Free The Doomsday Conspiracy by Sidney Sheldon

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    The huge mothership floated noiselessly through dark space, seemingly motionless, traveling at twenty-two thousand miles an hour in exact synchronization with the orbit of the earth. The six aliens aboard were studying the three-dimensional field-of-view optical screen that covered one wall of the spaceship. On the monitor, as the planet Earth rotated, they watched holographic pictures of what lay below while an electronic spectrograph analyzed the chemical components of the images that appeared. The atmosphere of the land masses they overflew was heavily polluted. Huge factories befouled the air with thick, black, poisonous gases while unbiodegradable refuse was dumped into landfills and into the seas. The aliens looked down at the oceans, once pristine and blue, now black with oil and brown with scum. The coral of the Great Barrier Reef was turning bleach-white, and fish were dying by the billions. Where trees had been stripped in the Amazon rain forest, there was a huge, barren crater. The instruments on the spaceship indicated that the earth's temperature had risen since their last exploration three years earlier. They could see wars being waged on the planet below, which spewed new poisons into the atmosphere. The aliens communicated by mental telepathy. Nothing has changed with the earthlings. It is a pity. They have learned nothing. We will teach them. Have you tried to reach the others? Yes. Something is wrong. There is no reply.
    You must keep trying. We must find the ship.
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    Sidney Sheldon - Doomsday Conspiracy
    On earth, thousands of feet below the spaceship's orbit, Robert placed a call from a secure phone to General Hilliard. He came on the line almost immediately.
    "Good afternoon, Commander. Do you have anything to report?" Yes. I would like to report that you are a lying sonofabitch.
    "About that weather balloon, General -.-it seems to have turned out to be a UFO." He waited.
    "Yes, I know. There were important security reasons why I couldn't tell you everything earlier."
    Bureaucratic double-talk. There was a short silence. General Hilliard said, "I'm going to tell you something in the strictest confidence, Commander. Our government had an encounter with extraterrestrials three years ago. They landed at one of our NATO air bases. We were able to communicate with them." Robert felt his heart begin to beat faster.
    "What-what did they say?"
    "That they intended to destroy us." He felt a shock go through him.
    "Destroy us?"
    "Exactly. They said they were coming back to take over this planet and make slaves of us, and that there is nothing we can do to prevent them. Not yet. But we're working on ways to stop them. That's why it's imperative that we avoid a public panic so we can buy time. I think you can understand now why it's so important that the witnesses are warned not to discuss what they saw. If word of the Idents, as we refer to them, leaked out, it would be a worldwide disaster."
    "You don't think it would be better to prepare people and?"
    "Commander, in 1938, a young actor named Orson Welles broadcast a radio play called 'War of the Worlds' about aliens invading the earth. Within minutes there was panic in cities all over America. A hysterical population tried to flee from the imaginary invaders. The telephone lines were jammed, the highways were clogged. People were killed. There was total chaos. No, we have to be prepared for the aliens before we go public with this. We want you to find those witnesses for their own protection, so we can keep this under control." Robert found that he was perspiring.
    "Yes. I-I understand."
    "Good. I gather you've talked to one of the witnesses?"
    "I've found two of them."
    "Their names?"
    "Hans Beckermanhe was the driver of the tour bus. He lives in Kappel...."
    "And the second?"
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    Sidney Sheldon - Doomsday Conspiracy
    "Fritz Mandel. He owns his own garage in Bern. He was the mechanic who towed the car of a third witness."
    "The name of that