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TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

FACILITY

RECOVERY ATTEMPT TRIAL — FIRST FIELD TRIAL VESSEL

18 JULY 1956

PERSONNEL PRESENT:

Dr. H. Lorenz, principal technical officer, presiding Dr. , instrumentation Dr. , materials , senior technical assistant W. Seaton, Director , recording

The trial was conducted at the facility upon the above date. The trial was undertaken upon the modified apparatus configuration developed by Dr. Lorenz over the preceding seven months for the purpose of attempting the recovery of the principal vessel of the First Field Trial of May 1955. The apparatus was configured to direct its field to coordinates corresponding to the original dispatch and to attempt the inverse translation of the field rather than the dispatch of a new article. The trial was the first of its kind. The technical group had assessed the probability of success at approximately three per centum.

The following is prepared from the wire recording and from the notes of the undersigned.

LORENZ: Gentlemen. Stations.

DR. (instrumentation): Chronometers running. Plates loaded.

DR. (materials): The chamber is clear. The receiving cradle is in position.

: The apparatus is at standby, Herr Doktor.

LORENZ: Mr. Seaton, you are content.

MR. SEATON: I am content. Conduct your trial, Doctor.

LORENZ: A moment, before I begin. For the record, my expectation of success remains low. I have advised the Director of this, and he has authorized the trial notwithstanding. I wish there to be no misunderstanding later about the advice I gave.

MR. SEATON: The record reflects it, Doctor. Proceed.

LORENZ: Proceeding. , mark.

(recording officer): Marked, sir.

LORENZ: The sequence is inverted. The field will form not at the chamber but at the coordinates. The field will then be drawn back to the chamber. First stage. … Stable. Second stage. … Stable. Third stage — projection. , the coupling at projection?

: The coupling holds, Herr Doktor.

LORENZ: Fourth stage. Fifth stage. , the field at the coordinates?

DR. (materials): The field is forming at the coordinates. Herr Doktor, the index is higher than I have ever seen it.

LORENZ: How high.

DR. (materials): The index is at — three times the predicted value. It is climbing.

LORENZ: Hold the field. Do not initiate the draw.

DR. (materials): I am holding.

LORENZ: , mark the index.

(recording officer): Marked. The index is at three point seven and climbing.

LORENZ: Climbing because we are — yes. Yes. , the plates?

DR. (instrumentation): The plates are — Herr Doktor, I am seeing something on the plates.

LORENZ: What.

DR. (instrumentation): A structure, on the plate now exposing. Something within the field. It has — edges. Lines.

LORENZ: A vessel?

DR. (instrumentation): It could be. Yes — the proportions are consistent with the principal vessel.

[A silence of some seconds. The recording captures Dr. Lorenz breathing audibly.]

LORENZ: Mr. Seaton.

MR. SEATON: I am here, Doctor.

LORENZ: We have found her.

MR. SEATON: Found her where, Doctor.

LORENZ: At the coordinates we sent her to. Whether she has been there all this time or returned to them, I do not know. But the plates show her.

[A further silence. The recording then captures a phenomenon which the undersigned will attempt to describe but for which his contemporaneous notes are imperfect. The chamber speakers, which had hitherto been silent, produced a sound of considerable amplitude, which the undersigned characterized in his notes as resembling a sustained tone of low frequency overlaid with what may have been voices, though the voices were not at the time intelligible. The sound continued for approximately four seconds, then resolved.]

DR. (instrumentation): The speakers — the speakers are picking up the field harmonics. I had not — they should not be —

LORENZ: Leave them. Let them run. , are you recording the audio?

(recording officer): Yes, Herr Doktor. The wire is picking up the speakers.

LORENZ: Then we have it. Let it run.

[The chamber speakers produce a second period of sound, of approximately fifteen seconds. The sound resolves, on this occasion, into something the undersigned can transcribe only with the assistance of the magnetic recording, which has been replayed extensively in the days following the trial. The transcription is set forth below. The sound was partially intelligible to the persons present, who reacted with manifest astonishment. The transcription has been verified against the magnetic recording. Passages in which the recording was insufficient to permit confident transcription are indicated by ellipsis. The transcription is fragmentary. The complete recording is held by the facility and is reproduced as the inclosure to the present transcript.]

[Voice One, identified by of the surviving complement records of the First Field Trial as that of , , USN, master of the principal vessel.]

VOICE ONE: …if this can be heard… I do not know how to give the date. The instruments do not read. We have been in the —

[Garbled.]

