The Day The Saucer Came To Earth

From out of space, *something* showed up.

It was the earliest morning hours at Jodrell Bank in the UK when alarm bells jerked astronomers out of their reverie of looking at overnight instrument readouts. Something had triggered the automatic near-Earth approach warning system researchers had secretly felt would never be tripped.

Yet there it was. It was happening. NOW. Within the lunar orbit without warning from out of the depths of space. Projections showed it was heading planetward and would go into orbit in a matter of hours.

Within minutes, the Director on duty picked up a phone and was connected to the Ministry of Defence and reported what Jodrell had seen. Hanging up, he picked up another receiver that instantly connected him with his opposite number on duty in Washington at the Pentagon.

A lot of people were waking up in shock this morning.

Within the hour, NORAD was flashing warnings from east to west as the object spun about the Earth in a decelerating retrograde flight path. A quick call was made to alert the Kremlin that something was coming over the horizon and was not from any known powers launching from the planet. They acknowledged that they had seen it, too, and were monitoring closely. So was Pine Gap in Australia, with the sensitive equipment at their disposal.

Didn’t stop everybody from being nervous, and placing their forces worldwide on full alert. They just didn’t know against what.

What was happening? An asteroid like Hollywood always warned us about? But asteroids don’t go into orbit and then start slowing down.

Or descending as if under conscious control.

For three days and several orbits, the mystery object passed over the surface of the world. With each full pass it slowed down until it finally entered the atmosphere and began what looked like a landing sequence.

No doubt about it now; it wasn’t a natural object that was being tracked.

Radar had watched the movements and the point of touchdown was projected as deep in the Nevada desert.

Portable SkyTrak trucks and military personnel raced to the area to monitor the situation as the…