In his slightly broken English he told how he was the son of poor, Polish immigrants with hardly any formal education.

To look at the man and to listen to his story you had an immediate urge to believe him. Maybe it was his appearance. He was dressed in well worn, but neat, overalls. He had slightly graying hair and the most honest pair of eyes I"ve ever seen.

Or maybe it was the way he told his story. He spoke softly and naively, almost pathetically, giving the impression that "most people think I"m crazy, but honestly, I"m really not."

Adamski started his story by telling how he had spent many long and cold nights at his telescope "at the request of the government"

trying to photograph one of the flying saucers everyone had been talking about. He"d been successful, as the full photograph racks on the wall showed, and he thought the next step would be to actually try to contact a saucer.

For some reason, Adamski didn"t know exactly why, on November 19th he"d decided to go out into the Mojave Desert. He"d called some friends and told them to meet him there.

By noon the next day the party, which consisted of Adamski and six others, had met and were eating lunch near the town of Desert Center on the California-Arizona border.

They looked for saucers, but except for an occasional airplane, the cloudless blue sky was empty. They were about ready to give it up as a bad day when another airplane came over. Again they looked up, but this time, in addition to seeing the airplane, they saw a silvery, cigar-shaped "flying saucer."

For some reason, again he didn"t know why, the group of people moved down the road where Adamski left them and took off into the desert alone.

By this time the "s.p.a.ce ship" had disappeared and once again Adamski was about to give up.

Then, a flash of light caught his eye and a smaller saucer (he later learned it was a "scout ship") came drifting down and landed about a half mile from him. He swung his camera into action and started to take pictures. Unfortunately, the one picture Adamski had to show was so out of focus the scout ship looked like a desert rock.

He took a few more pictures, he told his audience, and had stopped to admire the little scout ship when he suddenly noticed a man standing nearby.

Now, even those in the crowded restaurant who had been smirking when he started his story had put down their beers and were listening.

This is what they had come to hear.

You could actually have heard the proverbial pin drop.

Adamski told what went through his mind when he first saw the man-- maybe a prospector. But he noticed the man"s long, shoulder-length, sandy-colored hair, his dark skin, his Oriental features and his ski- pant type trousers. He was puzzled.

Then it came into his mind like a flash, he was looking at a person from some other world!

Through mental pictures, sign language, and a few words of English, Adamski found out the man was from Venus, he was friendly, and that they (the Venusians) were worried about radiation from our atomic bombs.

They talked. George pointed to his camera but the man from Venus politely refused to be photographed. Adamski pleaded to go into the "ship" to see how it operated but the Venusian refused this, too.

They talked some more--of s.p.a.ceships and of solar systems--before Adamski walked with his new found friend to the saucer and saw the Venusian off into s.p.a.ce.

At this point Adamski recalled how he had glanced up in the sky to see the air full of military aircraft.

Needless to say, the rest of Adamski"s party, who had supposedly seen the "contact" from a mile away, were excited. They rushed up to him and it was then that they noticed the footprints.

Plainly imprinted in the desert sand were curious markings made by ridges on the soles of the Venusian"s shoes.

At the urging of the crowd in the restaurant Adamski took an old shoe box out from under the counter. One of his party, that day, had just happened to have some plaster of paris and the shoe box contained plaster casts of shoe prints with strange, hieroglyphic- like symbols on the soles. No one in the restaurant asked how the weight of a mere man could make such sharp imprints in the dry, coa.r.s.e desert sand.

Next he showed the sworn statements of the witnesses and the crowd moved in around him for a better look.

As I left he was graciously filling people in on more details and the cash register was merrily ringing up saucer picture sales.

I didn"t write the trip off as a complete loss, the weather in California was beautiful.

Adamski held the UFO spotlight for some time.

The Venusians paid him another visit, this time at the restaurant, and he photographed their "ship." This, whether by Venusian fate or design, increased the flow of traffic to the restaurant at the base of Mt. Palomar.

It also had its side effects.

An astronomer from the observatory that houses the world famous 200- inch telescope on top of Mt. Palomar told me: "I hate to admit it but the number of week end visitors has picked up here. People drive down to hear George and decide that since they"re down here they might as well come up and see our establishment."

But George Adamski didn"t hold the front center of the stage for long. In rapid succession others stepped forward and hesitantly admitted that they too had been contacted.

Truman Bethurum, a journeyman mechanic of Redondo Beach, California, was next up.

Actually, he admitted, _he_ had been the first earthman to talk to a person from another world. Back on the night of July 26, 1952, four months before Adamski, a group of eight or ten, short, olive-skinned men with black wavy hair, had awakened him while he was asleep in a truck in the desert near Mormon Flats, Nevada.

These little men, unlike Adamski"s, spoke any language.

"You name it," they"d quipped to Bethurum, "we speak it."

In a newspaper article that was voted "Best Read of 1953," Bethurum told how the little men he met had been more cooperative and had actually taken him into their saucer, a huge job 300 feet in diameter and 16 feet high.

Once inside, Bethurum had met the captain of the "scow"--a true leader of men. Aura Rhanes was her name and she was a Venus de Milo with arms and warm blood. "When she spoke her words rhymed." They chatted and Bethurum learned that he was on the "Admiral"s scow" the command ship of Clarion"s fleet of saucers.

All in all, Bethurum made eleven visits to Aura"s scow. Each time they"d sit and talk. Bethurum told her about the earth and she told of the idyllic, Shangri-La type planet of Clarion--a yet undiscovered planet which is always opposite the moon.

But before too long, both Truman Bethurum and George Adamski had to move over. Daniel Fry, an engineer, stepped in.

At a press conference to kick off the International Saucer Convention in Los Angeles, Fry told how he had not only contacted the s.p.a.cemen _two_ _years_ _before_ Adamski and Bethurum, he had actually _ridden_ in a flying saucer.

It had all started on the night of July 4, 1950, when engineer Fry was temporarily employed at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico.

It was a hot night, and with nothing else to do, Fry decided to take a walk across the desert. He hadn"t traveled far when he saw a bluish light hovering over the mountains which rim this famous proving ground. He paid no attention. He"d heard flying saucer stories before and just plain didn"t believe them.

But as he watched, the light came closer and closer and closer, until a weird craft came silently to rest on the desert floor not seventy feet away.

For seconds, Fry, who had seen missile age developments at White Sands that would have dumfounded most laymen, merely stood and stared.

The object, Fry told newsmen, was an "ovate spheroid about thirty feet at the equator." (Fry has a habit of drifting off into the technical). Its outside surface was a highly polished silver with a slight violet iridescent glow.

At first Fry wanted to run but his rigid technical training overrode his common, natural urges. He decided to go over to the object and see what made it tick.

He circled it several times and nothing broke the desert silence.

Then he touched it.

"Better not touch that hull, pal, it"s hot," boomed a voice in a Hollywoodian tone.

Fry recoiled.