Over the Border
Unknown – September 1939
(1939)*
Eric Frank Russell
illustrated by Kramer

An article of strange things that happen—and a fascinating suggestion that makes those strange reports fall into so pattern. Is Earth being visited from the stars today?

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	There's a border surrounding the mental territory of John Doe, and Elmer Roe, and us. It's more than a border: it's a frontier complete with electrically loaded fence of a million wires. Every one of those wires is the very limit of somebody's credulity, or the furthest extent of somebody else's understanding.

	Over the border of orthodox knowledge lies a world that is our own, not quite. Across that weird frontier lies a land of seeming dreams that are frighteningly sober; a domain made doubly terrible by gross distortion of familiar things. It is this world, not as we see it with five inadequate senses, but as it really is.

	There are stealthy prowlers within our encampments, but outside our ken. We discover them as aquatic Venusians, and lumbering giants from Horrifia.

	The void is the highway of things that never trespass within the kraals of our understanding. Space is now being traversed with such ease and frequency that it is not conquering, but commuting. It is done not only with aplomb, but also with impudence.

	Extra-mundane invaders have long ceased to be modest in their arrivals. They soar even over our greatest cities, secure in the knowledge that their blazing descent will be defined by us in terms of superheated stone. That limiting fence is doubly useful; not only does it keep out, but it also keeps in.

	Or it keeps some of us in, most of us. Every group has its perverse minority who think a fence is something to be vaulted, that a border is a line to be crossed. We're about to do some vaulting and crossing right now. Just for the hell of it, we'll take you with us.

	Now we have said that Earth is being visited—and visited regularly—by beings from other planets. An airy, easy statement—but what basis have we? Well, if such were the case, the skeptic points out, someone would, certainly, have seen these visitants long since. Of course. They have. They have seen, and reported, the arrival of intelligently fabricated machines descending from the skies—machines that never took off from any part of Earth!

	Le Petit Journal (France), May 10, 1938—Master of the Dieppe trawler La Barbue reports seeing an obviously artificial contraption, which he describes as a "plane," fall into the sea about thirty-four miles north of Dieppe. No plane was found to be missing.

	"The trawler crew saw a great column of smoke rise above the sea four miles away. They proceeded to the spot, but found nothing."

	Liverpool Echo (Britain), September 22, 1938—Unknown "airplane" seen to plunge into the sea off Lowestoft. A lifeboat and a tug made a thorough search, found nothing. Later, a patch of oil was discovered north of the spot. No plane missing.

	"Airplane" seen to fall into the sea five miles off Felixstowe—British Daily Telegraph, September 23, 1938. Oil found, search abandoned. Same day, a radio message from Boulogne repotted disappearance of another "air machine" which plummeted into the sea three miles off Langatte, a village between Calais and Cape Grisnez, No wreckage could be found.

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	They're always "falling planes" except when they arrive at night, when they're "colored lights" or "meteors". A century ago, the daylight newcomers would have been '"balloons". Five centuries ago, they were "man-carrying kites".

	Our most cogent point is that we can pile up consistency until it becomes a pyramid of startling aspect: witnesses are in complete agreement that the things they saw were not products of nature, but artificial. Deliberate fabrication is the invariable aspect of these things that are belched from the heavens into the sea, not once in a thousand years, not once a year, but monthly, weekly, and maybe daily.

	Daily Telegraph (Britain)-, August 15. 1938—Search made by royal air force launches in Bridlington Bay following a report that a "plane" had fallen into the sea. Nothing was found. Same paper, October 14, 1938—Walmer lifeboat made two thorough but vain searches for source of mysterious flares seen in the dark hours before the dawn two miles off St. Margaret's Bay, Kent. 

	Radio message from the Hull steamer Polo, one thousand nine hundred and fifty tons, saying, "Airplane just burst into flames off Dudgeon light vessel." There wasn't any plane. Sheffield Star (Britain), April 8, 1938

	The day before the above, April 7th, the Newcastle collier Birtley, two thousand eight hundred and seventy-three tons, arrived at Hartlepool where First Mate Robert Wake made a report printed in British Daily Telegraph. He had seen "an airplane" plunge into the sea three miles ahead of his ship.

