The Roswell Returns

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
As those words echoed around Mission Control in Houston a round of spontaneous applause broke out across the site and in the control room. There were yelps and hollers of triumph echoing around the whole of NASA that momentous day in July 1969.
In the Command Module Michael Collins was monitoring the vital controls that kept it orbiting the Moon. He flipped the carbon dioxide uptake switch, looked at the battery charge meters, oxygen levels and closely watched the radar screen. He sat back in his flight chair and watched the instrumentation flick and whirr. He daren’t relax, he didn’t relax at all.
He paid great attention to the radar screen as he was commanded to. He had to monitor it for spooks, intruders or ghosts. He knew he was looking for Foo Fighters. They did show up on radar, aircrews had confirmed that as fact. It was how fast they appeared and disappeared that threw most pilots. There had been warnings by the Roswell Research Team that this flight in particular might be disrupted or buzzed by curious Foo Fighters. It was only a hunch, not a fact. The story of Foo Fighters had been put to bed years ago by an aggressive refuting of every publication of so called ‘facts’ about them and the Roswell Incident as it became known. But it was on everybody’s mind today. Especially today, when the USA officially landed on the Moon and put men there too. It was not as if Foo Fighter’s harmed anyone, it was more a spooking than harm. This mission was to be televised from beginning to end including the actual Moon excursions. It was going out live and if a Foo Fighter appeared then it would confirm to the conspiracy theorists that the Roswell crash did actually happen and Foo Fighters were a real phenomenon. NASA knew they were real, the scientists in Roswell Research knew they were real. The President of the United States knew they were real. J Edgar Hoover knew they were real. They all knew aliens were real and had been found crash landed in Roswell. They had the body and parts of the alien craft.
Now the Americans had landed on the Moon just to beat the Russians to it and to reclaim their dominance in the Space Race. It was also to justify the millions of dollars that had been spent on the Apollo project; NASA had to keep the public with them when spending so much of the taxpayer’s money.
Collins got up from his chair and opened the chiller cabinet and took out an orange juice, cracked it open and sipped on the cool juice. It made them all fart but it was cool and soothing, a real taste of home. He sat back in his chair and looked at the instrument panel again. All seemed well. The horizons were good, the oxygen levels were good, the charge meter was showing a full battery and low discharge rates, the radar was showing nothing unusual. He was happy that all was well in the Command Module. He sipped on his juice and sat back, he daren’t relax he was just trying to pretend to relax. As he sat there intently watching dials and read outs a faint sound of speech came out of the radio speakers. Then speakers went silent. Eerily silent.
“Repeat request, Over.” Collins intoned into the microphone. There was no reply.
“Repeat request, Over.” he repeated and looked at the volume read out in case he knocked it off or down. Then he noticed the channel number that the message had come through on. It was channel 45. Channel 45 was an unstable channel but had a longer range; that was why it was still on all NASA built radios. That channel however was an emergency channel only.
Collins thought for a few seconds, perhaps Armstrong or Aldrin had set their radios to that channel in the event of something going wrong with the descent on to the surface. Collins checked Armstrong and Aldrin’s channels, they were set and fixed on channel 31. There was no one else up here that could call on channel 45, no one. Not one living soul.
“Houston control, we have a channel 45 incoming, Over.” Collins deliberately enunciated into the mike. His mind was racing. Who could have sent a channel 45 up here?
The radio went silent for about five minutes or more. It seemed longer than that to Collins. Then the radio broke the silence,
“Columbia, Houston control here; we have no trace of a 45 here. It may be a localised fault. Check all channels and reset please, Over.”
Collins flipped a few switches checked and rechecked the read outs and ensured the radio was on channel 31,
“Check complete. Channel 31 that’s three one, reset and fixed, Over.” Collins looked down at the radio again. He knew that it wasn’t a localised fault. It was real, someone or something had a breakthrough on channel 45. He took a sip of his juice and re-secured it into the arm rest clamp. The radio crackled with chatter as Aldrin and Armstrong accomplished their Lunar excursion. They both seemed happy and excited to Collins. Who could blame them? Collins needed those familiar voices in the cockpit; they kept him company. He too had an important job to do as well. He leaned forward and adjusted the trim of the module, checked the horizon levels and monitored the oxygen levels and battery levels of the Eagle module on the Moon’s surface. He knew there wasn’t much he could do if things went wrong on the Moon’s surface. He was there to keep the command module safe and well. He sat back with his eyes fixed firmly on all the instrumentation in front of him and took another sip of the orange juice.
A white dot appeared on the radar screen. Collins leant forward into the screen and watched the dot travel slowly across the screen.
