The voice softened and added, "Take it easy, pal, you"re among friends."

After politely reading off the s.p.a.ceman, or whoever he was, for scaring him, pal Fry and the voice settled down for a friendly moonlight chat. Fry learned that the voice was indeed that of a s.p.a.ceman and they were down to pick up a new supply of air. After about four years of earth air transfusions, according to the s.p.a.ceman, they would become adapted to our atmosphere, and our gravity, and become "immunized to your bi-otics." The craft, Fry was told, was a "cargo carrier," unmanned and built to zoom down and scoop up earth air.

The conversation went on, waxing technical at times, and ended with an invitation to look into the ship. Then the s.p.a.ceman, possibly carried away by all the interest Fry was showing, offered a ride.

Fry accepted and they antidemagnetized off for New York City. Thirty minutes later they were back at White Sands.

Over New York City they came down from 35 to 20 miles and Fry could read the marquee of the Fulton Theater. "The Seven Year Itch" was playing.

He hadn"t told the Air Force about his ride before because he was afraid he"d lose his job. But, at the press conference, he did plug his new book, _The_ _White_ _Sands_ _Incident_.

By this time Adamski had already published his book _Flying_ _Saucers_ _Have_ _Landed_ and it looked as if Fry was going to cut him out. But Fry took a lie detector test on a widely viewed West Coast television show and flunked it flat.

His stock dropped as fast as it had risen but the decline was somewhat checked when a well known Southern California medium wrote to "her old friend" J. Edgar Hoover about the situation. Hoover, the story goes, shot back an answer--lie detectors are no good.

But the damage had been done. The "rigged" lie detector test had unfortunately relegated Daniel Fry, "engineer," "missile expert,"

"part owner of an engineering plant," and interplanetary hitchhiker to the bush league.

With Adamski and Bethurum on the stage and Fry peeking out of the wings all h.e.l.l broke loose.

One could say that everyone tried to get into the act, but I"d rather think that each colony of s.p.a.ce people tried to promote their own candidate.

In England, one Cedric Allingham met a Martian on the moors. In France, Germany, the United States, Portugal, Brazil, Spain-- everywhere--people "too uneducated to pull a hoax" met green men, dark men, white men, big men with little heads, little men with big heads and men with pointed heads. They wore motorcycle belts, baggy pants, diver suits, and were naked.

One lady proudly announced that a Venusian had tried to seduce her and within days another snorted in disgust. A Martian _had_ seduced her.

Then Adamski took a hop through outer s.p.a.ce and back.

Saucers poured forth words of wisdom via radio, light beams and mental telepathy. All of these messages were duly recorded on tape and sales were hot at $4.50 per 10-minute tape.

Not to be outdone by any other lousy planet, the Venusians picked up a young man from Los Angeles and actually took him to Venus. Not once, but three times.

He packed in audiences by telling how he had been contacted one night and asked by a "strange man" if he would go on an important mission. Afraid, but not one to shirk his patriotic duties, he met the stranger at a prearranged spot and was whisked off to Venus.

During a high level conference up there he was given the word: Tell the earthlings to lay off their atomic weapons, or else. They"re killing all our doves and we make our flying saucers out of the feathers our live doves shed.

The Venusians, this s.p.a.ce traveler warned his audiences, were already infiltrating the earth and he intimated that they were ready to move in case we didn"t cease atomic testing.

His next two trips to Venus were purely social.

The highlight of his lecture, when he awes his audience, is when he whips out his proof: (1) a blood smear on a slide--genuine Venusian blood, (2) an affidavit from his landlady stating he wasn"t home on three occasions, and (3) a photo of a Venusian walking in Los Angeles" McArthur Park. The mere fact that the Venusian looks like any Joe Doakes walking down the street is a picayunish point.

Venusians look just like us.

And it hasn"t stopped. During the big UFO flap of 1957 a man stumbled onto a landed saucer and chatted awhile with its occupants.

A few months later, soon after the atomic powered _U.S.S._ _Nautilus_ made its historic trip under the polar ice cap, this same man snorted in disgust. He packed his suitcase and started on a lecture tour.

Months before _he"d_ been there in a flying saucer.

Once again people sh.e.l.led out hard cash to hear his story.