	"When it struck the water," said Robert' Wake, "there was a sudden burst of flame which lit up the whole sky. The mass of flames rapidly dwindled to three small patches of light, and in another minute there was complete darkness again. We steamed ahead with all possible speed, but there was no sign of wreckage."

	'We admit to occasions when real airplanes suffer real crack-ups and make real falls into the sea. We have ignored something like forty reported falls in 1938 solely because they have coincided more-or-less with reports of missing machines. The data left to us concerns planes that are not planes. It is our quaint notion of logic that a thing which is not an air machine is something else.

	One deathward swoop of an unknown plane that left no wreckage could be ignored, or theorized over with innocence more parsonic—another smuggler has found that crime doesn't pay. But the same data, month after month, week after week, day after day! And each of those falls here listed occurred in 1938. Twice would be coincidence. Six times would be a miracle. Day after day back to Methuselah is a novel fact!

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	The identity of these, down-pouring fabrications is a subject we'd sooner not deal with but for the fact that we've shot off our mouths, and put ourselves in bad. It is at this point we discard the mantle of the oracle, squat on our hams in the kraal, and become guessers along with the crowd.

	Data that we've raked up makes us plump for the theory of space-traversing submersibles, super-amphibians, probably from Venus! The morning star looks a pretty safe bet, since it's our nearest neighbor, and a likely abode of aquatic life. We're being visited by Venusians fishy in more ways than one. They take to the sea as Terrestrials would make for the land, or as anything else would select its natural habitat.

	Liverpool Echo, March 29, 1938—Periscope of a submerged super-construction seen while fishing in More-cambe Bay by Harry Allen and William Baxter, of Dallam Avenue, Morecambe, Lancashire. It was seen the previous day by several Fleetwood fishermen.

	Says Baxter: "I saw a sudden scurry of seabirds rise off the water, and Allen and I looked at a spot nearly a mile away. Out of the water there rose something large and black like a big post. It was at least eight or nine feet high, and it rose and fell three times, then disappeared." Remarking that he'd traveled all over the world, the shocked Baxter added: "But I have never seen anything like this!"

	If he'd seen it descend, it would have been an "airplane". Or at night, a "meteor". Which reminds us that the fall of night does not necessarily lessen the volume of traffic at this cosmic junction. Reports will be sparser because of fewer witnesses. All the same, assuming that rockets are used—an arbitrary assumption such as we make in our weaker moments—the spectacle ought to be a nocturnal wow.

	Daily Telegraph, October 6, 1938—A reader signing himself Kingsley Nethercott, of Hassocks, Sussex, England, reports seeing something that might have been a meteorite, or might have been gallivanting Martians. The sky lights up and the fleet's in port again.

	Avows Mr. Nethercott, "I was walking in this district in the evening of Sunday, October 2nd, when I became, aware of intermittent blue flashes in the sky, obviously not lightning, but too brilliant to be generated by the electric railroad."

	The mysterious flashes grew more intense until, about half an hour later, "a most beautiful blue-green radiance shone through a sudden rift in the sky. Through this there appeared to drop a fiety body, vivid, and lovely, which disappeared in a second." There came one final flash of blue light. At the time, the sky was clear and full of stars.

	It has long been a cherished hope that some day somebody might know a rocket-vessel when he saw it. We've always been ambitious in the matter of hopes.

	New York Sun, July 29, 1938—Monster meteor-passes over New York. Epoque (France), same date—Great meteor crosses New York. La Prensa (Buenos Aires), same date—New York visited by great meteor. We do get around on our inquisitive stilts.

	British Daily Telegraph, July 29, 1938—Most brilliant meteor seen for years flashes over New York. "It afforded spectators a display of atmospheric firer works of such brilliance that many thought a fireball had fallen, or that a plane had crashed in flames." (We knew it—it just had to come!) Newspaper offices were deluged with calls reporting the incident. We've been deluged with newspapers reporting incidents.

	Mr. C. Federer, lecturer at the Hayden Planetarium, in Central Park, described the ''incident" as a long streak of white light tinged with blue, with a brilliant, glowing head. "I could hardly believe my eyes!"

	That head ought to look somewhat fiery with braking rockets going full blast, but we thrust the thought aside. Momentarily, it is of far greater consequence to find the reason why a scientific lecturer should distrust his own optics when confronted by a "meteor".

	"It looked like a giant roman candle," declared our incredulous but welcome witness, "or a rocket with a brilliant exhaust."

