Sidney Sheldon - The Doomsday Conspiracy

The woman in white turned to Robert. I am leaving now. She moved toward Admiral Whittaker, General Hilliard, and Monte Banks. You shall come with me.

Admiral Whittaker drew back. “No! I won’t go!”

Yes. We will not hurt you. She held out her hand, and for an instant nothing happened. Then, as the others watched, the three men began slowly moving toward the spaceship in a hypnotic daze.

Admiral Whittaker screamed, “No!”

He was still screaming when the three men disappeared inside the spaceship.

The woman in white turned to the others. They will not be harmed. They have much to learn. When they have learned, they will be brought back here.

Susan was holding Robert tightly.

Tell people they must stop killing this planet, Robert. Make them understand.

“I’m only one man.”

There are thousands of you. Every day your numbers grow. One day there will be millions, and you must all speak with one strong voice. Will you do it?

“I’ll try. I’ll try.”

We are leaving now. But we will be watching you. And we will be back.

The woman in white turned and entered the mothership. The lights inside began to glow brighter and brighter, until they seemed to light up the entire sky. Suddenly, without warning, the mother-ship took off, followed by the smaller ships, until finally they all vanished from sight.

Tell the people they must stop killing the planet. Right, Robert thought. I know now what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.

He looked at Susan and smiled.

In researching this novel, I have read numerous books, and magazine and newspaper articles citing astronauts who had reportedly had extraterrestrial experiences: Colonel Frank Borman on Gemini 7 supposedly took pictures of a UFO that followed his capsule. Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11 saw two unidentified spacecraft when he landed on the moon. Buzz Aldrin photographed unidentified spacecraft on the moon. Colonel L. Gordon Cooper, on a Project Mercury flight, encountered a large UFO over Perth, Australia, and recorded voices speaking languages later found to belong to no known earth language.

I talked to these men, as well as to other astronauts, and each one assured me that the stories were apocryphal, rather than apocalyptic, that they had had no experiences of any kind with UFOs. A few days after my telephone conversation with Colonel Gordon Cooper, he called me back. I returned his call, but he had suddenly become unavailable. One year later, I managed to acquire a letter written by him, dated November 9th, 1978, discussing UFOs.

I telephoned Colonel Cooper again to ask him if the letter was authentic. This time, he was more forthcoming. He informed me that it was, and that on his journeys into space he had personally witnessed several flights of UFOs. He also mentioned that other astronauts had had similar experiences that they were warned not to discuss.

I have read a dozen books that prove conclusively that flying saucers exist. I have read a dozen books that prove conclusively that flying saucers do not exist. I have run video tapes purporting to be photographs of flying saucers, and have met with therapists in the United States and abroad who specialize in hypnotizing people who claim to have been taken up into UFOs. The therapists say that they have handled hundreds of cases in which the details of the victims’ experiences are startlingly similar, including identical, unexplainable marks on their bodies.

An Air Force general in charge of the Blue Book project – a US government group formed to investigate flying saucers –assured me that there has never been any hard evidence of flying saucers, or of aliens.

Yet, in the foreword to Above Top Secret, a remarkable book by Timothy Good, Lord Hill-Norton, Admiral of the Fleet and British Chief of Defence Staff from 1971 to 1973, writes:

The evidence that there are objects which have been seen in our atmosphere, and even on terra firma, that cannot be accounted for either as man-made objects or as any physical force or effect known to our scientists seems to me to be overwhelming … A very large number of sightings have been vouched for by persons whose credentials seem to me unimpeachable. It is striking that so many have been trained observers, such as police officers and airline or military pilots …

In 1933, the 4th Swedish Flying Corps began an investigation of mysterious unmarked aircraft appearing over Scandinavia, and on April 30th, 1934, Major-General Erik Reuterswaerd issued the following statement to the press:

Comparisons of these reports show that there can be no doubt about illegal air traffic over our secret military areas. There are many reports from reliable people which describe close observation of the enigmatic flier. And in every case, the same remark can be noted; no insignias or identifying marks are visible on the machines … the question is: Who or what are they, and why have they been invading our air territory?

In 1947, Professor Paul Santorini, a leading Greek scientist, was asked to investigate missiles flying over Greece. “We soon established that they were not missiles. But, before we could do any more, the Army, after conferring with foreign officials, ordered the investigation stopped. Foreign scientists flew to Greece for secret talks with me.” [Emphasis added.]

The professor confirmed that a “world blanket of secrecy” surrounded the UFO question because, among other reasons, the authorities were unwilling to admit the existence of a force against which there was “no possibility of defence”.

From 1947 to 1952, ATIC (Air Technical Intelligence Centre) received approximately 1,500 official reports of sightings. Of these the Air Force carries 20 per cent as unexplained.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain in 1940, wrote:

More than 10,000 sightings have been reported, the majority of which cannot be accounted for by any “scientific explanation”. They have been tracked on radar screens … and the observed speeds have been as great as 9,000 miles an hour … I am convinced that these objects do exist and that they are not manufactured by any nation on earth. I can therefore see no alternative to accepting the theory that they come from an extraterrestrial source …

Recently, in Elmwood, Wisconsin, the entire town watched as flying saucers moved across their skies for several days.

General Lionel Max Chassin, who rose to the rank of Commanding General of the French Air Forces and served as General Air Defence Co-ordinator, Allied Air Forces, Central Europe (NATO), wrote:

That strange things have been seen is now beyond question … The number of thoughtful, intelligent, educated people in full possession of their faculties who have “seen something” and described it grows every day.

Then there was the famous Roswell Incident, in 1947. According to eyewitness reports, on the evening of July 2nd, a bright disc-shaped object was seen over Roswell, New Mexico. The following day, widely scattered wreckage was discovered by a local ranch manager and his two children. The authorities were alerted and an official statement was released confirming that the wreckage of a flying disc had been recovered. A second press statement was immediately issued stating that the wreckage was nothing more than the remains of a weather balloon, which was dutifully displayed at a press conference. Meanwhile the real wreckage was reported to have been sent to Wright Field. The bodies were described by one witness as “like human but they were not humans. The heads were round, the eyes were small, and they had no hair. Their eyes were widely spaced. They were quite small by our standards and their heads were larger in proportion to their bodies. Their clothing seemed to be one-piece and grey in colour. They seemed to be all males and there were a number of them … Military personnel took over and we were told to leave the area and not to talk to anyone about what we had seen.”