U.F.O. 517

by Bron Fane, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact

Synopsis

Innumerable explanations have been put forward for the phenomena, known popularly as U.F.O'S and Flying Saucers. Eminent psychologists explain them as purely mental phantasmagoria - symptomatic of mankind's age-old desire for "saviours from the sky".

Enthusiastic arm-chair cosmonauts regard them as irrefutable proof that super intelligences from Out There are watching the Earth. A few un-scrupulous publicity seekers and practical jokers cash in on the public's curiosity and weird stories of little green men and pink ants go the rounds.

Amateur military tacticians decide that the saucers are either out new secret weapons or the experimental weapons of some alien power.

Interest rises and falls. The Great Debate continues.

There are some other possibilities . . . and the implications of some are so horrifying that mere monsters from Beyond would be a pleasant anti-climax. This mature, challenging novel is not recommended for those who like to think of the everyday world in terms of permanence and security with humanity safely established at the head of creation.

Elspeth Jermyn came dangerously close to the truth, and slowly but surely gathered a small group of helpers together. They worked in strictest secrecy against the Saucer Phenomena and the invidious menace behind it . . . if they failed, life would have no real meaning.

Release date: December 19, 2013

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

ELSPETH JERMYN looked at her watch—a small, neat, diamond and platinum affair that suited her wrist admirably—and realised that she had nearly twenty minutes to fill in before the next lecture. It was her experience that learning was inhibited by too close a juxtaposition of one period with another. She liked to relax, to give time for her mind to absorb and digest the information she had received, before going on to something new. It was like the quantum theory, she thought. Energy moved in little packets and so did knowledge. Her mind did not seem to be in a relaxed mood that day. There were occasions when Elspeth could close her eyes and allow the blissful gossamer blanket of daydreaming relaxation to protect her from the sharp draught of the world around, but now her mind was ticking over like a powerful sports car frustrated by traffic lights and irritated by halt signs. Something light, she thought, something unimportant, something I can read without really thinking, to occupy the eyes and the first level of perception rather than to occupy the mind. There were some old papers in the common room rack. She went forward and lifted one from its brazen clamps. The headline contained an account of a Flying Saucer sighting in the locality. Elspeth wrinkled her dainty little nose and smiled. Didn’t really seem very feasible, she thought. The witnesses had been so certain they had sworn affidavits and reported the business to the special department of Air Security which dealt with it. It had been designated in the files as ‘U.F.O. 517.’ The reporter had been doing a bit of overtime to unearth all that information, thought the girl. She read the account again in a leisurely fashion, and then, still smiling a little, she turned the paper over, preparatory to putting it back in the rack. The back page was covered with an odd miscellany of personal advertisements. They ranged from heart cries to advertisements for deodorant talcum powders, a new cure for haemorrhoids and a way to stop smoking. She laughed more at the advertisements than she had done at the accounts of the supposed Flying Saucer. Two different aspects of credulity; and then, in the middle of the laughing she stopped. For an instant she knew bewilderment, followed by intense curiosity. The line that took her eye read simply:

“What does the square root of minus one smell like?” Then there was a box number.

She read it again and put the paper down with another glance at her watch. Ten minutes remained. What does the square root of minus one smell like? Was it a joke? A ‘with it’ advert? One that she hadn’t been able to see through? Perhaps some kind of mathematical deodorant? She picked the paper up again and scrutinised the rest of the column. Was it a misprint or a typographical error? She could understand the religious organisations, tract-promotion groups, and well-meaning but harmless cranks putting in texts or passionate exhortations to prayer, but this——? This seemed to have neither religious nor humanitarian significance. “What does the square root of minus one smell like?”

He mind became a teeming hive of activity. Suppose somebody had put the thing in seriously? Was it a code, a symbolism, a cypher of some sort? If so, what did the cypher hide, and what did the symbolism represent? Basically she saw it as an abstract concept equated with one of the unlikely sense-perception data gathering organs. You couldn’t smell the square root of minus one; you could only hold it as a mental concept. It wasn’t within the field of any physical organ. You could see the words, or mathematical symbols, in which it was expressed, but that was all. You could hear somebody say it. What was the advertiser getting at—if he was serious? One of the other students touched her on the shoulder.