	Behavior was rocketlike. The extramundane argonaut arced into the northeast at a speed reported as being between ten and thirty miles per second; It disappeared over the horizon, when a full-throated trump of its superheated brakes make the press say, "—when it appeared to explode, or at least throw off a violent shower of sparks."

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	We would not make ourselves Galileos on the strength of a distant candle. Our claim to fame has more hidden lights than exhibited ones. For three reasons, we are not too wholesale with our evidence; we have confined ourselves almost entirely to the year 1938, and have picked only a modest quota from that tonnage.

	How doubly impressive the whole when one observes the greatness of its little portion! That is one of our reasons for restricting our data. Another is the total inadequacy of any space less than that of a library.

	But we would remark, in passing, that we have data on "airplanes" falling in the Baltic (Helsingfors Uusi Suomi); near Sardinia (Il Telegrajo, Leghorn); in the North Sea, according to several British papers; near Iviza (Madrid A.B.C); and in the west Atlantic (New York Times).

	We have reports of periscopes seen gandering in the Irish Sea (Liverpool Daily Post, Britain); in the Channel (British Daily Mail); and off Iviza, (Paris Populaire).

	The bugbear is that ninety percent of our witnesses are mariners, and nine percent clergymen. Falling sharks or plunging sinners would be identified beyond doubt, but all other swooshing descenders are "planes". We have a feeling that by the time we're through with this we'll have been martyred solely because we suffer from a paucity of Federers.

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	A real brainwave of ours was the thought that things which come down either must stay down or go up again. Since we cannot conceive that extra-mundane visitors would visit without good extra-mundane reasons, or that they would stay any longer than was absolutely necessary, we think that things which dive in arrival are equally likely to soar in departure. What we need to prove ourselves of sound mind, impeccable character, and definite sobriety is data on ascensions into heaven.

	This is where we find ourselves pole vaulting toward a ditch full of nice, glutinous mud. Frantically, we try to change course in midair, then swing in mad effort to overleap the obstacle. 

	Evidence is sparse. We know, the reason, but see no way to encounter it.' So long as witnesses assume these things to be airplanes, we're done, diddled, gypped. A plane falling into the sea is news worthy, is reported, published. An ascending plane is beneath—or above—notice. Nobody mentions it, and we can find no way to make observers report such sights. So long-as ascension suggests normality, and only descent suggests abnormality, we're handicapped by guys who just won't talk.

	However, in July, 1938, an "unknown plane" flew, over Croydon,. London (Daily Herald), its-noise fading eastward. Note that what passed over in the night was not necessarily an airplane, but definitely was a noise resembling that of a plane. Exactly one year earlier (Daily Telegraph), "unknown planes" made strange, mechanical noises in the darkness over Hendon, London.

	Liverpool Echo, August 23, 1938—Huge "waterspout" seen off Prestatyn, North Wales. "The sea boiled around it." Waterspouts off the British coast are uncommon enough to be newsworthy. Same night, colored lights were seen passing over the Irish Sea.

	Daily Telegraph, September 2, 1938—Several huge "waterspouts" in the Channel were watched from Bexhill by thousands of holiday-makers. There are marine mountains that have brought forth an alien mouse, but in this case nothing visible burst from the spout-heads, or if they did,' they were not reported. That night, unknown planes made noises over northern France.

	Noises and colored lights are about all that one could discern of night-departing space-vessels. Our data on both is extensive despite our difficulties. Lights that soar too swiftly, and are too definitely vertical to be "planes", are called "distress rockets". Some of them may be distress rockets, but what about those that aren't? Not a month goes by without some paper reporting the launch of a lifeboat in response to rockets from nowhere. July; 22, 1937—Colored lights seen five hundred miles off Cape Race, Newfoundland, by a British freighter reported to be the Ranee. We got this from the Fortean Society Magazine, September, 1937, took a personal interest in the matter," and chased the Ranee over a goodly portion of the planet in effort to get more details.

	Eventually, the vessel's third officer, Mr. E. C. Carroll kindly searched his ship's log; wrote saying he could find no mention of this incident. More correspondence, then we learned that the reported call sign GSVP, attributed to the Raneej belonged to a boat called the Togimo. The latter, according to Lloyd's Register of Shipping, was owned by Jenkerson & Jones, of Milford Haven, Britain. We wrote a naive letter to the Togimo's captain. Resulting silence suggests we overdid naiveté.

