil field years after the major oil companies had written it off as a failure." . ewton carried on along those lines for quite awhile. What White grinned and shook his head. "Sure, I remember old N he was getting at was that apparently plenty of people Newton," he said. "He used to come out to Rangely with some had believed him without his having to subm it anything to kind of doodlebug outfit-one of those black boxes with a lot anybody; witness the number of copies Scully's book had sold. of d_ials on it nobody ever gets to look inside of. He tried to And what had he, Newton, got out of it? Nothing. Nothing tell everybody we were way off on the geology. He even picked but abuse and persecution. What had started out as a favor on up some leases down where his doodlebug said the oil was sup Newton's part to Scully had boomeranged and Newton was posed to be and did some drilling. Turned out he was the one getting tired of it. Looking at him as he stood there bristling. that was way off on the geology. He used to bring a lot of he was the picture of the in jured ph ilanthropist. people out here in those big cars of his. But as far as rediscover Then, almost without my realizing it, Newton's manner ing Range ly, that's a lot of baloney. began to change and the point of the whole floor show swung "Here's the story on Rangely. Standard of California redis· into focus. covered the field in 1902 but for a long time there wasn't much "I've talked with my people," Newton was saying in a calm, activity out there. The reason for that's sim pie. Crude oil was matter-of-fact voice: "and their statement to me was, see, that selling for ten cents a barrel. Rangely was a long way from the Scully made twenty-five or thirty thousand out of his book on refineries; and the roads, if you could call them that, were what little information we've furnished him. They said to me, terrible. 'Now if we lay all this stuff on the line, it's going to take a lot "When World War II came along there was a big demand of time and we waut to knpw what there is in it for us.' " for oil and the price shot up to the point where it was worth Commerce had entered the picture. while taking it out. The go,·ernment came along with some help The only thing to do was to declare open season on Newton's on the road situation and a private pipe line went in. Then disks and start working on the plan I had figured out. Rangely really opened up. That's all there was to the rediscov What I had in mind was to make a copy of Newton's disks ering of Rangely." and then, if I cou ld get him to haul out th e originals again, switch mine for one of his. here wasn't any doubt in my mind about whom to believe I had been counting on getting at least another look at the Ton the Rangely story. The past performance of the Newton disks before creating the copy, but the way New ton was acting Scully team didn't leave me any. choice. I realized I'd be lucky if I could get him to produce them even As I was leaving White's office he offered a suggestion. "If once more so I could switch on him. That meant I had to make you really want to get an idea of how Newton operates, get the copies from memory. It had been some time since I had hold of some hack issues of a magazine called the Petroleum seen the disks and then, even though I'd handled them, the Re11iew. You'll find some articles in there by Newton himself light hadn't been good for the sort of thing I had in mind. that will give you a pretty good line on him." I got hold of Newhall, the only other person who had been Just before I got on the plane, I called Thor Seversen at the along when Newton produced his trophies, and we compared Dnrt1er Post and asked him if he'd try to find the articles notes. V\1e were agreed the disks were about the size of a nickel, V\'h ite mentioned. Then I headed back for San Fra ncisco. plain-surfaced and silver-colored. All the way back I tried to think of a way to get possession The weight was the only tricky problem. A piece of aluminum of one of those disks of unknown metal without Newton know that looked about the right size didn't seem to weigh enough. ing I had it. Of course I could have just grabbed one and stuck Magnesium felt too light. Monel metal felt too heavy. Steel, it in my pocket, but with all the trouble Newton and Scully although it felt a little too slippery. seemed to be the best bet had. gone to in building the story up, it was a dead cinch tha·t for this job. they wouldn't stand hitched for a move like that. And I didn't Among his other talents, Newhall is a pretty fa ir muhinist. foe a we l e · He has l - quipped shop ·a n his garage and one afternoon Another item I came across, which appeared this time not in et up