Wherever you are, Mr. P. T. Barnum, you are undoubtedly grinning from ear to ear.

But there is a sober side to this apparently comical picture. The common undertone to many of these stories "hot from the lips of a s.p.a.ceman" is Utopia. On these other worlds there is no illness, they"ve learned how to cure all diseases. There are no wars, they"ve learned how to live peaceably. There is no poverty, everyone has everything he wants. There is no old age, they"ve learned the secret of eternal life.

Too many times this subtle pitch can be boiled down to, "Step right up folks and put a donation in the pot. I"m just on the verge of learning the s.p.a.ceman"s secrets and with a little money to carry out my work I"ll give _you_ the secret."

I"ve seen a man, crippled by arthritis, hobbling out into the desert in hopes that his "friend who talks to the Martians" could get them to cure him on their next trip. I"ve seen pensioners, who needed every buck they had, sh.e.l.l out money to "help buy radio equipment" to contact some planet to find out how they"d solved their economic problems. I saw a little old lady in a many times mended dress put down a ten dollar bill to help promote a "peace campaign" backed by the Venusians. She"d lost two sons in the war but had four grandsons she wanted to keep alive. A couple died and left $15,000 to a man to build a "longevity machine" so others could live. The Martians had given him the plans.

A woman died of thirst and exposure in the Mojave Desert trying to reach the spot where a man told her he was going to "make a contact."

Some of it isn"t comical.

Even though the field is becoming crowded, through thick and thin, Martian and Venusian, the old Maestro, George Adamski, is still head and shoulders above the rest. The hamburger stand is boarded up and he lives in a big ranch house. He vacations in Mexico and has his own clerical staff. His two books _Flying_ _Saucers_ _Have_ _Landed_ and _Inside_ _the_ _s.p.a.ce_ _Ships_ have sold something in the order of 200,000 copies and have been translated into nearly every language except Russian. To date, he"s had eleven visits from people from Mars, Venus and Saturn. Evidently Truman Bethurum"s Aura Rhanes put out the word about earthmen because two beautiful s.p.a.cewomen have now entered Adamski"s life: an "incredibly lovely" blonde named Kalna, and the equally beautiful Illmuth.

Only a few months ago, while on one of his numerous nationwide lecture tours, a saucer unexpectedly picked Adamski up in Kansas City and took him on a galactic cruise before depositing him at Ft.

Madison, Iowa, where he had a lecture date. He "wowed" the packed auditorium with his "proof"--an unused Kansas City to Ft. Madison train ticket.

Last week, in the Netherlands (Adamski"s nationwide tours have expanded to world-wide tours), he repeated his exploits to Queen Juliana.

But at Buckingham Palace, Mr. Barnum, all he saw was the changing of the guard.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Do They or Don"t They?

During the past four years the most frequent question I"ve been asked is: "What do you personally think? Do unidentified flying objects exist, or don"t they?"

I"m positive they don"t.

I was very skeptical when I finished my tour of active duty with the Air Force and left Project Blue Book in 1953, but now I"m convinced.

Since I left the Air Force the Age of the Satellite has arrived and we"re in it. Along with this new era came the long range radars, the satellite tracking cameras, and the other instruments that would have picked up any type of "s.p.a.ceship" coming into our atmosphere.

None of this instrumentation has ever given any indication of any type of unknown vehicle entering the earth"s atmosphere.

I checked this with the Department of Defense and I checked this through friends a.s.sociated with tracking projects. In both cases the results were completely negative.

There"s not even a glimmer of hope for the UFO.

Then there"s Project MOONWATCH, the Optical Satellite Tracking Program for the International Geophysical Year.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the director of MOONWATCH wrote to me: "I can quite safely say that we have no record of ever having received from our MOONWATCH teams any reports of sightings of unidentified objects which had any characteristics different from those of an orbiting satellite, a slow meteor, or of a suspected plane mistaken for a satellite."

Dr. Hynek should know. He has investigated and a.n.a.lyzed more UFO reports than any other scientist in the world.

And the third convincing point is that twelve years have pa.s.sed since the first UFO report was made and still there is not one shred of material evidence of anything unknown and no photos of anything other than meaningless blobs of light.

The next question that always arises is: "But people are seeing something. Experienced observers, like pilots, scientists and radar operators have reported UFO"s."