in fact....

The writing blurred, and instinctively Forster put his fist up to rub
his eyes, only to meet the hard plastic of his helmet visor. James
Rawdon Bentley....

It was January 18, 1951, three years ago, and the jagged line of the
Australian coast stretched like a small-scale map to the black curve of
the horizon.

From the converted bomber that was his flying lab, Forster could see the
other American observation plane cruising on a parallel course, about
half a mile away, and beyond it downwind the fringe of the billowing
cloud dome of the super-secret British thermonuclear shot.

Then suddenly Bentley's voice from the other plane was crackling over
the earphones, sharp and urgent:

"Our Geigers and scintillometers are going crazy! We're getting out of
here! There's something coming inside ... a light...."

* * * * *

Silence. Forster had watched in helpless horror as the other ship dipped
a silver wing, then nosed down ever so slowly, it seemed ... down ...
down ... in a dive that seemed to take hours as Forster's plane tracked
it, ending in a tiny splash like a pebble being thrown into a pond; then
the grimly beautiful iridescence of oil and gasoline spreading across
the glassy waters of the Timor Sea.

No parachutes had opened on the long journey down. An Australian air sea
rescue launch and helicopter were at the scene of the crash in minutes,
but neither bodies nor survivors had been found, then or later....

"Everything okay, Doctor Forster?"

"Yes," he said hoarsely. "Yes ... everything's okay ... just routine."

Forster focussed his eyes on the writing again. There was no doubt at
all that it was Bentley's. They had roomed and studied together for four
years at MIT, and then there had been a couple of years' post-graduate
work after that. During all that time they had used each other's notes
constantly.

But Bentley was dead.

Forster read on, stunned:

First, you'll want to know what happened over the Timor Sea after the
shot. Put very simply, I, the rest of the technicians, and the crew of
the B-29 were transhipped to another vehicle--without any damage to
ourselves. How, I'm not allowed to explain at this stage. Actually, they
only wanted me, but it wasn't feasible to collect me and leave the rest
behind, so they're all here, safe and well.

Who are "they," and where am I? The second question I can't answer--not
allowed to. "They," roughly translated