A Fine Send-Off

Dr. X posts this from CSETI's secret installation at Amici's in Mountain View:

"Reading Saucer Smear is a little sadder experience these days, as many veteran UFO investigators are dying off, having never found the proof they sought so diligently.

"But the faithful remain faithful, and it heartened me to read this letter from one of their longtime readers:

" '...Too bad about your late contributing editor, dear old Karl (Pflock). He was a fun fellow and a good ufologist. He will be missed. Did he tell you about the Confidential UFO Project he had been working on for several years, sworn to secrecy, and that has now been left unfinished, possibly forever, upon his death?'

"That brought a tear to my eye.

"So here is an idea for a movie: a group of UFO and paranormal researchers have known each other for many years. They frequent the same conventions and trade shows, they review each others' books in each others' newsletters, and generally scratch out a living from the racket. They're hacks, and they've made their peace with that.

"Then one day, the Dean of the group, a genial old skeptic, is talking with a younger researcher. The kid has come up with something odd and interesting involving the Air Force and a secret report. He plays a tape from the 1950s - radio transmissions from a fighter jet that disappeared. Sure sounds like it ran into something hard to explain. They part, promising to stay in touch.

"A few weeks later, the Dean learns the young man has died in a car crash. Drunk driving, the report says. But the kid didn't drink. And he notices that someone is following him..."