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I did go to Albuquerque several times but my visits were always short and I was always in a hurry so I didn't get to see him. It was six or eight months later before the subject of green fireballs came up again. I was eating lunch with a group of people at the AEC's Los Alamos Laboratory when one of the group mentioned the mysterious kelly-green balls of fire.
This place was called Los Alamos, or The Poplars, a name which would have suited a large majority of the estancia houses with trees growing about them, seeing that the tall Lombardy poplar was almost always there in long rows towering high above all other trees and a landmark in the district. It is about the people dwelling at Los Alamos I have now to write.
Its first mail was received at Tres Alamos, sixteen miles down the river. A postoffice was established in 1882, Joseph McRae in charge. When the Southern Pacific came through, Benson was established, nine miles to the northward. Tombstone lies sixteen miles to the southeast. In May, 1880, the present St. David townsite was laid out. John Smith Merrill built the first house.
We had a few files marked "Los Alamos Conference," "Fireballs," "Project Twinkle," etc., but I didn't pay any attention to them. Then one day I was at a meeting in Los Angeles with several other officers from ATIC, and was introduced to Dr. Joseph Kaplan. When he found we were from ATIC, his first question was, "What ever happened to the green fireballs?"
La Paz, and some of the most distinguished scientists at Los Alamos had seen at least one. In mid-February 1949 a conference was called at Los Alamos to determine what should be done to further pursue the investigation. The Air Force, Project Sign, the intelligence people at Kirtland, and other interested parties had done everything they could think of and still no answer.
The entire family was close on his heels as he went into the library. He threw the scrambler switch, then asked anxiously, "Yes, Steve?" "Just had word, Rick, so I called in spite of the hour. Your father is safe inside the compound at Los Alamos. He's all right. And just as a precaution, he'll spend most of his time in a shielded area where no radio signal can penetrate.
In Los Alamos 230 miles to the north, a group of scientists' wives who had stayed up all night for the not so secret test, saw the light and heard the distant sound. One wife, Jane Wilson, described it this way, "Then it came. The trees, illuminated, leaping out. The mountains flashing into life. Later, the long slow rumble. Something had happened, all right, for good or ill."
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