John Smith was born in 1941. A child of the harsh war years, he dreamed of becoming a pilot from early childhood. The dream came true quite easily. After school, the purposeful and hardworking cabbage soup boy entered the American Air Force Military College in 1960 and successfully graduated from it.
It was his turn to show his combat abilities - the young pilot was sent to Vietnam. He did not stay there for a long time, but received the "Medal for Service in Vietnam". True, evil tongues said that this medal was given to anyone who made at least one combat mission.
But John Skeet had more ambitious plans. Having flown over 9 thousand hours in ten years, Major Smith decided to apply for admission to the astronaut corps.
He became a space scavenger, or rather a "cleaner". The essence of his activity was to clean up near-earth space from a lot of debris from launch vehicles, failed satellites and other space junk. Without a doubt, this is a noble mission, and there was enough work for the "orderlies of near-earth space".
In the radiation belt
It is worth remembering at what time the described events took place. Following the end of the Apollo lunar program, President Reagan's administration launched the SDI program.
In the very near future, it was planned to deploy in near-earth space a whole complex of space assets designed to detect and destroy ballistic missiles and warheads of a potential enemy.
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Apparently, John Smith and his colleagues, among other things, were obliged to test means that could be used for more serious work, including for the destruction of foreign spy satellites. One way or another, John Smith at the end of October, 1973, took off on a new ship, which was disguised as another satellite launched by order of the Pentagon.
The first three days the flight proceeded normally, but then the maneuvering and orientation system of the spacecraft malfunctioned. Thus, the ship and its pilot found themselves in the area of the radiation belts, which, as you know, has a negative effect not only on the body, but also on the equipment. NASA's administration tried to rescue the astronaut by launching emergency preparations for the launch of another rocket. But suddenly the connection with Smith was cut off completely.
In the confusion, no one noticed that along with Smith's signals, some strange radio noises were persistently climbing the air. Only then, after analyzing the recordings made, experts suggested that the source of these sounds was somewhere in the constellation of the Triangle. The very same radiation, very active during Smith's flight, over time, too, began to weaken, and then completely disappeared.
After what happened in space for several days, all NASA workers were in a state of shock. The authorities were the first to come to their senses and strictly ordered all employees, under threat of immediate dismissal, to forget about the space tragedy that had occurred, as if it had never happened. At the same time, the launch of the spacecraft, piloted by John, was noted in the documentation as simply unsuccessful, and the astronaut was written off as killed in an accident during a training flight.
The personnel of the military space forces are an absolutely secret sphere, and no one was worried that this story could get out. It could have ended there if it had not recently received an unexpected, downright fantastic continuation.
Suspicious resurrection
Thunder struck for NASA workers in late 2000. The lost American satellite ship was suddenly discovered by accident. How did this happen? An amateur astronomer from the Fiji Islands recorded an unknown space body in an orbit at an altitude of 480 kilometers and reported it to the American Space Agency.
The agency's specialists pointed their radars to the indicated area, then rummaged through the archives and came to the conclusion that the once missing Smith ship … re-emerged from oblivion and is currently descending …
The rest was already a matter of technology. Although the ship was still not responding to radio requests, NASA decided to take advantage of the object's descent to an acceptable altitude, and made an attempt to remove it from orbit. At the beginning of 2001, this operation was carried out during the next flight of the "shuttle" "Endeavor". Having secured the cargo in the transport compartment, the Endeavor landed safely. And when the find was opened, it turned out that Smith was still in the cockpit and … alive. But unconscious, since the temperature inside the ship was close to absolute zero.
As the temperature began to rise gradually, one of the experts noticed that the astronaut seemed to be showing signs of life. Specialists in cryogenic medicine were urgently called for help. Little by little, the astronaut was reanimated. And then it turned out that John Smith had returned to Earth … not at all! Then who is?
The first suspicions arose after NASA doctors and specialists from one of the leading US military hospitals checked the patient's condition with his medical records. Strange discrepancies emerged immediately. For example, few people know that in most cases the human heart is not located on the left, as is commonly believed, but practically in the center of the chest, it is only partially displaced to the left. Sometimes there are people whose heart is displaced to the right. Moreover, such an anomaly, as a rule, does not lead to a deterioration in health and well-being. Judging by the map, Smith was once such a person. In the current patient, the heart had a normal, left, displacement.
In addition, Smith's medical record showed traces of a fractured ribs, received as a child. In the current patient, all ribs were impeccable. Several rather large moles, fixed on the body of John Smith and mentioned in the column "Special signs", were completely absent from the newly arrived astronaut.
Well, okay, it may be little things that can still be explained somehow. But here are the data concerning the intellectual abilities of the individual in question. The former Smith had difficulties with higher mathematics, and the returning astronaut freely extracted cubic roots from 18-digit numbers … Other oddities became known. In particular, it was found that in the personal notebook of the astronaut, which is given to everyone before the flight, only half of 100 sheets remained. Moreover, out of 50 pages, only 24 John was dotted with strange small characters that did not resemble either oriental hieroglyphs, or ancient ideographic letters, or letters of any modern alphabet. In general, the specialists had a crazy hypothesis: it was not John Smith who returned to Earth, but a certain humanoid creature that responds to this name and which was replaced by a real astronaut. Who, why and why did it, is unclear.
This incident was carefully classified. But while the authorities were deciding what to do, John Smith mysteriously disappeared somewhere. Nobody saw him leave the guarded premises. Nobody noticed that someone was leaving the protected area of the base. Nevertheless, the fact remains - John Smith left his place of stay, or rather, imprisonment. And a thorough search has yielded nothing. There was just an astronaut and - no!
The American military department was like water in its mouth, not responding to the articles about the strange astronaut published in the media. Well, they are no strangers, but ordinary Americans inundated with letters asking to tell in more detail about this story and Congress, and television, and newspaper editors. In response - complete silence …