to do we s a little counterfeiting. the New York Times but, oddly euough, in the files of the hen we go nt o \V . � through we had a� assortm� £ steel disks, San Fmn.cisco Chro nicle a continent-width away, conveyed news me a l ittle b•gge nickel, som: a httle s �aller. Our 15, 1932, so r than a . from New York on January that a Brooklyn man had m _ idea was that b y making the fa kes slightly varymg s•zes we asked the New York State Bureau of Securities for a Supreme match. would surely have one that was a good-enou�h For some Court examination order to determine if Newton was engaged sk reason or other we turned out one fake d 1 '?ad� of m onel in fraudulent stock practices. The man felt he had been bilked vier steel to begm With and we $28,000. metal. Monel metal is hea than by Newton in the amount of No outcome was recorded e a s thic as the ones made �( made our m onel disk about twic � in the public prints, so presumably nothing came of it. y om anson, but we ad ded It steel. I t was ridiculously heavy b c p Then there were two up-state New York incidents. In Sep- , 1934, a tember at Oneida, Newton got involved with the state to our collection anyw y. _ .• , ·' - ,._,______.] . __ _ police in a matter concerning false stock statements. In July or ·days I carnea au rne laKes arouno I n my F the next few 1935, The process worked pretty well. The at Elmira, he was arrested on a judge's bench warrant, pockets to "age" them. charged with two violations of the law relating to false state only trouble was I jingled. to sks ments or advertisements on securities, and was released in $2,500 The problem no.w was t� get Newton produc� his di again so J could swi tch on htm. But Newtqn wo uldn t produce. bail; a year and a half later the indictments were dismissed In a series of attempts to get Newton to haul out his disks, and the case closed. meetings with a whole new, tempting cast of characters were It was plain that in his financial dealings, Newton had a suggest�d to him: people of influence who could guarantee him_ tendency to get into trouble, and a knack for ·getting out of it. protection in case "the military" turned against him and Dr. I got to wo�dering if, what with his various oil enterprises, Gee; a man who would happily part with a sizable chunk of Newton might not have tr�ed to sell a little stock in Cali money for just a glimpse ol the mysterious disks from Venus; fornia. The rules on such matters are very strict in California, kindred souls with reports of saucer sightings who begged for a so strict that the office of the Corporation Commissioner keeps peek at Newton's treasures. Still Newton would n't bite. very careful records to insure that those rules are enforced. I Finally another dinner was set .up in the Palm Court, the found that the Commissioner's office was not unaware of Silas place Newton had first produced the disks. This time Hal Mc Newton, though nothing was pending against him. Intyre, a professional magician who now uses his magic act to Uncovering such a background for Scu lly's "Scientist X," the help him fit hearing aids to children, came along in the role of University of Denver lecturer, the great geophysicist of the oil a friend who had a saucer sighting to report. Hal was loaded industry, obviously ca lled for some intensive digging into the with the fake disks. Just before Newton appeared, I tried to man's current activities. give Hal a last minute fill-in on which one of the fakes . I What came up unexpectedly in the first spadeful was a clear thought would be the best match for a Newton disk. Hal; who clue at last to Dr. Gee. had been kept informed of the story, was about as exasperated I won't go into the method of delving here. Let's say simply as I was. He said, "I don't care what Newton's disks look like. that the telephone is a great invention, and Newton is a great Even if he pulls out a square one I'm going to switch on him." telephoner. A checkup revealed that he phoned often to Phoe But it was no go. Newton just kept playing his role of a nix, Arizona. He spoke there with a Leo GeBauer. science-fiction Scheherazade regaling Ui with more stories about Phoenix was the locale of Dr. Gee, according to Scully's book Dr. Gee and his fabulous laboratories. Every time we worked and to the statements of Newton himself. The pseudonym "Gee" around �o the subject of the disks, Newton had an excuse· for and the name "GeBauer" certainly seemed to be kin. not producing them. Furthermore, the pl_ace and name were not the only signifi After about a week of trying I began to think the disks had cant similarities. Though he didn't appear, from a distance, to sailed back to Venus on their own and my sanity was about be a