“Come on, Elspeth, you’ll be late.” Then she was moving with the rest into a large, multi-windowed room, sitting at a desk with a note pad open; and there were others doing the same thing all around her; a man was talking; a man was talking about psychology, about the theories of Freud, and the pioneer work of the Viennese School. Part of her mind was writing down the salient points he made, while another part of her mind was mulling over and over again the incredible question in the personal advertisement column of a half-discarded common room newspaper. What does the square root of minus one smell like? At first it sounded like Goon humour: the kind of remark that the uninhibited genius of Milligan would burble inimitably across the footlights. It could almost have been an Oblomovism; but there was more to it than that. It wasn’t just superbly zany humour. It was there for a reason. There was enough about it to be purposeful, and she wished to find its purpose.

The lecture ended; there was only one thing to do; she would have to answer the advertisement. It suddenly occurred to her she hadn’t got the box number; she hadn’t written it down. What if someone had taken or destroyed the paper? She hurried back to the Common Room, panting by the time she got there. It was still there. She snatched at it avidly, like an opium addict reaching for his tincture. She scribbled the box number down with feverish haste: Zy 221. Even that seemed to have a strange symbolism of its own. She went to the Commons stationery store, bought a stamped envelope and returned to the Common Room. It was empty. Everyone else had already gone hurrying towards the dining room. Somehow Elspeth didn’t feel hungry. Curiosity had replaced every other appetite. The sheet she tore from her note pad didn’t look particularly attractive; she wasn’t really satisfied with it as a medium for her letter, but impatience was an integral part of Elspeth’s make-up. She was aware of the conflicting drives of impatience on the one hand and an innate desire to be neat on the other. She compromised by screwing up and throwing away the first sheet of paper she had torn from its holder. The second one she took out carefully and neatly. It still didn’t strike her as being adequate for a letter, particularly one that had now assumed such importance, but at least, despite its obviously collegiate look, its edges were intact. She jotted down her address and the date, began “Dear Advertiser,” and then stopped to think.

Something instinctive warned her that what she had to say was going to be of prime importance. A single line ‘I am interested in your advertisement and would like to know more’ would not do. She had a hunch that the odd question had been written simply to attract a certain kind of person who, in the opinion of the advertiser, would respond in a certain kind of way.

And so, with the pen resting against the paper, she paused and thought. The more she thought about it the less sense there seemed to be in answering it, and with a rather rueful and critical smile she knew that if she thought about it for long enough she probably wouldn’t answer it at all; and that would give the burning curiosity a chance to return with redoubled vigour in the middle of the night when she had neither envelope nor paper available.

Any beginning, however tame, would be better than not answering, she decided. It took her the whole of lunch hour to compose the letter to her satisfaction, and even then the satisfaction was by no means complete. It read:

“Dear Advertiser,

“I am intrigued by your olfactory associations of the square root of minus one. If the imputation of redolence to an abstract mathematical concept has any philosophical significance I would be interested to hear of it. Perhaps, on the other hand, you intended the advert as a joke, in which case I am wrong, but it has been sufficiently entertaining to merit the expenditure of four pence on this stamp. Perhaps there is some poetical concept inherent in the idea. If so, I am probably too much of a Philistine to appreciate it, but would be grateful to have it explained. If it is of any importance in relation to the advertisement, I am a nineteen-year-old student of psychology in my second undergraduate year.

“Yours sincerely,                  

“Elspeth Jermyn.”    

She posted it in the college box, and realising that she had now missed lunch walked ruefully to the canteen and bought coffee and biscuits instead. Now that she had done all that could humanly be done to satisfy her curiosity, normal things like hunger were reasserting themselves. A smell came through the back of the canteen window and the kitchen just beyond it, where the lunches were prepared. College lunch was not usually of the best, but the smell promised more sapidity than was usually placed at the disposal of the student fraternity.

Elspeth patted her firm, flat young stomach and imagined that she heard a hollow sound coming up rather sadly.

The neat little watch warned her that the next lecture period was due.

