Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California, now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert. What could it be?

There was no balloon and there were no aeronauts.

Some strange phenomenon had occurred in the higher zones of the atmosphere a phenomenon of which

neither the nature nor the cause could be explained today it appeared over America.

Forty-eight hours afterwards it was over Europe.

A week later it was in Asia.

Hence in every country of the world empire,

or kingdom or republic, there was anxiety which it was important to allay.

If you hear in your house strange and inexplicable noises, do you not at once endeavor to discover the cause?

And if your search is in vain, do you not leave your house and take up your quarters and another?

But in this case, the house was the terrestrial globe.

There are no means of leaving that house for the moon or Mars or Venus or Jupiter or any other planet of the solar system.

And so of necessity we have to find out what it is that takes place.

Not in the infinite void, but within the atmospheric zones.

In fact, if there's no air, there's no noise, and as there was a noise at famous trumpet, the phenomenon must occur in the air, the density of which invariably diminishes. The Naturally, the newspapers took up the question in their thousands and treated it in every form, throwing on it both light and darkness,

recording many things about it true or false,

alarming and tranquilizing their readers as the sale required,

and almost driving ordinary people mad.

But one blow, party politics dropped unheated,

and the affairs of the world went on none the worse for it.

But what could this thing be?

There was not an observatory that was not applied to.

...