He flipped the channel switch on the radio to channel 6, this channel could not be heard by the live broadcast channel. It was an emergency channel for the mission.
“Houston we have a Code One on Columbia, I repeat a Code One Columbia. Over.”
“Code One received Columbia. Over.” Houston control came back instantly.  There was short delay before the radio broke silence again.
“Columbia, this is General Wallbrook. Do you have or can you get a visual on the spook?”
Collins stood up and squinted out of the tiny portholes on the module, he tried to focus into the blackness of space.
“Negative. That is a negative. Over.”
As he sat back down a flash of lithium intensity light filled the whole of the module’s interior. It looked like a million flash bulbs had gone off at once.
He grabbed at the microphone on his seat,
“Affirmative! I say affirmative. We have incoming Foo’s, I repeat we have Foo’s.”
“Hostile Columbia?” Wallbrook asked.
“Not as yet. Not as yet.” Collins replied. His adrenalin was racing. He was concerned for the men on the surface. He looked at the radar screen, the object seemed to be circling the module, not buzzing it; just calmly, deliberately, circling it. Then the radio crackled into life again. On channel 45.
“Please confirm this contact…..” the voice faded in and out “Confirm contact, I repeat, confirm contact.” the voice sounded human but with an electronic edge to it.
“Please repeat request. Contact. Over.” Collins spoke into the microphone hesitantly. He was unsure as to what he heard.
“Contact, confirm contact please. Is that your message?” Collins repeated to confirm what he had heard.
“Affirmative, Contact confirmed. We...” the faint voice replied just before the signal faded.
The radio suddenly changed back to channel 31 and Collins heard Aldrin and Armstrong talking to each other again.
Collins quickly switched to channel 6,
“Houston, we have had a request to contact message on channel 45, I repeat a request to contact message on channel 45. Please advise.”
Houston didn’t reply instantly. The radio went silent for a while.
In Ground Control all hell broke loose as controller’s fingers flew around control panels and others made hurried and urgent phone calls. They had no idea what they were dealing with; alien contact or breakthrough human contact from Earth.  Were the Russians broadcasting a scramble message to disrupt the mission? Surely they wouldn’t risk three men’s lives? What the hell where they dealing with here?
One man in the room knew, General Wallbrook. He knew what that contact meant. Or he thought he knew. He hoped it was alien contact. He had headed up the Roswell Research Team as it became euphemistically known since 1961.
General Wallbrook excitedly radioed the Roswell Research Unit,
“We have had contact! It’s proved we did it, we did it!” with that he put down the microphone and slumped back in his chair, lit a cigar and beamed widely. No one in Houston who overheard that conversation knew what the General was alluding too.  It was that secret. His moment of triumph was lost when he realised that he had to contact Columbia, Collins and Apollo 11.
“Columbia, contact Armstrong and Aldrin and confirm if they had a visual on the Foo.” Wallbrook was trying to confirm what he had heard. He had an idea why a Foo would circle Columbia. He relit his cigar and puffed on it.
“Get me the Roswell boys. Here. Now. Every damn one of them.” Wallbrook shouted to his adjutant. The adjutant ran out of the control room and made hurried phone calls from a scrambled line.
Collins contacted the Eagle,
“Buzz, Neil have you had a visual on a Foo?”
“Affirmative.” Aldrin and Armstrong came straight back in unison.
Collins radioed Houston,
“Armstrong and Aldrin report a positive sighting. Advise please. Is it mission abort?”
“Columbia. Await orders and advice. Repeat: Await advice Columbia. Over.”
Mission control replied after advice given to them by General Wallbrook. They were in the dark about this and felt confused as to what to do next.
The General thought he knew what was needed but he needed the Roswell Team up here in Houston right now. This had to be a group decision. Contact like this was the ultimate pinnacle to the years of work they had put in.
Collins sat back into his command chair. All of his senses were on edge, he was hyper vigilant. His job now was to keep the Columbia command module safe and orbiting the Moon. He watched the radar in case the Foo reappeared. He watched the radio in case further contact was made by that unknown person or alien. He felt spooked and unsure of events.
The radio silence broke and Mission Control advised Aldrin and Armstrong to be vigilant but to continue with their mission. As the world knows that is exactly what they did, carried on with all the experiments and flag waving that they could manage.

        Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom and Ed White climbed the stairs to the lift that would take them to the module at the top of Apollo One. The three astronauts had chosen that name; Apollo was the God of Archers. This arrow was designed to fly as sure as one of his arrows. They were also going to be the first astronauts in a Saturn 1B rocket. This rocket was capable of taking men to the moon. It was said to be the most powerful rocket ever built. More powerful in more ways than one in fact. They made their way into the cockpit of the craft and took up their assigned command seats. They all knew the drill, they had done this a hundred times or more before. There was, they all knew, room for error in every launch in every rocket ever built. This mission had a lot riding on it, a huge amount.  They all sat and looked at the instruments set out before each member of the crew. Each one had an assigned task. They were all nervous though none showed it. This was to be a huge leap they were taking, in fact America was taking.
Apollo One was to be the first manned mission to Mars. The Red Planet.
Publicly and in official records the mission was a test run to see if man could get to the Moon and back.
In secret the scientists at Roswell Research had cracked the theory of the propulsion units used in the crashed Foo Fighter. They had isolated and tested the small baseball sized chunk of material that they had yielded from the crashed alien craft. They had tested it again and again; they knew now it was heliotropic, it recharged in sunlight. They knew that its energy increased without its mass or weight increasing. They had also logged that when there was a Mars Close Approach the substance become excited and tried to move from the container it was held in towards the red planet.  It was noted that every 24 months since 1947 that the substance had shown that tropism. It was an entirely new substance to man and scientist. It showed no radioactive output like Uranium or Plutonium, it had no temperature but it felt warm to the touch. It was a scientific enigma. It took a full 12 years to obtain a name: The scientists named it, Marilynium after Marilyn Monroe after one team member had seen ‘Some Like It Hot’. It was their idea of a joke. They were, after all, scientists not poets or painters.
The crashed alien space craft in Roswell had yielded technologies that were far above and beyond anything that was extant on Earth. The one thing that the scientists could not find on the craft was any sign of landing gear or means to land. It was suggested that the aliens never wanted to land or they had another means of landing that often failed. The few crash sites suggested the latter; they had no means of landing on Earth. Aztec pictographs always showed what seemed to be alien craft in a ball of flame; as did the Australian Aborigine cave drawings. It was a curiosity that outwitted the Roswell Research Team. Some of the other onboard technology was far beyond even the Roswell scientist’s understanding, a lot of it defied both logic and challenged long standing theories.
That was all the theory in place, Apollo One was the real test.
The three astronauts readied themselves for the take off.
The new technologies gleaned from the Roswell site had to be taught to the three astronauts, they had to be trained in the new technology. For one the astronauts would have to be cryogenically suspended after take off so they could survive the massive journey they were about to undertake. That theory had come from the Roswell sample, its body had revealed under autopsy and test samples that the flesh had undergone a preservation process; cryogenics. The alien pilot it seemed did not have time to reverse the process before he, or it as it was asexual, crashed. One mystery surrounded the alien craft: how the humanoid had got into something so tiny. The craft was far smaller than the specimen. Also how the devil such a small craft was laden with so much advanced technology. All those questions were unsolved; they would use the technology they had to build a craft as best they could for a launch in 1967, twenty years after the alien craft had been found. A full twenty years of solid research, autopsy and fact gathering had given some clues and some answers to the alien craft and its occupant. But not all of them.
Grissom looked at the dials in front of him,
“Battery level good. Radio on channel 31. Cryogenics, check. Operational AOK. Good to go Houston.”
Chaffee flicked some switches and looked thoughtfully at the screen in front of him,
“Escape rocket AOK. Ultra boost power on. Marilynium stable. Check. Good to go.”
“Check. All systems stable and looking good Apollo One.” the control room replied.
Ed White, the senior pilot, flicked at a bank of switches and began his checks and controls,
“Oxygen level, good. Inner temp good. Standard fuel stable and ready for discharge. Checks made. Good to go.”
“Standby Apollo One.” Houston intoned. That was the only part of the check that was heard by the general public. The standby alert.
This project was so secret that new technologies had to be invented. It was how to keep the mission a secret that puzzled some great minds. The American public and the world would be watching the launch and hoping that it was successful. The world hope of course excluded the Russians. It was decided that the only way for the mission to remain a total secret was if there was a catastrophe and the astronauts perished in the capsule. This subterfuge was going to be enacted by a version of the masking device that the alien craft had onboard. The Roswell Research scientists had worked on this device for years. They realised that this is how and why the Foo Fighters had appeared and disappeared so rapidly. They ascertained that it disrupted the molecules around the craft and in doing so made it disappear, or apparently disappear. This device was onboard Apollo One. The rocket would disappear then reappear outside the Earth’s orbit. The television coverage would be momentarily disrupted as an identical craft was destroyed in an onboard fire.  That fire would consume and kill all the astronauts. Early secret experiments had shown this trick could be done. It was an expensive trick to play but the rewards were beyond the millions of dollars of expense.