Newton-Scully grade of superscientist, GeBauer did have to follow. some technical knowledge of electronics. He was proprietor of Then Newton's business with the "big-brass" took him to the Western Radio & Engineering Company, a radio and tele Washington. While he was away I decided to use the time to vision parts su pply house. check up further on Newton's background and to start scout It wouldn't do to call up GeBauer and ask him bluntly if he ing out leads to Dr. Gee. was Dr. Gee. My next step was laid out for me-to go to Phoenix From Scully's book I knew that Newton had lived in New and size 1,1p GeBauer in person. York City-in the winter of 1929-30, he had housed distin I was set to take off when Newton turned up in San Francisco guished visitors in "his Park Avenue residence."· I was to find again. Apparently he was ready to talk business about the disks. that shortly after that time, Newton was .,. embroi�d in some acti�ry in New York which Scully either knew nothing about TRUE MAGAZINE or didn't bother to mention. t's not in the glamorous Dick Tracy J detective tradition to mole through old newspaper files, but sometimes it pays off. The New York Times publishes an index that amply justifies its famous slogan, "All the news that's fit to print." I discovered in the public library that in 1931 the Times reported that Silas M. Newton, "reputed wealthy oil man and gol fer," had been arrested by New York police, charged with grand larceny on the complaint of an elderly retired New Jersey real-estate dealer who claimed that Newton had rigged a $25,000 sale to him of worthless stock in a gas and utilities company. New ton denied any fraud, claimed it was all a misunderstanding, and was released in $2,500 bail. The next day the Times noted that New York State authorities expected to arrange Newton's extradition to New Jersey within a week. Evidently Newton beat the rap, for no further news of the case appeared, and from checking records I learned that some five years later, in Sep "1\.fay I be excusl�d?" tember 1936, his ba il was discharged. 101 :\ 11 out cn.:n glancing at it, nd w�nt ril?ht on with his st 1ry. ·' THE FLY·ING SAUC�RS AND THE � . � o do d1sk back m o my Ius had t now was get Ius t pocket WJtllO�It noticing the moYe. l\Jclntyre had warned me t�ot to do t t too . . MYSTERIOUS LITTLE MEN soon and above all, not to look at my hand whde I put Jt mto my pocket. I didn't, but it was a stm�gle. Tl�cn l t�ied to sit . there and listen to Newton w1th that disk oi Ius bnrn111g a hole right through the side of my suit. . . . As hard as I tried not to sneak a look at the lake stttlng e started off by announcing over th� tele hone, "No v my p � there in the handkerch ief alongside of Newton's disk, I couldn't H people arc not trying to sell anythmg. rhcr haven ot � f{ stop it. "V hen I saw the �wo of them together � almost passed anything· to se ll. But you certainly, sec, should be m a posJtio . � out. The fake was so bad It stuck out hkc an Esk1mo at a Boston to know how far you want to go to get to the bottom of th1s social tea party. deal." . . . Newton never noticed tt. When he was through wtth Ius If a cash offer was what was required to make Newton pro- African saucer story he wrapped up the disks and gears, stuck duce his disks a�ain, there was on ly one thing to do. _ them in his pocket and announced that l�e would t-a ke up the The trouble was that makinO" Newton an offer was kmd of . . offer with Doctor. It might take a httle time, Newton warned. like trailing your foot in the wafer to lure a shark within ga ffing The last Newton had heard, the doctor had disappeared into distance. The stakes had to be high to make any sense and the sc ientificwi lds of Pasadena so thoroughly that even his wife Newton could be counted on to take care of himself in a fast shullle. couldn't find him. But Newton would get in touch with me. Five minutes after he was gone, I was on my way to the Stan A Yery solemn conference was set up and Newton w�s author ford Research Institute with the disk of unknown metal. ized to tell "his people" that $10,000 would be put m escrow Dr. Hobson and his men gave the disk the full trea tment. as soon as some reasonable proof of the story's authenticity was They clipped off a tiny piece and checked its melting po i�t. produced. An additional .