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	Colored lights, presumed to be navigation lights of an airplane, seen off east Denmark, mid-September. Same month, "unknown planes" whined distantly above Luxembourg—though these were rumored to be high-flying German aid for Franco. We got a fourth-hand report of "thundering noises" that raced across Alsace-Lorraine in June, 1938, and wrote Dernier es Nouvelles' de Strasbourg for confirmation. Looks like we must have retained some ingenuousness after that Togimo affair. No reply.

	British Daily Telegraph, February 8, 1938—Extraordinary brilliant "star" seen over the northeast horizon by Mr. H. Bond, of Ringwood, Hampshire. It was seen also by one of this observer's friends, who wrote in next day. It "resembled an enormous shield of brass lighted up by a searchlight." Our own searchlight has long been striving to shed light on shields of brass. However, we now know that they're "stars" when they get outside our atmosphere.

	Same paper, same issue—Letters from L. F. Grove, B. Sc., of Andover; Alec H. Crocker, B. Sc., Hampshire; A. G. Brown, of Swindon, and R. C. Michafd, of Bath, reporting that they had Seen brilliant lights, like glowing, spheres, soaring in the sky. Phenomena were coincident with an "exceptional display of electronic shimmerings said to be "the aurora borealis"—itself a very rare sight in Britain.

	Plenty of overhead rumbles, explosions, and thunderings have hammered down upon ears not elevated to vaulting-pole height. When the noises aren't "planes", they're described as "natural thunder". We have a couple of cases where-hearers' sense of the unnatural was strong enough to cause the phenomena to be called "freak thunder". Britain's Thunderstorm Census Organisation would be of great use to us—if its members could vault.

	Sunday Times (Britain), March 27, 1938—"Heavy artillery fire" reported as having been heard at Ray Lodge, near Lingfield, Surrey, England, by Mr. W. G. Carlton Hall, of London. We were living in England at this time, and are prepared to certify that there was no bloody revolution round and about. Maybe the banging came from Spain, "The firing was heavy and continuous." We anticipated the wiseacres with our wisecrack they decided what it was. It was caused by the Spanish battle at Huesca, six hundred miles away.

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	Things come, and things go, and they busy themselves in the interim. A guess of not too remarkable shrewdness is that occupants of super-submersibles scramble for the loot that enticed them here. Since we earth-bound creatures can dig, mine, weld, and perform all sorts of engineering feats under water, it doesn't seem far-fetched to think of aquatic aliens conducting submarine drilling and quarrying perhaps by means of atomic power.

	If such things are happening, we're not likely to discover the fact before a goodly portion of our stores of what-ever-they've-come-for has been snitched. There may be times when the burglars betray themselves with a disruption strong enough to shake a distant needle, but if the needle-watcher translates the wagglings into Chinese, everything remains hotsy-totsy.

	These queer, two-legged land crabs, with which Terra is infested, won't worry over what they don't see. There are no sidewalk superintendents in the mighty depths.

	Shakes and quakes and trembles between unknown falls and strange ascensions. It is a coincidence as remarkable as the invariable presence of pants at a lodge meeting.

	Things flopped into the North Sea in early April, 1938. Daily Mail, (Britain), April 14, 1938—Three Stepney, London, streets badly shaken by a quake that did not register on local instruments. Seismologists denied that an earthquake had functioned. Clocks were broken, earthenware smashed, and furniture jazzed around. Dozens of people had rude awakening from their slumbers. The seismologists had not.

	Two of the British Broadcasting Company's transmitters broke down. A fortnight after the Stepney quiver, thirty thousand tons of cliff thundered into the sea at Sidestrand, near Cromer.

	More extra-mundane arrivals in May, mostly making a terminus of the English Channel. We've cited one, seen by the trawler La Barbue. Daily Telegraph, June 16, 1938—Earth tremors in London. They registered on seismographs, but the epicenter could not be determined.

	Reynolds News (London), June 19, 1938—Three tremors shake south Wales. Same paper, one week earlier, June 12th—Big shock shakes south of England, Channel Islands, north of France and Belgium. British Sunday Times, June 12, 1938—Earthquake shocks; "believed to have been caused by a submarine disturbance in the English Channel," felt throughout Europe the previous day.

