Contact across the Solar System

UFO's and Star Trekking

Kalna and Ilmuth continued to read plenty of books and other publications about UFO's, and they continued to find a few possible sightings of SSC spacecraft here and there.

Roswell? Kalna recalled another pilot telling her about it. "One of our remote-controlled probes went out of control, and it was headed for a crash. We sent it a suicide command, but it didn't work as well as we hoped. It turned into lots of metal and plastic fragments. We saw it from a distance, but we had to depart, and we couldn't send in another probe or a scout to check it out. When we returned to it, the Earthers had gotten to it, and we couldn't do much with it."

UFO abductions? It was a depressing public-relations problem. If the SSC ever tries to make contact with the Earthers again, how will the SSC convince the Earthers that its people don't want to do clumsy medical examinations on them against their will?

Crop circles? A new genre of Earther art, it seemed. Neither of the two knew of anyone who was making them, and neither did Orthon or any others that they asked.

Cattle mutilations? What a dumb way of taking samples. More likely some Earther predatory animals.

To get what UFO believers were thinking, they decided to go to a UFO convention. But there was a problem. Some of the convention's attendees may have read George Adamski's "Inside the Spaceships" and they might recognize the two. So they decided to use disguises. They quickly found a store that sells wigs, and Kalna got a light-brown curly wig, and Ilmuth a black tightly-curled wig. They decided to dress in their usual sort of clothing, however, because it had successfully made them look like typical college students or typical yuppies.

They went, and they questioned several of the people there, especially those with buttons about various UFO stuff. Abductions. Roswell. Area 51. Government coverups. MJ-12. Blue Book. Billy Meier. Pleiadians. The Mars Face. Many of those present dismissed UFO contactees as fantasizers and fakers, though they'd sometimes get into arguments over George's and Billy Meier's spacecraft pictures. Most of those present considered it self-evident that various governments knew more than what they were telling us about UFO's.

Kalna quizzed someone with an Area 51 pin about that US military base, and she found out that he believed that it housed some crashed ET spacecraft that its personnel were reverse-engineering there. She also quizzed someone who thought that UFO contactees were all frauds and enemies of true UFOlogy. There had to be something emotional that was driving such a strong conclusion, she thought. Something that would make contactees seem much worse than harmless fantasizers. She read his mind, and she concluded that he had a big reason that he was unwilling to state. He considered UFO-contactee accounts too good to be true.

This was another potential problem for the SSC if it ever decides to make contact again, she thought. The SSC may seem too good to be true to many Earthers.

Not to be outdone, Ilmuth quizzed someone about UFO abductions, and he said that there was evidence of several species doing the abducting. Not just the well-known Grays, but various others, like Reptilians and Insectoids. As to how they get in and out, he was sure that they have teleportation devices. Like on Star Trek.

"So it's 'Beam us up'"?

"Yeah."

Ilmuth also quizzed a believer in the Mars Face. She had to keep herself from describing when she once saw it up close from a scoutcraft. That believer seemed convinced that NASA was in on The Great UFO Coverup, and that NASA knows about lots of artifacts on Mars's surface. A lot more artifacts than the Mars Face.

The two bought some UFO books, and as they headed home, they discussed what they found.

Kalna noted "Not even that anti-contactee guy suspected me."

Ilmuth responded "I wasn't suspected either. Looks like our wigs worked."

Then all that stuff about government coverups. It would be hard to tell what various Earther government agencies were keeping secret, even for the SSC. But what Earther governments have revealed so far didn't suggest that they know much more than any other Earthers.

The two also went to a Star Trek convention, and they decided to dress in Star Trek costumes for the event. They decided to dress in the shirt-and-pants TOS version, because it is more modest and reasonable than those minidresses, and because it's fairly easy to make. As they did at the UFO convention, they spent much of the time quizzing various people there. They asked several people what they saw in the Star Trek universe, and they found that many of them liked that it was an optimistic view of humanity's future. Humanity would not destroy itself with wars and the like, and would eventually become united. But it still had plenty of respect for individual differences, so everybody was not all alike. Not only that, humanity would make contact with the inhabitants of other planets, and join with them to create a peaceful, cooperative United Federation of Planets. Even more, the UFP's spaceships often have multiplanet crews, with crewpeople from different planets fully accepted. Much like what the SSC had achieved.

Ilmuth talked to someone who described himself as a technical expert on Star Trek, and she asked about some of the howlers of the series. That expert conceded that some of this stuff was concessions to the Earthbound intuitions of many of its viewers, and he seemed uncomfortable about doing so.

The two also traveled to Arizona to visit the Grand Canyon and the Great Barringer Meteor Crater. They'd seen both structures from the air or outer space, and now they got to be physically present at those structures. They ended up doing a lot of hiking at both attractions, and they used a lot of sunscreen to protect from the Sun's ultraviolet light, especially Kalna with her fair skin. Wearing big hats and sunglasses also helped, and with their long-sleeved shirts, blue jeans, sneakers, backpacks, and binoculars, it was hard to tell that they came from other planets.

The Grand Canyon is a huge, meandering gash in the Earth's crust, nearly a kilometer / half a mile deep, carved over the last few million years by the Colorado River. The rock itself is several layers from 200 million to 2 billion years old, and one can easily recognize the different layers from their different erosion rates. Some have vertical sides, while others have diagonal sides. They also found out what Earther geologists said about it, yet more of their remarkable work in untangling the extremely complicated geological history of their homeworld. These and other scientists would be great people to contact, except that they would consider the two to be kooks.

Meteor Crater is a shallow pit about 1.6 km / 1 mi across and 170 m / 570 ft deep. The two had seen numerous impact craters over their career, but they were now standing on the edge of one without needing spacesuits, the best-preserved one on its planet.

Ilmuth noted "The Earther geologists have identified 100 or 200 -- I forget how many -- on their planet."

Kalna responded "I've seen pictures of some of them. They are almost unrecognizable. Even our observers have trouble recognizing some of them."