Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth – Steps to the Stars – INSIDE THE CRAFT
A sound — partly a hiss and partly a murmur — came from the top of the craft. This lasted for about 15 seconds, then all became quiet again. ‘Any port large enough to have filled a ship of that size with air in 15 seconds should have produced quite a roar,’ Fry reasoned. ‘I realized then that the walls of the ship were almost, if not entirely, soundproof, and since most of the sound of the entering air would be produced, inside, very little would be audible outside.’
A single click was then heard coming from the lower wall of the craft, and a section of the lower side of the hull moved back on itself for a few inches then moved sideways, disappearing into the wall of the hull and leaving an oval- shaped opening about five feet in height and some three feet in width at its widest point. Fry walked towards the hatch and, ducking slightly, went inside the craft. With his feet still on the ground, owing to the curvature of the craft, he looked around.
The compartment into which I was looking occupied only a small portion of the interior of the ship. It was a room about nine feet deep and seven feet wide, with a floor about 16 inches above the ground and a ceiling between six and seven feet above the floor. The walls were slightly curved and the intersections of the walls were bevelled so that there were no sharp angles or corners . . .
The room contained four seats; they looked much like our modern body contour chairs, except that they were somewhat smaller . . . The seats faced the opening in which I was standing, and were arranged in two rows of two each in the center of the room, leaving an aisle between the seats and either wall. In the center of the rear wall, where it joined the ceiling, there was a small box or cabinet with a tube and what appeared to be a lens arrangement.
It was somewhat similar to a small motion picture camera or projector, except that no film spools or other moving parts were visible. Light was coming from the lens. It was not a beam of light such as would have come from a projector, but a diffused glow . . . it still furnished ample light for comfortable seeing in the small compartment Fry noted that the seats and the light seemed to be the only furnishings in an otherwise bare metal room. Not a very inviting cabin,’ he thought, ‘looks more like a cell.’
‘It’s only a sampling carrier,’ said the voice, in response to Fry’s unspoken thought, ‘and was not really designed or intended to carry passengers: the small compartment was designed for emergencies only, but you will find the seats quite comfortable. Step in and take a seat if you wish to make this test flight.’
Fry stepped up on to the floor and headed towards the nearest seat. As he did so, he heard a click as the door began to slide out of the recess in the wall behind him. ‘Instinctively, I turned as though to leap out to the comparative safety of the open desert behind me, but the door was already closed. If this was a trap, I was in it now, and there was no point in struggling against the inevitable.’ ‘Where would you like to go?’ asked the voice, now seeming to come from all around Fry, rather than beside him, as before. ‘I don’t know how far you can take me in whatever time you have,’ he replied. ‘And since this compartment has no windows, it won’t matter which way we go, as I won’t be able to see anything.’ ‘You will be able to see,’ came the reply, ‘at least, as much as you could see from any of your vehicles in the air at night. If you would like a suggestion, we can take you over the city of New York and return you here in about 30 minutes.
At an elevation of about 20 of your miles, the light patterns of your major cities take on an especially fascinating appearance which we have never seen in connection with any other planet.’ ‘To New York — and back — in 30 minutes?’ retorted Fry. ‘Your minutes must be very different from ours. New York is 2,000 miles from here. A round trip would be 4,000 miles. To do it in half an hour would require a speed of 8,000 miles per hour! How can you produce and apply energies of that order in a craft like this, and how can I take the acceleration? You don’t even have belts on these seats!’
‘You won’t feel the acceleration at all,’ came the reassuring reply. ‘Just take a seat and I will start the craft . . . Fry took the seat nearest to the door and found it to be quite comfortable. ‘The material of which it was made felt like foam rubber with a vinylite covering. However, there were no seams or joints such as an outer covering would require, so the material, whatever it was, probably had been moulded directly into its frame in a single operation.’