and he had a "good flying saucer report," hot off the wires. He read
it to me. The lead line was: "Thousands of people saw a huge fireball
light up dark New Mexico skies tonight."

The story went on to tell about how a "blinding green" fireball the
size of a full moon had silently streaked southeast across Colorado
and northern New Mexico at eight-forty that night. Thousands of
people had seen the fireball. It had passed right over a crowded
football stadium at Santa Fe, New Mexico, and people in Denver said
it "turned night into day." The crew of a TWA airliner flying into
Albuquerque from Amarillo, Texas, saw it. Every police and newspaper
switchboard in the two-state area was jammed with calls.

One of the calls was from a man inquiring if anything unusual had
happened recently. When he was informed about the mysterious fireball
he heaved an audible sigh of relief, "Thanks," he said, "I was afraid
I'd gotten some bad bourbon." And he hung up.

Dr. Lincoln La Paz, world-famous authority on meteorites and head of
the University of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics, apparently
took the occurrence calmly. The wire story said he had told a
reporter that he would plot its course, try to determine where it
landed, and go out and try to find it. "But," he said, "I don't
expect to find anything."

When Jim Phalen had read the rest of the report he asked, "What was
it?"

"It sounds to me like the green fireballs are back," I answered.

"What the devil are green fireballs?"

What the devil _are_ green fireballs? I'd like to know. So would a
lot of other people.

The green fireballs streaked into UFO history late in November 1948,
when people around Albuquerque, New Mexico, began to report seeing
mysterious "green flares" at night. The first reports mentioned only
a "green streak in the sky," low on the horizon. From the description
the Air Force Intelligence people at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque and
the Project Sign people at ATIC wrote the objects off as flares.
After all, thousands of GI's had probably been discharged with a
duffel bag full of "liberated" Very pistols and flares.

But as days passed the reports got better. They seemed to indicate
that the "flares" were getting larger and more people were reporting
seeing them. It was doubtful if this "growth" was psychological
because there had been no publicity--so the Air Force decided to
reconsider the "flare" answer. They were in the process of doing this