$25,000 was to be turned over to New- m They did a simple gr�vimet�ic analysis. Th�y mounted if ton prior to publication. _ . . plastic, polished a portt�m of It to a m1rror fimsh am� exam med Newton was in great form that day_ He was weanng a very its structure microscopically_ They sent another piece of the ravels he had pale gray flannel suit and somewhere in his � disk ·over to Stanford University for a spectrochemical analysis. picked up a deep tan. The way he hand�cd himself I got to It seemed a shame to go to all that trouble. The disk wasn't feeling that S3!l.OOO was really a pretty ch mtzy offer. made of anything that a 12-year-old with a H Chem-Cra.ft out There was the usual amount ol backing and filling. Newton fitco uldn't have analyzed in twenty minutes. mulled the proposition over and gravely considered what his Newton's precious unknown metal that Dr. Gee had sup people would th ink. Occasionally. he �ligressed long enough to . posedly taken from a crashed flying saucer, the same that had spin some colorful bit of sa cenan mformauon but by and � . : refused to melt in Dr. Gee's laboratory at 10,000 degrees, melted large he was strictly the busmess man negouatmg. It was a quite nicely at Stanford Research Institute at just 657 degrees, shock, then, when he rum maged around in a co at pocket, hauled Fahrenheit. out the grimy handkerchief, spre ad the gears and disk o the � � It was plain old alum inum, 99.5 percent pure, a quality com desk and sa id, "I suppose you wanted to see these agam. mercially described as grade 2S and used in the manufacture of It was a bad moment. One look at Newton's disks and it was nothing more cosmic than pots and pans. a cinch that the su bstitutes were at best pretty unreasonable With th'at piece of intelligence in hand, I gathered up my facsimilies. But it could have been a lot worse-1 could have notes and headed for Hollywood and Frank Scully. The prob been caught diskless. Luckily, I did h •ve the fake disks with : . lem now was to find out whether Scully had known about this me, bad as they were. I was still ca rrymg them around, agmg state of affairs or, if he had simply been gulled by Newton and them in my pockets. Dr. Gee, whether he would be man enough to admit it and The most obvious thing wrong with my fakes was that they - help me run down the rest of the story. were much too thin-all but the one made of monel metaL It Just to be on the . safe side, though, I decided to see if I was about halfway thick enough, but if it had se.eme� too heavy couldn't first ge t him to identify Dr. Gee as GeBauer. It would when it was made up, now, by secretly sortmg It out· and be something of a bluff, but, pending my trip to Phoenix, I was hefting it in my pocket, it seemed hopeless. . pretty sure I had the right man. While I was wondering what to do, Newton was . talkmg The Scully living room hadn't changed. It was s.till the same about a saucer that had been sighted over Africa_ As swept away cheery bedlam of dogs and chi ldren with Scully holding forth as he was by his new story he never once lost sight of he disks, a � as usual on saucer case flashed to him by an ardent fan who handing over first one and then the other and placmg them had re ad his book. on his open handkerchief as they were returned. In the relative €aim of Scully's cluttered workroom I brought I didn't dare stall any longer. Not only was there the chance out the laboratory reports on the disk-the film from the spectro that any minute Newton would wrap up the disks and tuck chemical analysis, the terse report on the gravimetric, the bleak them awav, but I was beginning to get the shakes. notes on the microscopic examination. I palmed the monel fake by gripping it with the fourth finger between the palm and second joint, and tried to remem 1l1l !hen Scully got throug� ith them �1e looked as a man ber what my friend Mcintyre, the magician, had told me. � . "Let me see one of those disks again, Mr. Newton," I said. Y"W might who had been ndmg m a flymg saucer when the !_guess I'm not cut out for this sort of thing because my voice center fell out. After awhile· he called in his wife. For Mrs. sounded like I was going to be sick and when I took my hands Scully's benefit the whole file on Newton was hauled out. from my pocket I could see the skin creases shine where the When she was through, Mrs. Scully just sat there saying over sweat was forming. · . and over, "How can it possibly be true?" The propitious mo I took Newton's disk between my thumb and forefinger, held ment seemed .to be at hand to hazard the matter of Dr. Gee. it up to look at it, and then let i t drop i nto my c p ed ?and. The first move was to see if Scully still contended, as he had . . � l? I gave a kind of feeble cough With the Id�a that If It ch nke? in his book, that he had actually met Dr. Gee. Scully not only against the Iake, the sound would be covered. There wasn t sa id tha t he had, but that considering the high scientific tone any clink. of Dr. Gee's conversation it didn't seem possible that he could I went through the motions of hefting the disk in