"Several places," I told him. "At Chicago, in Salt Lake City--in fact,
we've been hearing it all over."

"Well, there's nothing to it," Gorman declared. He changed the
subject.

Some time afterward, a Fargo pilot told me there had been trouble over
the ramming story.

"But it wasn't Gorman's fault. Somebody else released that report to
the A. P. The news story didn't actually say there was an Air Force
order to ram it, but the idea got around, and we heard that Washington
squawked. Gorman had a pretty rough time of it for a while. Some of
the newspapers razzed his story. And the Project 'Saucer' teams really
worked on him. I guess they were trying to scare him into saying he
was mistaken, and it was a balloon."

When I asked Gorman about this, he denied he'd had rough treatment by
the Project teams.

"Sure, they asked about a thousand questions, and I could tell they
thought it might be a hoax at first. But that was before they quizzed
the others who saw it."

"Anybody suggest it was a balloon?" I said casually.

"At first, they were sure that's what it was," answered Gorman. "You
see, there was a weather balloon released here. You know the kind, it
has a lighted candle on it. The Project teams said I'd chased after