STRANGE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OMNIBUS (21 page)

Seven hours later they emerged with their joint conclusion. They believed his plane had crashed in a remote area of New Guinea and furnished the map coordinates that they thought indicated the probable site. Other aerial reconnaissance missions to overfly the location were ordered. Again, the dense jungle foliage prevented any confirmation.

So great was the Pentagon’s desire to retain Congressman Carpenter’s good will that further efforts were ordered. The State Department obtained permission from the New Guinea authorities for an American search party to travel to the suspected crash site on foot. A search party of some dozen individuals was carefully selected. In addition to the remains identification experts, there was added a team of Navy Seals to provide security from possibly hostile indigenous tribes. The party was flown in by helicopter to the closest suitable drop-off area, and the search party then cut its way through the dense jungle.

After three days of hard going, the searchers reached the coordinates given by the seers as the probable crash site. There to their joy, the found the wreckage of an airplane that had crashed many years before. Initial joy turned to disappointment as they carefully screened the wreckage, and it became obvious that the crashed plane had not been Captain Carpenter’s but of a Lockheed Electra and that Human remains in the wreckage were those of a woman of about forty years of age. The mystery was solved when some personal effects showed the pilot to have been famed aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared in July 1937 in the South Pacific while on a flight to circumnavigate the world.

When the search party returned to Washington, the results of the mission were interpreted as proving the utility of the seers’ research. All that was needed was to improve the accuracy of the map coordinates they provided. The seers were recalled to Washington and asked to repeat the effort. Again after some hours they jointly came up with new coordinates for the probable crash site of Captain Carpenter’s plane which was in the same general area as the first site they had provided. Rather than going through the time-consuming process to obtain permission authorities for the search party to again go on foot to the crash site, the Pentagon decided to just assume that the initial permission had been sufficiently broad to cover future attempts.

The search party, with most of its original members, again traveled by helicopter to the landing site in New Guinea. This time, the party had to spend four days cutting through the jungle. Once again, they were overjoyed to see a crashed airship hidden from above by the dense foliage. But it quickly became clear that the wreckage could not be the remains of Captain Carpenter’s aircraft. The airship had clearly been extremely large and circular in shape. The search party approached it and saw a door in one side of the ship. Dr. Foster, the team leader, instructed the other members to stay behind and walked up to the door; He tried it, and the door swung open easily.

As he entered, and the door closed automatically behind him, some form of indirect lighting eliminated the interior. To his amazement, Foster beheld the remains of the crew. Four skeletons were found, humanoid, but clearly not those of humans. The saucer-like craft had been piloted by beings that were about three feet in height.

Foster stood there gaping, wondering what to do. He had a pretty good idea but decided to confer with his subordinates. Returning to the door, he opened it and summoned in his two senior deputies, the commander of the Seals detachment and the senior remains specialist. Ushering them into the ship, he pointed to the mains of the crew and indicated his belief that they came from outer space and that from the condition of the remains and of the wreckage he estimated that the craft had crashed here more than three centuries ago.

His colleagues agreed with Dr. Foster’s conclusions. They now had to decide on the proper course to follow. The team leader noted that if news of the discovery were ever made public, it would have an incalculable effect on the religious, scientific, economic and political beliefs of the world. He added that there appeared to be no urgency in disseminating the news. After all, the wreckage had been there undetected for about five centuries without any known effects on the world. Presumably, the race that sent it might well wait another five centuries or more before taking any further action which might make their existence known to the Earth’s population.

After some discussion, they all agreed on the need for extreme secrecy. They would not communicate to the other team members what they had found no transmit the news back to Washington. They further agreed to Dr. Foster’s proposal, although only after some objections raised by the senior human remains specialist to completely destroy the wreckage by detonating a thermite bomb.

One by one they left the ship, Dr. Foster being the last. He told the other team members that the wreckage appeared to be that of a secret Air Force Flying Saucer experimental observation craft. It would be necessary to destroy it completely; he added, to prevent the technology from being stolen by foreign powers. The Seals leader returned to the ship, placed the thermite bomb within, set the fuse and quickly left. From a spot in the clearing far enough from the wreckage to be safe, they watched the ship explode in a cloud of smoke. When the debris lifted, Foster breathed a sigh of relief. Everything that might have suggested that the wreckage had come from outer space had vanished with the explosion.

The team sent back a curt message saying only that the wreckage had been carefully inspected and that it had been determined it definitely was not that from Captain Carpenter’s missing plane. The search party then cut its way back to the helicopter pickup point and was retrieved and flown back to Washington without incident. By the time the team members arrived back in Washington, media interest in the mission had faded from view. Dr.Foster arranged for a private meeting with the President’s National Security Advisor and in the latter’s office orally communicated to him the details of what the team had discovered. With considerable apprehension, he gave his justification for keeping the discovery secret and for thoroughly destroying the wreckage. Much to Foster’s relief, the presidential adviser agreed with his decision and told Foster he saw no reason to inform any other person. Some things, he noted, are better left secret.

The only problem now was what to tell Congressman Carpenter. The need to retain his good will was just as great as ever. After explaining to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Navy on the urgency of his plan, the National Security Advisor obtained their agreement to christen the next navy missile destroyer the USS Winston Carpenter. Theoretically, the Carpenter so honored was the late Captain Winston Carpenter, but Congressman Carpenter’s association with his late father’s bravery was stressed in all of the Pentagon’s publicity on the subject. Happily, Congressman Carpenter can always be relied upon to throw his powerful support behind any Pentagon proposal for expensive new weapon’s programs.

Rutgard Sterling became one of the wealthiest men in the world through his invention of the formula that turns women’s hair permanently blonde. From a tiny garage workshop near Stockholm, Sweden, he built up a giant manufacturing empire with factories all around the globe. Because of the strong and continuous demand for the product, his plants all operated at full capacity.