my hand be anything but what Newton claimed. although actually I was holding the two of them tightly palmed I made Scully a proposition. If he would voluntarily admit to keep them from ge tting mixed up. Big, single drops of icy who Dr. Gee was, I offered to let him join forces with me sweat were slithering down my sides. publicly in the final stages of smoking out Newton's real mo I just sat there for a second or two hefting away and trying tives in perpetrating a national hoax. to look as if I were pondering some deep interplanetary prob Scully refused. He had given his word, he sa id, not to reveal lem. Then, looking Newton �igh t in the eye as Mcintyre had who Dr. Gee was, ·a nd he didn't intend to break his promise told me, I let the monel fake slide into my other hand and Mrs. Scully tried to co nvince him that he had been taken in by passed it hack to him. Keeping my eyes from flicking down at Newton and was thus no longer ob l igated to him. Scully that fake disk as I handed it over was the hardest thing I've wouldn't budge_ ever done. I decided to play it the way they do in th� movies. 'YitJ� the Newton took it, plunked it down on the handkerch ief with- most indifferent attitude I could muster, I hmted tha t It dtdn. t 110 a mak knew who Gee wa;, anyway . keeping their laborat.ory machi nery running as kind of main e any differe nce to me because I . . l?c cause 1t . tenance man. I guess L .must have so unded pretty md1fferent e to h •Ill. that I The Better Business .Bureau wound up its report with a III THE FLYING SAUCERS AND THE certainly helpful to Newton's promotional pitch. The «rticle predicted that the town of Rangely "can become a city of 50,000 in the next fi"e years." That would be in 1952. Scully's predic MYSTERIOUS LITTLE MEN tion is a little high unless something- u nusual happens in Rangely in the next lew months. The latest population figures. gathered in 19!>0 and printed in the Rand McNally Road Atlas. shows Rangely's pop u l a t ion hon�ring at th e ;>.()00 mark. There is other remarkable c.:ooperatiqn between Newton His line was, "I don't want to put anyth ing down in writing and Scully. In the su bseq uent Pdmleum Ueview, for 1947-48. until I ta lk it over with my attorney." He had run into trouble Newton blossomed into print again with "a new explora tor� with Newton before. Seems as though Newton owed him some method ... (a) revolutionary new tec.:h nique (that) may end mone for some eq uipment GeBauer had built lor him. He y the specter of 'dry holes.' " Some phrases from the article and didn't know if he should sign .any statement or not. the magazine's explanatory sq uib will ring familiar to readers GeBauer wanted to talk the deal over with his v-.; i(e, who was of Scully's book. For example: in the shop. I left them ta lking and made a little tour of the place. In a room th at was a combination storeroom, workshop Petroleum Review : "Certain it is that petroleum in place _ radiates energy ...mic rowaves ca n be caught and measured." and wrapping room, there was a box of bn�wn rods exa�tly m like the one George Koehler had showed me Denver claim· Behind the Flying Saucers, page 36: "Petroleum in place ... ing it was a J>erelite arrow shaft. radiates magnetic energy and this is measurable." I was feelinu kind ol reckless. Maybe it was the heat. I broke off a piece o trod and took it over to GeBauer. "'What's this Pe troleum Review: "Microwaves being broadcast constan�ly " stuff?" I asked. by petroleum deposits hidden deep in the earth ... "Television antenna separators," he said. He didn't look too Behind the Flying Sa ucers, page 36: "Petrofeum deposits was happy. l\-Iavbe he sore beca use I broke that piece off. hidden deep in the earth were constantly broadcasting ... I began to push GeBauer about the stat�mei t, since he s�ill magnetic microwaves." ? _ stuck to his story, and finally he started dtctaung to hts w•fe. Scully could have checked the worth of such claims as easily It took severa l false starts but he eventually produced what I as I did by querying any authority in the su bject. Dr. Thomas needed as a lever ot1 Scully. It was on his letterhead and it read: Poulter of the Stanford Research Institute examined Newton's statements and told me, "As far as I know, petroleum in place To Whom It l\lay Co ncern : I have been asked by J. P. doesn 't radiate anything. If it did, all the world's oil fields Cahn of the Sn n Francisco Chronicle if I were the Dr. Gee would have been discovered long ago." in Scully's book. I am making this statement to all con The practical value of Newton's theories was already on cerned : I am not the Dr. Gee mentioned in the book Be record. The same Petroleum Review issue of 1946-47 