Grissom, Chaffee and White sat back and waited for control to start the launch procedure. The radio in the cockpit broke into life,
“This is President Johnson. I’d like to thank you three brave men for the task you are about to undertake. America will be very proud of you. It takes more courage than I could ever think of to take on a task of this magnitude. May God speed you and bless you. God bless America.”
“Thank you Mr President.” the three men saluted unison, as they replied to the message.
Then they all went back to checking dials and readying themselves for the launch. There was no going back once the ignition sequence was started. The Marilynium propulsion unit could not be halted once it was engaged in the fusion and discharge process. The alien must have had the technology to stop the process, but Roswell Research hadn’t cracked that part of the craft, it was beyond their understanding.
The Marilynium onboard was only the size of a baseball, scientists had grown an offshoot of the original piece from the crash. However small it was it had the potential power of a thousand atomic bombs or more. The Research Team had laser cut off infinitesimal amounts of the specimen and had powered vehicles of massive tonnage. The piece in the rocket was believed to be able to power Apollo One to Mars. The return flight was another question; they had built a unit into the command module. Naturally it was as yet untested on Martian soil. Though the alien had proved in theory that it would and could work.
Conventional rockets would take the Apollo out of the Earth’s atmosphere into outer space. Then the Marilynium unit would in effect be shown Mars by the navigation unit and it would, in theory,  gravitate towards Mars. That was the total untested theory.
Clear segments let in the ship’s fuselage would allow sunlight to recharge the Marilynium, those segments had mirrored reflectors to capture every drop of the Sun’s rays. The plastic used was an entirely new type called Truspex; a portmanteau of Truman and Perspex. All this was theory; it had been tested on the Earth, in space it was an entirely different matter. The science proved it, however the reality may be a different thing entirely. This was big stuff for 1967, groundbreaking science in fact.
The countdown to launch started,
“Module prepared.”
“All systems are active. All systems are go.”
“Fuel online and ready.”
“Fuel exchange started. Ignition started. Launch gantry withdrawn. Umbilical withdrawn. We are go. We are go.”
“Ten, nine, eight,…...”
The liquid oxygen vapours tumbled down the fuselage of the rocket. There was a sudden ‘CRACK’ heard over the radio from inside the cockpit. This was of course a staged noise. The deception had begun. It was cruel deception to play on the world but it had to be believable and effective.
“We have a problem! ABORT launch, ABORT launch!” A mission controller screamed down microphones.
“We have a fire!” a voice yelled out in the control room.
“We have a fire, all engines to halt, all fire crews to launch pad. ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!”
The rest became part of space flight history.

APOLLO ONE DESTROYED BY FIRE
Chaffee, Grissom and White Perish in The Blaze

The headlines screamed in newspapers throughout America and the world. The news reported that all three astronauts had perished in the fire. Not one person had survived the horrific fire that ensued when an electrical spark in the pure oxygen atmosphere had set fire to the nylon interior.
As Apollo One exited the Earth’s gravitational pull the three astronauts did all the checks they needed to do before switching on the cryogenic units embedded in each one of their spacesuits. They felt the G Forces push them back into their chairs. It was those very G Forces that would compress the Marilynium and start the reaction that would take them to Mars. The scientists had never figured out how the Aliens made the substance initiate a reaction. They had done it in the laboratory by compressing the Marilynium so it sort of fought back and caused a reaction within itself. That fight back propelled units across the desert and also a small distance up into the sky. Some of those early test flights were the so called weather balloon sightings.
They were now on their way to Mars. There was no turning back. They all had a meal each from the extensive larder and settled into their command chairs. The larder was to keep them going should they reach Mars. When they reached Mars. If they reached Mars. It was estimated that it would take about 300 days to get to the red planet. The Roswell Team expected that to be less with the new propulsion unit in operation.
Ed White switched in the Marilynium unit and did a double check on all the oxygen levels and emergency fuel levels; all were good. Then he and the other crew members pulled a cowl over their heads and switched in the cryogenic units. The rocket and Marilynium would do the navigating. The occupants were now superfluous. This countered all their training as test pilots and fighter pilots.
Onboard Columbia, Collins sat waiting for any updates or advice as to what was happening. The radio came to life as he was doing a fuel and oxygen check.   The radio was on channel 6, the masked channel. No one but Houston and the crew could hear the broadcast.
“Columbia this is mission control. Use channel 45 to broadcast an appeal to the incoming message. Over.”
Collins looked confused and asked Houston to clarify the message,
“Say again Control. Repeat advice please.”
“Contact on channel 45 the incoming messenger please Columbia.”
“Affirmative.” Collins replied.
