radiant ash: Holloman Air Force Base is located 10 miles west of Alamogordo, in south-central New Mexico. It was in a corner of the then Alamogordo Army Airfield that Trinity Site was constructed, and, on July l6, 1945, the first atomic device was exploded.

monkey: Hanuman, the popular "monkey chief" of Hinduism, was an epiphany of the solar god, Indra. Called the "yellow ape," because his complexion glowed "like molten gold," Hanuman was able to fly, as well as being an accomplished grammarian.

astrochimp: At Holloman's Aeromedical Research Laboratory, chimpanzees were launched as high as 36 miles into space. Kidnapped from equatorial Africa, the chimpanzee "has this new role in history which has brought him closer to man and even made him a Space Age hero in keeping with the best of our Western traditions." (Reynolds,1967)

banana-flavored: "Nuclear War is Bad for Bananas." (Keyes,1987)

Naked: Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the famous Tarzan the Ape Man series, served with Troop B, 7th Regiment, U.S. Cavalry, in Arizona, 1896. He wrote two novels based on the Apache Indians: The War Chief (1926), and Apache Devil (1927). The Apaches "have reduced the art of war to its most primitive conception; they have stripped it stark to its ultimate purpose, leaving the unlovely truth of it quite naked, unadorned by sophistries or hypocrisies--to kill without being killed." (Burroughs,1964)

metallic: "An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico...Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture." (Fawcett & Greenwood,1984)

mutations: "The twentieth-century baby is a Neanderthal at heart. Suddenly whisked back in time and exchanged with a Neanderthal offspring, he or she would be well equipped to hobnob with the sabertooths and woolly mastodons; to compete, communicate, and copulate with fellow Neanderthals; in short, to fit in quite nicely." (Lipton,1985)

stealthy: A squadron of F-111-A Stealth fighters is presently stationed at Holloman in 1992.

King of Birds: "The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle (stationed at Holloman) is widely considered to be the world's greatest fighter, able to outfly, outmanoeuvre and outshoot anything else in the sky." (Spick,1986)

suspended: A ceremonial kite was flown to welcome Henry, King of Poland, into Krakow on Feb.15,1573. "What seemed most rare at this ceremony was that a white eagle appeared, flying continuously above the head of the King all along the streets and arranged with such artifice that one could not see whence proceeded its movement." (Dupleix,164l)

leaping: On June 20,1540, in Viseu, Portugal, Joao Torto--on wings made from iron hoops covered with cloth, and a helmet representing an eagle's head with open beak--leaped "from the tower of the cathedral, intending to fly to the nearby Saint Matthew's fields." Instead, he "crashed on a roof when his helmet slipped over his eyes and he died a few days later." (Hart,1985)

right arm: "It is man's right arm that is dedicated to the god of war; it is the mana of the right shoulder that guides the spear to its target; it is therefore only the right hand that will carry and wield the weapon." (Hertz,1960)

fading star:"This is the dead land/This is the cactus land/Here the stone images/Are raised, here they receive/The supplication of a dead man's hand/Under the twinkle of a fading star." (T.S. Eliot. From, "The Hollow Men.")