ScienceDirect - Technol Rep Tohoku Univ ... - Garryck Osborne

NICK COOK 47
the most baffling mysteries of the 20th century: the origins of the UFO.
If machines like those in General Twining's memo were "within the
present U.S. knowledge," no wonder Trimble and his colleagues had so
quickly fallen silent on the subject of a new and exotic propulsion source.
The flying disc must have exhibited performance so in advance of its
time that it had been super-classified, then hidden in plain sight—behind
the UFO myth—for the best part of 60 years.
Perhaps, too, it explained why Trimble had sounded like he'd had the
fear of God put in him when he had been approached by Lockheed's PR
machine on my behalf. The spooks would have made it abundantly clear
there would be no statute of limitations on this particular secret. That
you never talked about it. Ever.
Across multiple satellite relays, I heard the anguished shrieks of his
three-month-old, the background clatter of his older children as they ran
wild in the tiny apartment and finally relief in Lawrence Cross' voice as
he realized it was me; a moment's respite in a whirl of copy deadlines,
late-night feeds and trips to theme parks.
The baby's crying faded into the static as Cross took the handset into
another room.
I thanked him for the tip about LaViolette and Valone, as a result of
which I had pieced together the essential elements of T.T. Brown's life
and work. Without elaborating on how I'd arrived there, I asked him
what he knew about the Germans' purported development of flying
saucers in World War Two.
"Oh Jesus," Cross said, and I formed a mental picture of him rubbing
his eyes and reaching for a cigarette, "where do I begin?"
I prompted him. One minute the Nazis were tinkering with this
technology, the next people were reporting sightings of these objects,
first in Gemany, then in America ... ?
"It's not as simple as that," Cross said.
"Come on, Lawrence. A book called German Secret Weapons of World
War II, by Rudolf Lusar details names, dates and places. Has anyone ever
dug into this stuff? Have you? The story must be fit to bust wide open."
"It's been around for decades," he said, "long enough to have been
given a name."
"What do you mean?"
"In the trade, we call it 'the Legend.' It looks so straightforward,
doesn't it? A story with a solid trail. But it's not like that at all. When you
get into this stuff the trail goes everywhere and nowhere. The people who
really did exist are long dead and others probably never existed at all. I