	Atomic disruptions, on a major scale, beneath the bed of the sea, might well affect Europe, We bear in mind lurid accounts of the effect upon seismographs when the Spanish government exploded its huge mine under deeply mortified insurgents in University City, Madrid.

	There was an incident over New York on July 29th. Our loyal supporter Mr. Federer saw it. The thing "fled-to the horizon, dived. New York, same date, in any paper you care to turn up—Earthquake shock in New York, accompanied by a freak storm, and rain "of cloudburst proportions". Taxpayers in Queens paddled knee-deep.

	We have searched in vain for a consort that might have picked on the Mediterranean; Il Popolo d'Italia (Italy), July 29, 1938—Three earthquake shocks felt in northern Peleponnesus, Greece. Same shudder ran through the Ionian Islands. If fishy foragers would have the decency to bring their own pit-props, this sort of thing might not happen.

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	No especial vaulting ability is required to imagine that there are things worth struggling for, beneath the floor of the ocean. British Cavalcade, September 17, 1938—Submarine Oil Finds. Oil discovered a mile from the shore, and two thousand two hundred feet below sea level, near Inverness, Nova Scotia.

	One alien privateer left North Wales, maybe near Prestatyn, on August 23, 1938—we have given you the data. Presumably, it scrammed because its errand was done. Western Mail (Cardiff), August 15, 1938—Earth tremors at Pwllheli, North Wales. It took them a week to get-ready for departure. Or perhaps they had to wait upon planetary motions.

	We like to think that the rocket over New York was merely one of a cosmic flotilla strung throughout the void, with six, seven or eight weeks of flight-time separating the leader from the last. If one of the leaders ducked for cover near the Ionian Islands, another certainly sought sanctuary within quaking distance of New Guinea.

	Tremors felt in Salamaua, new capital of New Guinea—Daily Telegraph, June 25, 1938. "Experts were of the opinion that yesterday's tremor merely implied a disturbance of the ocean bed." We thought we'd found company for the planetarium, until we noticed that word—"merely". They said it without a tremor of their own. Somebody ought to disturb their beds.

	We cling to the conceit that we can guess as well as any seismologist, but do it more shrewdly. What—seismologists don't guess?

	British Daily Telegraph, November 12, 1938—Mystery of Earthquake that Lost Itself. (How dramatic are these journalists!) The shock was no elusive, one-cent shiver. It was recorded on the world's seismographs night of November 10th. "Experts pronounced it to be of the greatest violence of any shock for thirty years."

	Declared Mr. J. J; Shaw, West Bromwich, London, seismologist: "In all my thirty years' experience I have never known such a big disturbance in such a short time." Epicenter, said the paper, was stated to be in the Far East, and "news of disaster was awaited with bated breath."

	Nothing happened. The Japs continued to write apologies; the Chinese got on with their bomb-dodging. Still nothing happened.

	So they shifted the epicenter. With superb co-ordination, they moved it to the bed of the Pacific Ocean, south of Alaska. There are things other than epicenters that might well be shifted to the bed of the Pacific Ocean, south of Alaska.

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	Since we can never case a joint without getting fingered by some expert, we might as well give the experts the whole works by making nonchalant mention of our rare collection of scientific ineptitudes. These boys haven't even got the consistency of authoritarianism. What they need is a central clearing house for their yahs; a sort of scientific Ein Reich—Ein Volk—Ein Fuehrer. Until they get it, we collect their own confusions. Things like scientific doubts concerning Peary's scientific dash to the Pole, or scientific aspersions cast against scientific explorations of the Weddell Sea, are mere nothings. We can forget that warfare is a science, and that it's nearly three years since military experts assured us about the absolute hopelessness of defending Madrid. Or that it's nearer thirty years since shipbuilding experts' convinced us of the unsinkability of the Titanic. Or that every week for several years economic experts have been forecasting the collapse of the economic structure of any nation embracing an ideology that they don't like.

	Dipping our hand in our lucky bag, we pull forth one for the hydrographers. Reynolds Nezvs, September 4, 1938—Reshaping of Tristan da Cunha. Allan B. Crawford, member of a visiting Norwegian expedition, doubted the charts of the British admiralty hydrographer, and resurveyed the island. With the cursed perspicacity of a wandering Scot, he found the charts very much wrong. So the island has been "reshaped".

