body had not burned, not disintegrated, and was not full of holes;
the wreck was not radioactive, nor was it magnetized.

One very important and pertinent question remained. Why did Mantell,
an experienced pilot, try to go to 20,000 feet when he didn't even
have an oxygen mask? If he had run out of oxygen, it would have been
different Every pilot and crewman has it pounded into him, "Do not,
under any circumstances, go above 15,000 feet without oxygen." In
high-altitude indoctrination during World War II, I made several
trips up to 30,000 feet in a pressure chamber. To demonstrate anoxia
we would leave our oxygen masks off until we became dizzy. A few of
the more hardy souls could get to 15,000 feet, but nobody ever got
over 17,000. Possibly Mantell thought he could climb up to 20,000 in
a hurry and get back down before he got anoxia and blacked out, but
this would be a foolish chance. This point was covered in the
sighting report. A long-time friend of Mantell's went on record as
saying that he'd flown with him several years and knew him
personally. He couldn't conceive of Mantell's even thinking about
disregarding his lack of oxygen. Mantell was one of the most cautious
pilots he knew. "The only thing I can think," he commented, "was that
he was after something that he believed to be more important than his
life or his family."

My next step was to try to find out what Mantell's wing men had seen
or thought but this was a blind alley. All of this evidence was in
the ruined portion of the microfilm, even their names were missing.
The only reference I could find to them was a vague passage
indicating they hadn't seen anything.

I concentrated on the canopy-reflection theory. It is widely