Contact across the Solar System

Los Angeles, City of Angels III

Soon after, the Adamski Gang headed to their next stop, Los Angeles. They got dropped off near Santa Barbara, and some residents drove them to their home near that town in a van that they rented. Kalna picked up the tab for that also. "Land is cheap out here," said one of the residents, "and you can still get a good connection to the Earthers' data network," referring to the Internet.

Kalna and Ilmuth also got to visit their old haunts again, Caltech and UCLA, and the Adamski Gang and the residents got to visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, home of the main command center for the Americans' interplanetary spacecraft. The place also had mockups of some of these spacecraft. Ilmuth and Firkon looked at a go-cart-sized rover and thought "This is what some of our fellow Martians are so afraid of." They also learned about how the JPL people drive their rovers. They radio to Mars some drive commands, and the rover radios back some pictures. The rover's drivers then look at those pictures and decide what to do next. This clearly isn't anything to lose sleep over, the two thought, even if it would be hard to explain it to their fellow Martians.

Firkon and Ramu also got to visit lots of LA stuff. It was more than sixty years, and a lot had changed -- and a lot had not changed. If anything, LA had changed more between their two earlier visits than it had changed from their previous visit to their current visit. LA's suburbs sprawled even farther out, and LA also had more freeways, but much of LA was still very similar, like cars being everywhere. But Firkon noticed a curious change. When the two were last in LA, it was dismantling its urban-rail lines, but when they were visiting it now, LA had made some progress in building new ones. Pretty nice ones, even if rather limited compared to what LA once had.

LA was still the movie and TV capital of the United States, still an important center for the production of movie and TV entertainments for not only the US, but also for much of the rest of the world. In LA itself, its entertainment industry was still headquartered in LA's Hollywood district. So LA with its Hollywood district was still an important cultural center.

LA's oil pumps also continued to be active, continuing to pump oil from beneath the city.

The next day, the Adamski Gang tried to find the site of Palomar Gardens Cafe, where George had worked during his contacts with them. It was gone, burned down, and its land now part of a campground. But they gave themselves a consolation prize: a trip up Mt Palomar to its famous observatory with its three big telescopes. Its biggest one, with a mirror about 200 inches / 5 meters across, was for a few decades the Earthers' biggest optical telescope.

They spent the night in a motel in Indio, and they entertained themselves by watching Earther TV shows and discussing them, though heckling was sometimes a better word. The news was dominated by Saudi Arabia and how its ruling family was splitting into hostile factions.

The next day, they visited the spot where it all began, where Orthon first met George. The residents parked their van on the nearby roadside, then everybody walked up a nearby hill to the ravine where the two had had their famous first contact.

"I never expected to see it from the ground," said Kalna.

"I was a bit busy at the ship's controls to notice very much," said Ilmuth.

They took several pictures, including an Adamski-Gang group shot and a shot of Orthon and Ramu standing where Orthon and George had stood.

But if any other people were there, they would have thought that these people were fellow Southern Californians on an outing, not visitors from other planets who had come to the spot where they first met one of their Earth friends.

On the way back to Santa Barbara, they stopped off to visit contactee George van Tassel's long-time home, a giant rock near Landers, CA that he had lived underneath for much of his life. He had held several UFO conventions there, and Kalna said about them "What a missed opportunity."

Orthon responded "We wanted to be cautious."

Ilmuth said "We could never figure out what his 'Ashtar' was supposed to be. Even Solgonda couldn't learn much about that," referring to a SSC person who had contacted him.

Kalna said "Some of what he said was just plain weird. Like men from our worlds interbreeding with female Earth apes."

Orthon shook his head, but Zuhl said "Looks like I missed out on a lot of fun."

Firkon said "I can't say much. Ramu and I wanted a break from the Earth."

Ramu said "Yeah. Earthers can be a bit much to take."

Orthon said "I talked to Solgonda about our contact effort, and he wasn't very interested. He said that Earthers are too irrational."

They also stopped off at Kirk's Rock at Vasquez Rocks, a tilted layered rock. "Where Kirk fought the Gorn," explained Ilmuth.

She and Kalna then had to explain the Star-Trek Original-Series episode "Arena" to the others. Our heroes arrive at an Earth colony that is under attack, and they fight off the attackers. They then chase the attackers' ship. But along the way, both get stopped in space by super aliens, and then Captain Kirk and his Gorn counterpart, a lizard man, get placed in some wilderness area and made to fight each other. Kirk improvises a crude gun, and he is just about to kill the Gorn when he lets the Gorn live. That impresses those super aliens, the Metrons.

Firkon then stated that this rock could become a geological tourist attraction for the people of the worlds, and the gang then exchanged anecdotes about interesting geological formations and effects that they have seen on the Earth and elsewhere. Firkon and Ramu and Kalna and Ilmuth visiting the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater, Kalna seeing Hawaii's glowing lava along with its city lights at night ("I used a spectroscope to be sure"), and Zuhl describing how a fellow pilot once explored some deep-ocean topography by traveling underwater in a modified scoutcraft.

They made it back to Santa Barbara, but they wanted a good rest after that big day. They wandered downtown Santa Barbara the next day, and that night they went to a beach for a pickup. As he did with the other residents that he departed from on this trip, Orthon praised his resident hosts for their willingness to stay on the Earth and risk Earther xenophobia as the SSC makes contact with the Earthers. Then two scoutcraft arrived, and the Adamski Gang boarded the scouts with their luggage and waved goodbye to the residents. They waved back. Orthon also said goodbye to the Earth. This may be his last time on the Earth in a long time, he thought.

The scouts speeded westward and evening twilight became visible in front of them as a thin bluish line. The ship became visible ahead of them, and the scouts went aboard. The Gang then entertained everybody by describing their Earthly adventures and showing off pictures of what they saw.