Journalist Jane Hale seeks the truth about UFOs in this science fiction suspense that revolves around a conspiracy: Flying saucers are a product of human -- not alien -- ingenuity. The United States purloined the technology from the Germans at the end of the war and then began a clandestine program to produce a fleet of antigravity vehicles; Harry Truman secretly nurtured the program after the saucers' sensational showing in demonstrations the president himself ordered over Washington in 1952; influential engineer and technocrat Vannevar Bush aggressively enforced a secrecy doctrine reminiscent of the Manhattan Project. Four decades later, physics wunderkind, fighter pilot and astronautics prodigy Tommy Swift is recruited into the military's clandestine space program. A Midwestern kid with a talent for math and science and a Ph.D. in physics, he is on a fast track to become a NASA astronaut until diverted to the shadow space program. He becomes commander of Big Black Delta, a mammoth triangular spacecraft.