'Has everyone finished reading?' General Taylor asked, obviously impatient to continue.

Most of the heads, hazed in smoke, nodded affirmatively.

'It's certainly impressive,' Orville Wright said, 'but it doesn't prove that this man created anything out of the ordinary, in secret or otherwise.'

Aware of Wright's ill.u.s.trious position in the history of aviation, that Charles Lindbergh had been forthright in his support of Robert H. G.o.ddard, and that both men might therefore be more sceptical than most, Bradley said, 'While I can't confirm that Wilson worked on airships more advanced than those built officially, I think it's worth pointing out that during the period 1896 to 1897 when Wilson had left Cornell University and disappeared completely to work, as we now know, on airship design and construction America suffered what is now known as the Great Airship Scare.'

'I remember it well,' Orville Wright said. 'It lasted for months. There was a great wave of sightings of mysterious airships that were actually carrying pa.s.sengers, or crew members, who reportedly spoke to the locals when they landed. At the time I put it down to ma.s.s hysteria.'

'Well,' Bradley said, 'maybe it was and maybe it wasn't but certainly most of the reports of contact between the airship crews and the witnesses mentioned a crew member who called himself Wilson. Please, gentlemen, bear with me.'

Bradley withdrew from his briefcase the press clippings that Gladys Kinder had sent him, spread them out on the table before him, and talked while reading from them, one by one.

'As you all probably know,' he began, 'the first major UFO flap was indeed in 1896, beginning about November of that year and continuing until May 1897. That was five years before the first experiments of Orville, here, and his brother, Wilbur; but there were, by that time, various airship designs on the drawing boards or in the Patent Office. For instance, according to my clippings here, on August 11, 1896, patent number 565805 was given to Charles Abbot Smith of San Francisco for an airship he intended having ready by the following year. And another patent, number 580941, was issued to Henry Heintz of Elkton, South Dakota, on April 20, 1897.'

'In all fairness,' Lindbergh said, 'you should perhaps point out that while many of the UFOs sighted were shaped roughly like the patented designs, there's no record of those airships having been built.'

'Okay,' Bradley said, 'I concede that but the fact that there's no record of them doesn't necessarily mean they weren't built.'

'But the reported UFOs resembled the airships on the patented designs?' a disembodied voice asked from farther along the table.

'Yes,' Orville Wright said. 'At that time the general belief was that aerial navigation would be solved through an airship, rather than a heavier-than-air flying machine, so most of the earlier designs looked like dirigibles with a pa.s.senger car on the bottom.'

'Cigar-shaped.'

'Correct.'

'Okay, Bradley,' General Taylor said, 'please continue.'

'What stands out in the 1896-97 sightings,' Bradley continued, 'is that the unidentified flying objects were mostly cigar-shaped, that they frequently landed, and that their occupants often talked to the witnesses, usually asking for water for their machines.'

'I remember that,' Orville Wright said, still proud of his memory.

'Now, the most intriguing of the numerous contactee stories,' Bradley went on doggedly, 'involved a man who called himself Wilson. He never gave his first name.'

Bradley's throat felt dry, so he swallowed, coughed into his fist, then started reading again from his notes and clippings.

'The first incident occurred in Beaumont, Texas, on April 19, 1897, when one J. B. Ligon, the local agent for Magnolia Brewery, and his son, Charles, noticed lights in a pasture a few hundred yards away and went to investigate. They came upon four men standing beside a large, dark object that neither of the witnesses could see clearly. One of those men asked Ligon for a bucket of water, Ligon let him have it, and then the man introduced himself as Mr Wilson. He then told Ligon that he and his friends were travelling in a flying machine, that they had taken a trip out to the gulf presumably the Gulf of Galveston, though no name was given and that they were returning to the quiet Iowa town where the airship and four others like it had been constructed. When asked, Wilson explained that electricity powered the propellers and wings of his airship. Then he and his fellow crew member got back into the basket of the airship and Ligon watched it ascending.'

'I get your drift,' Orville Wright said. 'That particular Wilson said he was returning to the quiet Iowa town where the airship and four others like it had been constructed and your Wilson, the one in these notes, originally came lrom Iowa.'