that car hind The Flying Saurer. I have no knowledge of the flying ried Newton's articles co ntained, on- page a resume by the saucer other th an what l.have read.... 88, editors of the year's drilling openi.tions that noted, "One hun I have in no way any connection with Fra nk Scully, his dred and forty ...wel ls ...were added to the forty wells pro books or statements, nor did I at any time give Frank Scully ducing on January in Rangely Field, and its first duster authority to infer that I might be Dr. Gee. The scientific I, 1946, was drilled-the Newton Oil Company's Goverument on duties and qualifications mentioned in his book in no way D-1 the southern edge of the field.... " Perhaps it was this dry hole, describe my activities during the war period. (s igned) L. A. GeBauer. which is not the best of recommendations for an oil promoter. that made necessary Newton's "revolutionary new technique" which he proclaimed the following year and the theory of which All Scully had asked me to get was a . statement from GeBauer Scully glowingly quoted. denying the identity by which Scully had admitted to me that he knew him. I had it, and on GeBauer's own letterhead. I cer tainly figured that would do the trick of unlocking Scully. 0 nly the ultimate quest ion remained to be answered. Why did But it didn't. Frank Scully write Behind the Flying Saucers-a book now Maybe Scully had his fingers c_ rossed when he promised me proved to be, in effect, one of the greatest scientific hoaxes to that if I got such a statement he would admit Newton and Ge hit the coun try since the old Cardiff Giant was rooted out of Bauer had chumped him and help me run down the reason the soil of the Onondaga Valley in 1869. they went to all that trouble. Or maybe he only keeps his I 'm sorry that I don't know the answer. I don't know it be promises on odd days of the week. It's hard to tell. But Scully cause I think there is po single answer. Beyond the immediate knows what he promised and so does his wife. She was there and obvious one that the book was highly profitable lies a tangle at the time. of intangibles-the motives of the various individuals who were First I called him on the telephone and told him what had involved in fosteri ng the story. happened. Scully wouldn't even listen to me. I believe that Frank Scully allnwed himself to trust sincerely I l)ad the GeBauer sta tement photostated and I mailed him what was told him by others, although I'll agree that that takes a copy by registered mail. some believing al?out Scully. "I have tried to the best of my His only reply to that was a violent letter and a phone call ability to find flaws in their stories," he wrote in his preface. that should have short-circuited the entire Bell System. Scully You can charitably form a low opinion of his ability. or you maintained that I was persecuting him, just as everyone else can generously suppose that he may have been blinded by his co nnected with the saucer story was being persecuted, and that long fr iendship with the man who emerges most impressively he would probably sue someone. To date no one has showed up from the book-that wizard among ore and oil explorers, the to serve any papers. scientist whose geophysical acumen as described by author Scully would certainly merit any investor's interest, Silas Mason omething else showed up, however, that makes for some Newton. S interesting speculation. Thor Seversen, diggi ng around in I_'d give a good deal to know what led Newton to concoct Denver. finally found copies of the publication called the the Little-Men-in-Flying-Saucers-from-Venus yarn and get other Petmleum Review that R. D. White of the California Company people to go along with it. I've been meaning to ask him, but had suggested I read. I t was a good suggestion. he hasn't come around lately. In the 1946-47 Petroleum Review you will find three long I've been meaning to ask him, too, if he has figured out a mag· articl es written by Silas M. Newton. In all of them Newton ex netic story to expla in the fact that one of those disks of un· pounded the merits of his geological theories about Rangely known metal in his handkerchi ef is so much heavier than the and denounced the United States Geological Survey and "bu other one. s - . reaucratic Washington." If I know Newton, I'll bet that he ha . J P. Cahn Newton further distinguished himself by introducing to his Petroleum Review readers none other than the noted author Frank Scully whom he incorrectly cla imed "served several times (as a) member of the California legislature." Scully's contri bution to that issue of the Petroleum Review A True Book-Length Feature was an artidc e n tit l ed "Notes on Building a City" that was 112