VOICE ONE: …the dark place. I cannot say how long. Time did not run as it should. There were —

[Voice Two, unidentified, possibly an officer or rating of the complement.]

VOICE TWO: …shapes in the dark. I saw them. We all saw them. They were not — they did not have the shape of —

VOICE ONE: They did not keep their shape. They were larger than the dark could hold. We saw — pieces. Pieces of them.

[Garbled. The undersigned notes a passage of approximately five seconds in which the recording captures multiple voices speaking simultaneously, none of which are intelligible.]

VOICE ONE: …came out over a coast. Gentlemen, we saw Rome. What I am told now is Rome. I do not know how the vessel was in the sky. The instruments — but there was a city below us, fields, the sea. We were not at the coordinates. We were over the city.

[Garbled.]

VOICE TWO: …people on the ground. They saw us. They were running. They were —

VOICE ONE: The ground was full of them. We were overhead for —

[Garbled.]

VOICE ONE: …then we were taken again. Not through the dark. Somewhere else. There was light. Gentlemen, it was not unpleasant. It was —

VOICE TWO: It was clean.

VOICE ONE: No shapes this time. There was only —

[Garbled. The recording captures, in the garbled passage, what may be the word “open” or “ocean” or another word the undersigned cannot determine.]

VOICE ONE: …we are arriving somewhere. The instruments are reading again. Gentlemen, they show a date that I am not at liberty to —

[The recording captures a sound which the undersigned can describe only as resembling a sharp report or impact, of approximately one second’s duration. The transmission ceases.]

[A silence in the chamber. The chamber speakers are silent. The undersigned notes the duration of the silence as approximately forty seconds.]

LORENZ: . Discontinue the draw.

DR. (materials): Herr Doktor, the field is collapsing on its own. I am not driving it.

LORENZ: Let it collapse. Do not interfere.

DR. (materials): The field has collapsed.

LORENZ: , the index?

(recording officer): Index reads zero, Herr Doktor.

LORENZ: We have lost the channel.

[A pause.]

MR. SEATON: Doctor.

LORENZ: Mr. Seaton.

MR. SEATON: That was — we heard them, Doctor. We heard them speaking.

LORENZ: We heard them, Mr. Seaton.

MR. SEATON: They are alive.

LORENZ: We heard two voices. What was the complement of the vessel?

(recording officer): The complement was officers and ratings, sir.

LORENZ: Twenty-six men. We know nothing of the other twenty-four, or whether these two are still alive. The signal came through the manifold. It had been — handled. We cannot place the time at which they spoke. Last week, 218 B.C., some point in the future before they were taken again. Any of those is possible.

MR. SEATON: They said they were taken through the forward direction.

LORENZ: They said they were taken through something clean. I take that to be the forward direction.

MR. SEATON: Where did they go.

LORENZ: I do not know, Mr. Seaton. The transmission cut off before they could say.

MR. SEATON: Doctor. They are still out there.

LORENZ: They are still out there.

MR. SEATON: Doctor, we have to —

LORENZ: Before you ask, Mr. Seaton: the apparatus cannot recover them in its present configuration. Seven months of work have given us a channel that carries their voices for a few seconds. I have no means to bring the men through it. The voices have no mass.

MR. SEATON: There must be —

LORENZ: I shall keep working. But let the record be plain: I do not know whether we can bring them back. We sent those men into something we did not understand, and it has — used them. The first translation was through Infernus. The second through Caelus. We sent them once. They have been moved twice. We cannot identify their coordinates or their condition. And yet they spoke to us, gentlemen, across something I cannot call a distance. Distance is not what separates us from them.

[A silence.]

LORENZ: . Discontinue the recording.

The recording is discontinued at the instruction of the principal technical officer.

A subsequent technical session of the technical group was held in the afternoon for the purpose of preserving the magnetic recording and producing the transcription, which is forwarded as the inclosure to the present transcript. The undersigned notes for the record that Dr. Lorenz, upon discontinuing the recording, was observed by the undersigned to be in a state of considerable agitation, and was joined in the office attached to the chamber by Mr. Seaton, where the two men remained for approximately one hour. The undersigned was not present at the conversation and is not in a position to render it.

Recording Officer

MK-CHIRON

Inclosure: Magnetic Recording of Transmission Received During Trial, with Transcription (under separate cover, )

NOTE: The terms “Infernus” and “Caelus” were employed by Dr. Lorenz in the present transcript and have not previously appeared in the documents of the program. The undersigned records them as Dr. Lorenz spoke them.