Bradley just raised his hands in a questioning manner, then started reading again.

'The next day, April 20, Sheriff H. W. Bayer of Uvalde, also in Texas, went to investigate a strange light and voices in back of his house. He encountered an airship and three men and one of the men introduced himself as Wilson, from Goshen, New York. Wilson then enquired about one C. C. Akers, former sheriff of Zavalia County, saying he'd met him in Fort Worth in 1877 and now wanted to see him again. Surprised, Sheriff Baylor replied that Captain Akers was now at Eagle Pa.s.s, and Wilson, apparently disappointed, asked to be remembered to him the next time Baylor visited him. Baylor reported that the men from the airship wanted water and that Wilson requested that their visit be kept secret from the townspeople; then he and the other men climbed back into the airship and, quote, its great wings and fans were set in motion and it sped away northward in the direction of San Angelo, unquote. Incidentally, the county clerk also saw the airship as it left the area.'

He glanced up from his notes to see what effect he was having on the learned gentlemen; thirteen faces stared attentively at him through a haze of cigarette and cigar smoke, so he lowered his gaze and started reading again.

'Two days later, in Josserand, Texas, a whirring sound awoke farmer Frank Nichols, who looked out from his window and saw brilliant lights streaming from what he described as a ponderous vessel of strange proportions, floating over his cornfield. Nichols went outside to investigate, but before he reached the large vessel, two men walked up to him and asked if they could have water from his well. Nichols agreed to this request as farmers in those days mostly did and the men then invited him to inspect their airship. When he did, he noticed that there were six or seven crew members. One of those men told him that the ship's motive power was highly condensed electricity and that it was one of five that had been constructed in a small town in Iowa with the backing of a large New York stock company.'

'So what we're talking about,' Lindbergh said, 'are five or six airships, originating in a small town in Iowa.'

'Right,' a granite-faced Pentagon general confirmed from a haze of smoke.

'The next day,' Bradley continued, 'on April 23, witnesses described in this Houston Post clipping as two responsible men, reported that an airship had descended where they lived in Kountze, Texas, and that two of the occupants had given their names as Jackson and...'

'Wilson,' General Taylor said with a sly grin.

'Right,' Bradley said, not returning the grin, but instead concentrating on his reading, which was making him feel oddly selfconscious. 'Four days after that incident, on April 27, the Galveston Daily News printed a letter from the aforementioned C. C. Akers, in which Akers claimed that he had indeed known a man in Forth Worth, Texas, named Wilson; that Wilson was from New York; that he was in his middle twenties; and that he was of a mechanical turn of mind and then working on aerial navigation and something that would, quote, astonish the world.'

'That letter could have come from a hoaxer,' Orville Wright pointed out with a jab of his finger, 'after he'd read the original story mentioning the unknown Akers.'

'Finally,' Bradley read, deliberately ignoring the famous, and famously testy, old man, 'early in the evening of April 30, in Deadwood, Texas, a farmer named H. C. Lagrone heard his horses bucking as if in stampede. Going outside, he saw a bright white light circling around the fields nearby and illuminating the entire area before descending and landing in one of the fields. Walking to the landing spot, Lagrone found a crew of five men, three of whom engaged him in conversation while the others collected water in rubber bags. The men informed Lagrone that their airship was one of five that had been flying around the country recently; that theirs was in fact the same one that had landed in Beaumont a few days before; that all the airships had been constructed in an interior town in Illinois which, please note, borders Iowa and that they were reluctant to say anything else because they hadn't yet taken out any patents. By May that same year, the wave of sightings ended... and the mysterious Mr Wilson wasn't heard from again.'

As Bradley gathered his notes and clippings together, there was a bewildered, or disbelieving, silence from those sitting around the table, either smoking or drinking water or beer. Eventually, when the silence became too obvious, Lindbergh propped his elbows up on the table, rested his chin on his clasped hands, and said, 'So what's being suggested here is that the mysterious Wilson of the so-called Great Airship Scare of 1896-97, who made frequent remarks about having constructed the airships, either five or six, in a small town in Iowa, is the same Wilson who worked for Robert G.o.ddard and now works for the n.a.z.is.'