	Meteorologists, biologists, archaeologists, and all the other ologists slip up every now and again. We can shut our eyes, and pick a clipping for any of them. They'll have to open their eyes before they can pick a clipping for us.

	Sterility in mules provides us with a nice, biological vignette. Scientifically, mules are sterile—except when mules aren't sterile. Cavalcade (Britain), December 31, 1938—twenty-six years old Wellington (S. Africa), mule named Falk has suddenly begun to yield milk in complete defiance of mulish tradition. Mayor G. H. Donaldson (durn these Scots!) milked her while incredulous farmers stared on. Yield, four bottles a day. "Case has astounded veterinary surgeons, as the mule is a hybrid, supposed to be sterile. Falk is believed to have yet another surprise in store." We give you three guesses.

	Archaeologists don't faze us, either. Paris Matin, November 29, 1938—Campaign of ridicule in prospect for prominent. French archaeologists who pronounced as an authentic antique of enormous value a mutilated statue of Venus dug up; at St. Juste, on the River Loire. A young Italian sculptor, Franco Cremonese, had the impudence, to claim the work as his own, saying he'd completed it in 1937, thought it lousy, knocked bits off it, and buried it. For his pains he received a lecture on the ethics of art.

	Emitting a meteoric shower of sapristis, Cremonese rushed away, brought back his model, who swore that she had posed for the authentic antique of enormous value. To clinch the matter, Cremonese produced from his workshop the bits he had knocked off. They fitted the statue perfectly.

	By citing these sweet selections, we do not make it our purpose to sneer at earnest men. We cling determinedly to our sturdy pole, and are not to be shifted from the point that if latitude is to be permitted those who measure and weigh and estimate, latitude must be permitted those who vault. Our stance is a simple one: that we can guess as well as anyone else, and often better.

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	Gadgets and dinkuses of undeniably deliberate fabrication pour down in a cosmic rain. We know they come, we know they go, and we know that they do some nice, quiet looting in the meanwhile.

	However seemingly uninteresting we may be to marine entities from Venus or elsewhere, we cannot imagine them passing up a chance to grab themselves a handy specimen of homo sapiens, They're just as likely to land home with a pickled human body, and, perhaps, a live African mud turtle, and a dead hyena, as any earthly mariner is liable to turn up with a bottle of rum, a case of mounted butterflies, a stuffed monkey, and a live parrot.

	A lonely brig in full sail, cleaving waters that have, recently absorbed a "falling plane," waters that have covered and camouflaged a succeeding tremor, is a ship sailing full tilt into mystery that isn't so very puzzling to people who use poles. We can see that vessel's captain wondering what the deuce is wanted of him by this big submarine that has surfaced to lee. The two move along, closing gradually. Then, with hellish enthusiasm, a metal hatch vomits scaly things from an alien belly. With all sails set, but no hand, at the helm, the Marie Celeste wanders on.

	The Waratah was too big to be boarded, even by surprise. There was the risk of failure, and resulting worldwide alarm. So they heaved it over, and helped themselves. Such a feat is easy when it's been done before, and will be done again. And again and again and again.

	Reynolds News (Britain), July 10, 1938—Mystery Force Sends Ships to Doom Near Lonely Island. "What mysterious and uncontrollable forces lurk in the southernmost part of the Atlantic—forces strong enough to overcome well-found: vessels so that they disappear without trace?"

	This plaintive journalistic bleat was caused by the sudden and complete disappearance of German four-masted barque, Admiral Karpfanger, with sixty cadets on board. Another sailing ship, the Winterhude, property of Finnish owner Gustay Erikson, later vanished on the same course in the same area. Nearly ten years earlier, yet another ship, the Danish vessel Kobenhavn, also vanished on the same course in the same area. She had seventy cadets on board. Looks like there is an alien appetite for cadets. "Hundred-days' search between Crozet and Kerguelen Islands has revealed nothing."

	In our elevated opinion, Kerguelen Island is a much-used junction, terminus, or shunting-yard for traffic from the void. Extra-mundane spacefarers frequently kibitz around the place, waiting for jumping-off time, and are quick to grab themselves a handful from passing loads of living souvenirs. See reports concerning mysterious footprints found on Kerguelen Island early in the nineteenth century, by Captain Sir James Clarke Ross, of the British royal navy.