At length, Sterling decided it was time for him to retire. He was an orphan, had never married and had no known relations. This caused widespread speculation as to what would become of his wealth once he departed this world. There was great anticipation in Swedish political circles over the prospect of acquiring the Sterling fortune and using it to fiancé many desired but unimplemented programs.

Sterling had for many years engaged in a bitter dispute with the Swedish tax authorities of the government tax imposed on his product, which was taxed as a luxury rather than as what Sterling considered it to be a pharmaceutical product. For this reason, he determined that not even the smallest fragment of his wealth would ever fall into the greedy clutches of the government. Employing the best lawyers in Europe for the purpose, he had them design a philanthropic organization bearing his name with a structure so foolproof that every legal or administrative effort by the Swedish government to alter its provisions was straightway rebuffed by the Swedish courts.

Into this foundation, Sterling put his entire fortune. Now he faced a problem. All of the logical humanitarian missions for such an institution had already been taken. Andrew Carnegie had already financed all the public libraries that were desired; the Rockefeller had already provided all of the medical research projects necessary. Sterling then recalled Alfred Nobel, the famed Swedish inventor of dynamite. Nobel had donated the bulk of his vast fortune to provide for prizes to be awarded individuals for their outstanding contributions to humanity. This gave Sterling an idea.

The problem with the Nobel Peace Prize, as Sterling saw it, while it rewarded a few admittedly outstanding individuals; it left the great bulk of mankind feeling worse about themselves. For example, while only a handful of physicists around the world could be logically considered as eligible for the annual Nobel prize in physics and only one actually win it, scores in every country would be left disappointed. Sterling concluded that to help remedy the problem; his foundation would award prizes each year in all the prominent areas of human endeavor to the individual whose performance or achievements had been the worst. Taking physics, for example, many physicists in every nation had come up lacking and might be considered, and the really incompetent ones would receive needed recognition.

Each year the annual award of the Sterling prizes was awaited with even greater anticipation than that of the Nobel prizes. The cash award in each case was so great that the fortunate recipient would become fabulously wealthy. Little wonder that when the panel selecting the winners gathered in Stockholm, the event was covered by hundreds of journalists.

Naturally there was some debate over the choices. The award of the prize for the worst political judgment to the president of a once great power.He had destroyed the wealth and population of his country by embarking on a series of unnecessary and disastrous wars was attacked. The choice as was attacked as rewarding the wrong individual by those who argued it should have gone to the monarch who ordered the abolition of all alcoholic drinks at the start of a major war, although his government was dependent on the government tax on liquor provided almost all of his government’s revenues. Similarly, the choice of the Hanson prize in economics was bitterly contested by those who argued to should have gone to the central banker who convinced his government to go off the gold standard and print whatever amount of paper currency was thought necessary and the other economist who succeeded in implementing a rigid series of price and wage controls to curtail inflation and then provided that it be enforced by asking the population to observe the honor system.

It is sad to think that Sterling’s prize intended to help the progress of mankind became the cause of so much harm. The size of the annual awards was so great that individuals began to strive to achieve disastrous results in order to compete for it. Political leaders, who always had the propensity to make unwise decisions and introduce programs clearly flawed now tried harder to worsen their performance in office. Most business decisions represented a senseless investment of company capital. More and more pharmaceutical products not only had little prospect of being effective but usually carried with them a host of grave health threats.

In the wake of these developments, the economies of all nations in which potential Sterling prize winners resided plummeted. Unemployment soared, wages plunged, and most corporations declared bankruptcy. If Sterling had still been alive, there was some chance he might have stepped in and altered the charter of his organization. Unfortunately, he had passed away and so could longer be appealed to. The situation grew so grave that the leaders of the world’s great powers gathered to discuss the problem and hopefully to solve it. An effort in all of their highest courts to break the Sterling will. Once again, the provisions approved by Sterling proved unchallengeable.

It was clear that extra-legal methods had to be employed. The G-7 members and NATO passed identical resolutions authorizing “the use of whatever means might be necessary” to deal with the problem.” Under the leadership of the US, a joint task force was formed made up of Navy Seals, British Special Forces and French commandos. It was carried in ultra-fast American transports that were designed to elude radar. They arrived in Stockholm on the eve of the meeting of the panel chosen to select the year’s winners of the Sterling prize. He team took them into custody and dispatched them to the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where they were given every possible comfort but barred from leaving or communicating with the outside world. Thus, with the panel unable to announce the prize winners, interest in pursuing s prize would decline and the world return to normal.

Alas, this brilliant plan failed. Unknown to the nations of the world, a secret codicil in Sterling’s will provided that in case the panel was unable to meet for any reason, a substitute panel would meet secretly in Copenhagen, Denmark and designate that year’s Sterling Prize winners. When the panel announced its choices, the world was astounded both that the brilliant effort to silence the panel had failed and the names of the winners. The vast sum awarded annually would be shared this year by the world leaders who had thought it possible to curtail human avarice and stupidity somehow.

From his earliest years, Chesterfield Cooper knew what his life’s ambition would be. Let the other little boys prattle on about becoming a policeman, a fireman or a jet pilot. He knew he was going to be a mad scientist. Naturally his parents were naturally appalled when they learned his ambition. When they found that he had pasted a large posture depicting Dr. Frankenstein to his bedroom wall that they determined, action had to be taken. His father, a prominent Wall Street broker, took Cooper with him to his office, hoping to interest the boy in finance. The elder Cooper was pleased by his son’s avid interest until he learned the reason. The boy wanted to learn how to manipulate the stock market to secure sufficient funding for his work as a mad scientist.