the subject even worth showing an interest in. That does mean something.” After
a few seconds of silence Conlon added, “Anyhow, asking astronomers for opinions
on something like that is ridiculous. It’s not a subject they’re competent to
comment on.”
“What!” Brady exclaimed.
“What does an astronomer know about UFOs?” Conlon asked him.
Brady threw up his hands helplessly. “Well, how do I answer that? They’re things
in the sky, right? So, astronomers are supposed to know about things in the
sky.”
“What things in the sky?”
“What things? . . . The ones people say they see.”
“Exactly!” Conlon sat back and spread his hands in a show of satisfaction. “The
things people say they see—All of the evidence boils down to eyewitness
testimony. What does an astronomer know about evaluating testimony? How many
times in his whole career does he have to try to learn whether a witness
believes his own story, or decide whether the witness saw what he thought he
saw, and whether it meant what he thought it meant? See my point? An
astronomer’s the wrong guy. What you need is a good lawyer or police detective,
except they’ve all got other things to do than worry about investigating UFOs.”
“But at least you know an astronomer’s not just any dummy,” Brady said.
“If that’s all you need, why not ask a heart surgeon or a poker player?” Conlon
shook his head. “Being an expert in one field doesn’t make somebody’s opinions
on subjects they’re not qualified to talk about worth more than anybody else’s.
But all too often they think they’re infallible about anything and everything,
and people believe them. You can see it everywhere—political economists who
think they know more about fusion than nuclear engineers do; lawyers trying to
define what’s alive and what isn’t; Nobel Prize-winning physicists being taken
with simple conjuring tricks by so-called psychics. What does a physicist know
about trickery and deception? Quarks and photons don’t tell lies. We have stage
magicians and conjurors who are experts on deception and the art of fooling
people—it’s their business. But who ever thinks of asking them in?”
Conlon’s tone had mellowed somewhat while he was talking, and Brady began to
sense the message that he was trying to communicate: Whether Brady agreed with
him or not about UFOs, Conlon and the people in the Planetary Exploration
Program had better things to do than get involved in public relations concerning
the likes of Senator Kerning. That was Brady’s department. And the way Conlon
was beginning to fidget in his chair said that he was getting near the end of
the time he was prepared to spend trying to communicate it.
Brady spread his hands for a moment, then acknowledged with a nod and picked the
paper up from Conlon’s desk as he rose to his feet. “Well, sorry to have taken
your time,” he said. “We’ll take care of this. I just thought . . . maybe you’d
appreciate the opportunity to contribute something.” He turned and walked over
to the door.
“Al,” Conlon called out grumy as Brady was about to leave the room. Brady
stopped and looked back. “I realize that you meant it for the best. Don’t think
you goofed. You’ve got your job to do—I know that. I guess from now on we
understand each other, huh?”
Brady returned a faint smile. “I guess so,” he replied. “I’ll talk to you more
about UFOs sometime.”
“Do that.”
“Take care.” With that, Brady left.
Conlon sighed and sat staring down at the desk for a while with his chin propped
on his knuckles. He wondered where it would all lead— pendulum-wavers being
hired by oil companies to locate deposits; degrees in the “paranormal” being
awarded by universities that should have known better; kook papers appearing in
what used to be reputable scientific publications; politicians calling for a
phase-down of the fusion program because they were convinced of the imminence of
unlimited “cosmic energy” forever from pyramids, this at a time when the U.S.
was having to import up-to-date tokamak reactors from Japan.
It was becoming all but impossible to find good engineers and technicians.
Science, engineering, the true arts, and the professions—in fact just about