The two following days passed with difficulty. Try as she would to concentrate on anything, social activities or her lectures, try as she would to read or to make the right kind of noises during tutorial sessions, she could not get her mind very far from that intriguing question about the graveolence of the square root of the negative unit. Then the post came. … There was a letter from her aunt in Cornwall. A circular from the Students’ Union, a catalogue of posts from agencies specialising in vac. jobs—all of which she discarded—and a mysterious greyish envelope that had a vaguely medical and vaguely academic appearance. The writing—small, neat and very methodical—was thin, almost as though it had been written with a mapping pen. The unusual, strong, black quality of the ink made it more legible than ordinary writing, not less. Elspeth opened it with fingers that shook unashamedly with excitement. She looked at the signature first and then the address. The address was Kensington. The signature looked like ‘Zelby.’ It was not written with the same meticulous neatness as the envelope or the rest of the letter, but it certainly looked more like ‘Zelby’ than any other letter combination. She read the letter through carefully—twice, and was glad that she had answered the advertisement.

“Dear Miss Jermyn,

“I assume from your address and your professions of studentship, that you are still outside the noble institution of holy wedlock.” There was a jocular, academic quality to Zelby’s phrasing. The humour was dry, not stiff. “However,” the letter went on, “If I have inadvertently dispossessed you from your title, please accept my humble apologies. The advertisement, as you guessed, was intended to convey certain information in symbolic form. If this information is as accurate as I suppose it to be, it could have very important consequences indeed upon an international, perhaps even a cosmic scale.” That word ‘cosmic’ made Elspeth think, suddenly, of the article she had seen in the same paper, the thing about U.F.O. 517. Even as the word moved through her mind she realised that she must have associated it with science fiction for a long time. It was an exciting, imaginative sort of word, ‘cosmic’. She whispered it out loud. It seemed to bode much.

“I would not like to commit too much of my theory to so open and easily intercepted device as a letter,” continued Zelby, “however, if you would care to call at the above address, this evening if possible, I would like to show you that the question in the advertisement does have an answer and that this answer can be reached by normal, computer programming methods. There is no need to reply if you do not wish to pursue the matter any further. For reasons of security, which you will understand if you come, I would like you to memorise the address and then burn the letter.”

How very odd, she thought, how very very odd. The idea of burning the letter, combined with the overtones of that word ‘cosmic’ gave her the feeling that she had become involved in a science fiction novel which had married a spy thriller and wasn’t quite sure what would happen next. Elspeth looked rather disappointedly at the warmly efficient central heating pipe all around the Common Room wall. Spy thrillers belonged to the coal fire epoch, she decided. Unless you went all the way down to the boiler room—which even then might turn out to be oil-fired, or electric or something even more inconvenient for letter burners, how did you get rid of the missive? The ash tray presented itself for her consideration. Elspeth was too mature and intelligent to smoke, but there was a table lighter in the centre of the polished oak surface in front of her. She lit a corner of her letter very carefully, held it by the opposite corner, and allowed it to burn. With the tip of a pencil she stirred the ashes, and the resulting fragments would have defied the most patient technician in Scotland Yard forensic laboratories.

The last lecture might as well not have been given as far as she was concerned. Her hand and her ear obeyed the habit of the last two years and wrote copiously what they heard, but her mind, her real consciousness, the brilliant, living essence of Elspeth, kept repeating an address over and over again. She was among, the first out of the lecture room, preceded only by a miserable looking student with a neurotic landlady (who always made a scene if he was late for the ill-prepared tea with which she was systematically destroying his internal economy).

She took the tube to South Kensington and began looking for the address. For some reason, perhaps the hint of dark things, and the importance of security—inferred from the burning of the letter—she didn’t want to ask the way, even from the solid, reliable form of a Dock Green type police constable. She felt that she wanted to find Doctor Zelby’s home unaided, and as unobtrusively as possible. She found herself at last in the shadow of a wrought iron street lamp. Its beams just reached the door of an old Georgian mansion that looked as though it had seen palmier days. Elspeth felt an odd sense of foreboding as she looked up at the house. The top dissolved in th. . .