And mass hysteria is by no means a product of the present century. But -- what if these human foibles were deliberately being exploited?
"You say, Corelli, that you saw three -- er, Martian -- ships. Can you describe them?" Clayton asked.
Corelli blinked as he felt the weight of his colleagues' eyes boring into him. "I didn't say they were Martian, sir -- only that they seemed to be unearthly. And they were not the conventional saucer-shaped things -- they acted like saucers skimming across the water. That's what made me think they were genuine. And they didn't seem to be going fast enough so that I'd expect to hear a roar like a jet-plane.
"It struck me that this might not be the way they fly, naturally, but the way they might fly if the pilots were having trouble adjusting the controls to a heavier atmosphere than they were used to."
Clayton frowned. This boy was definitely going to be a problem.