	On March 8, 1938, a sturdy, thoroughly up-to-date vessel left Cardiff, south Wales, radioed an "All's well!" when passing Fayal, Azores, on March 14th, then vanished. She was the five-thousand-four-hundred-and-sixty-six-ton boat Anglo-Australian, with thirty-eight aboard. She's never been heard of since, and no wreckage has been found.

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	Linking is our hobby. Millions link suspenders for the sake of physical decency. We link facts, and achieve intellectual decency.

	Drops and shocks near Bridlington, and on July 30, 1938, the Daily Telegraph reported that two men and two women had vanished from a rowboat found wandering, and towed in.. You guessed it!—it was found and towed by Bridlington lifeboat.

	Falling phenomena off Denmark. Later—Stockholm Svenska Dagbladet, October 8, 1938—Norwegian government making frantic search for ship Rundehorn which had left Aalesund for Greenland, :and vanished with eighteen aboard.

	Remember, that periscope that peered across Morecambe Bay end of March, only a couple of days after "heavy/artillery fire" had been heard over Surrey? We think that, as usual, this invading thing was one of a cosmic flotilla, that it had companions, elsewhere—perhaps off the east coast of Africa.

	Cape Times (Cape Town, March 28, 1938—Hope given up for missing Mauritius steamer Agnar, four hundred and twenty-seven tons, which disappeared between Mauritius and Madagascar March 12th, .Thorough search by six-thousand-four-hundred-and-seventy-nine-ton Glasgow steamer Banffshire proved fruitless. Times of India, April, 12, 1938—Bombay steamer Jehangir, three thousand five hundred and sixty-six tons, makes further search for missing Mauritius boat Agnar. No trace found.

	We look for a handier snatching-point nearer the place where "artillery fire" was heard, and, by the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, we find it!

	Daily Telegraph] March 28; 1938—Empty boat comes ashore at Hayling Island, Hampshire, with all sails set. Nothing more heard or seen of its five occupants. Fisherman Baxter said that he'd never seen anything like the thing that he saw. Neither has Baxter ever had a squeak so narrow as that narrow squeak.

	Plunges and shudders and vanishings, while blissfully the world snoozes on. Svenska Dagbladet, August 9, 1938—Complete disappearance of Norwegian steamer Havmann. Sheffield Daily Independent (Britain), August 9th—Small sailing vessel disappears at. Dippin, near Whiting Bay, Arran. Man and woman row into the Channel from Plymouth, vanish—British Daily Express, June 10, 1938. "The weather was calm. Widespread search revealed nothing." North Mail (Newcastle, Britain), July 1, 1938—Search being made for yacht which sailed from Blyth, Northumberland, and vanished.

	If it's bad to be snatched for the delectation of something fishy, fantastic, and far away, how much worse to be plucked like bait from a dangling line?

	We have a file of inky shudders concerning a series of disappearances of Japanese divers off' the coast of Australia. We hoped that these eerie gulpings had ended with one at the end of July, 1937, according to a report which may or may not belong to the Melbourne Leader.

	The skipper of the Japanese pearler Yamata Maru dived to salvage shell from a sunken ship. In due time he sent the signal to haul up. The crew hauled up only his helmet and life line. Other divers descended, found nothing. "This adds one more to a series of mysterious disappearances which are terrifying divers off the Australian coast."

	A year later, and it's still continuing. British Sunday Times, August 7, 1938—Japanese diver Masao Matsumo descended from the lugger Felton, off Darnley Island, near Darwin, Northern Territory of Australia. He signaled to be hauled up. The crew hauled up, brought above the surface his helmet, corselet, and a basket of pearl shell. Other divers went down, found nothing.

	"Bring me back a parrot, willya?"

	"Bring me back a biped, willya?"

	If only we could savvy the dodblasted screed, we'd have gotten ourselves some nape-ruffling entertainment by instituting a lengthy search through the morgue of Tokyo's Nichi Nichi Shimbun. Quakes and vanishings are fifty for a dime in Japan, and all we want to complete the picture is data on "falling planes" and "soaring lights". It is a quaint thought that the sons of the Sun may also be the stuffed monkeys of the Stars.

The End