- Narrator: Something, he didn't know what, but something as big as a battleship has just flown over and past him.
- Maj. Bergen: By the time I get through with you, Mr. Electronics Engineer, you'll be lucky if they let you test batteries for flashlights.
- Gen. Van Buskirk: Three men reported they saw something. Two of them are now dead.
- Mitch MacAfee: That makes me Chief Cook and Bottle Washer in a one-man Bird Watcher's Society!
- Mitch MacAfee: Now, I don't don't care if that bird came from outer space or Upper Saddle River, New Jersey; it's still made of flesh and blood - of some sort - and vulnerable to bullets and bombs.
- Pierre Broussard: You like Pierre's apple jack, oui?
- Mitch MacAfee: Ahh, a perfect antidote for snakebite, thunder, lightning, and disbelieving generals. Fill 'er up, Pierre.
- Mitch MacAfee: Now if this thing of mine works, and we can get close, real close, and bombard that bird's anti-matter energy shield with a stream of mesic atoms, I think we can destroy that shield. The bird would defenseless then except for beak, claws, and wings. You could hit it with everything but the kitchen sink.
- Gen. Van Buskirk: We've got kitchen sinks to spare, son!
- Narrator: Once the world was big, and no man in his lifetime could circle it. Through the centuries, science has made man's lifetime bigger, and the world smaller. Now the farthest corner of the Earth is as close as a pushbutton, and time has lost all meaning as man-made devices speed many many times faster than sound itself.
- Sally: Well, flying battleships, pink elephants, same difference.
- Mitch MacAfee: I said it looked like a battleship, not that it was a battleship.
- Narrator: An electronics engineer, a radar officer, a mathematician and systems analyst, a radar operator, a couple of plotters. People doing a job, well, efficiently, serious, having fun, doing a job. Situation: normal. For the moment...
- Sally: Something that seemingly destroyed four planes and just missed you the first time. Something like your flying battleship?
- Sally: Oh, nothing so domestic as a flying saucer, officer. Just a flying battleship.
- Police Officer: Well, have a good time with your flying battleship.
- Sally: If felt like something collided with us up there!
- Mitch MacAfee: Yeah, a flying battleship that wasn't there.
- Narrator: Once more a frantic pilot radios in a report on a UFO. A bird. A bird as big as a battleship!
- Sally: Did he say what it was?
- Gen. Van Buskirk: Yes, he did. A bird. A bird as big as a battleship...
- Mitch MacAfee: Listen, General, this idea of mine may prove to be as phony as a three dollar bill, but I still think it's worth a listen.
- Mitch MacAfee: That's what I've been talking about for 10 minutes! Get me my pants, will you, General?
- Mitch MacAfee: I know another poem. Be plain in dress and sober in your diet. In short, my dearie, kiss me and be quiet.
- Dr. Karol Noymann: Uh, you are both right. And wrong. The bird itself is not antimatter, but the bird unquestionably radiates some sort of force - an energy screen, some invisible barrier - and that energy screen is antimatter.
- Lt. Gen. Edward Considine: Hundreds of planes from every command are combimg the skies - searching for this overgrown buzzard.
- Mitch MacAfee: Listen General, this idea of mine may prove to be as phony as a three dollar bill, but I still think it's worth a listen.
- Lt. Gen. Edward Considine: It's hard to come up with answers when you don't even know what the question is.
- Sally: Will it work, Mitch?
- Mitch MacAfee: I don't know. I honestly haven't the faintest, foggiest idea. It's one of those cockeyed concepts that you pull down out of Cloud Eight somewhere in sheer desperation.