“This is Columbia. Please re-contact this ship with your message. Over.”
As he waited for a reply he took another sip of juice. He sat back and waited a while before repeating the message.
“This is Columbia. Please re-contact this ship with your message. Over.” he put the microphone back into its cradle and waited. Then the radio broke into life again,
“Columbia. This is the message. We are alive and well.”
“Thank you messenger, please confirm your name or names for me.”
The radio stuttered and changed to channel 6.
“Columbia, this is control. We are working on a patch to link 45 to us. Understood?”
“Yes. Copy. Understood.” Collins replied.
Houston control took over the conversation. Collins became a bystander.
“Hello messenger. This is mission control Earth speaking now. Can you confirm your identity?”
The radio was silent for a while and white noise filled the air in the module and Houston control.
“Hello Earth, this is Gus Grissom.”
“Grissom?” the Houston controller was taken aback by that name.
“Can you confirm that name please messenger?”
“Virgil Grissom, I am here with Ed White and Roger Chaffee.”
The radio went silent again. Collins was totally confused. Chaffee, Grissom and White were the stuff of legends. They had all perished in the Apollo One fire.
Collins looked down and exclaimed,
“Phew! Jeez.” in total amazement.
The three astronauts were circling the Columbia. They were out there and alive.
Collins mulled over the possibilities in his head for the rescue mission. He suddenly felt so lonely in Columbia. It would be up to him to fashion a rescue and get Aldrin and Armstrong off the surface. This was testing all the emergency plans that had been planned in the event of an emergency, but they involved 2 astronauts not 5. How the hell would they rescue these three and then get back to Earth? They could use the Eagle as a temporary refuge perhaps; It could dock and get back to orbit the Earth whilst a rescue rocket was prepared and launched. That would take days, weeks even months. He was willing to try anything to get those three back to safety. These possibilities evaporated over the next few minutes of conversation.
“Houston, this is Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee reporting for duty Sir.”
General Wallbrook broke into the conversation,
“Good to have you boys back!”
“Thank you Sir.” Grissom replied. He vaguely remembered the voice from the past. It had been two years.
“Are you in a Foo?” the General excitedly continued.
“We are in a type of sealed capsule. It’s kinda cramped.” Grissom replied.
“Are you alone? Do you have a pilot?”
“We are alone Sir. No pilot onboard. The craft is self propelled and self navigating.”
“Do you have the equipment to enter the Earth’s atmosphere?” the General continued to debrief Grissom.
 “We believe have been given the means to re-enter the Earth.” Grissom replied but he had some hesitation in his voice.
“Are you all well?” he added.
“We are all well. We were held in quarantine. The people are friendly and made sure we got back. They will be in contact soon.” he stopped for a brief moment,
“We are programmed to land at Chicxulub this ship’s navigation unit has been pre-set to land there. We were informed of that before we left Mars.”
General Wallbrook knew exactly what Grissom was talking about: The Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico. It had long been suspected by the Roswell Team that a massive Foo Fighter had crashed there. There were ancient Aztec, Mayan and Olmec tales that a ‘fireball’ had crashed landed hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. The crater also had the hallmarks of a crash site, it was elongated and shallow at one end; the point of initial contact, it also has tektites, shocked quartz and a gravity anomaly; all the hallmarks of extreme heat. Despite underwater explorations no wreckage had been found by the Roswell diving and bathysphere team.
General Wallbrook immediately radioed the Roswell Team,
“We are looking at a Chicxulub touchdown now. ETA to be advised. Exact location co-ordinates unknown. Get the whole damned recovery team there now! Get the Navy there now.” he threw the microphone down on to the table in frustration.
He relit his cigar and took a few puffs on it, there was something on his mind. He picked up the microphone and tuned the radio to channel 45,
“General Wallbrook here. Confirm your names again. Over.”
“Sir, We are: Virgil Gus Grissom, Edward H White the second and Roger B Chaffee. Over.”
Wallbrook’s hand shook for a moment as the names were reeled off. He switched out the microphone and held it away from his mouth. His team looked at him, they had never seen him like this, he was always decisive and strident.
“Good god.” Wallbrook uttered and went pale. “I never knew it would come to this. I had hoped but never realised….” he trailed off and sat back completely pole-axed by the names he had heard. Then he suddenly and aggressively stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray in front of him and looked down at the floor caught in a thought. He looked up at the television screens showing the Moon landing live in front of him and wondered if, hoped that,  the aliens had refined their landing techniques since 1947.
The radio waves went silent for a moment then broke into life,
“Houston, Ed White here; Tell my wife I love her very much.”
“She knows.” Ground Control replied.