Bethurum could not get the disturbing image of the disappearing
flashlight out of his mind. Aura Rhanes had said that it was gone
forever, in the same way anyone attacking a Clarion vessel would be made
to disappear forever. And yet, she had also proclaimed that her people
never took life. Wasn't vanishing forever the same thing as death?
He would have to ask her that question if he ever again had the opportunity
to see her and her magnificent spaceship.
After only a few hours of sleep, he rose early in order
to make his visit as planned with Whitey Edwards and his family in Las
Vegas. His laundry has been returned by the hotel cleaners, and he
opened the bag to discover that his nearly-new work suit was in ruins,
the whole left side of the shirt and the rear top of the trousers completely
gone, as if eaten away by acid.
He'd had no contact he could remember with hazardous
chemicals, not even spilled battery acid from the trucks he repaired for
a living. What could have caused such damage?
He was about to march angrily into the hotel laundry
room when it dawned on him that the ruined suit had been the one he was
wearing when he had lifted the Clarion saucer the night before with his
bare hands. Could the craft's magnetic field or some volatile substance
in its makeup have disintegrated the fibers of his cloth-ing? Yet
another question for the mysterious Captain Rhanes.
A TELEPATHIC SUMMONS
As soon as he reached Las Vegas, Bethurum stopped for
a haircut. He wanted to look his best when he met his friend's family.
But he was to have no vacation from his extraterrestrial
contacts. As the barber was finishing, Bethurum spied a tiny woman
passing the shop, wearing a familiar pert beret, black, velvety blouse,
and red skirt with small, flat pleats – Aura Rhanes!
He jumped from the barber's chair, scattered his payment
across the counter, and rushed to try to catch her. As he stepped
out onto the street, the woman acknowledged his presence with a nod that
seemed to cue him that she did not wish to be publicly recognized.
She quickly vanished into a crowd.
That evening, over dinner, Bethurum entertained Whitey
Edwards' family with retellings of his saucer encounter stories to date.
Anxious to convince them of his honesty, he hit upon an idea. He
asked the whole family to follow him out to a distant desert spot where
he would attempt to summon the Clarion scow telepathic-ally, as Captain
Rhanes had assured him from the begin-ning that he would be able to do
just by thinking about the time and place.
But his friend wanted no part of the plan. Feeling dejected
and stubborn, Bethurum decided to go to the desert alone to carry out his
experiment. He got into his truck and drove to a spot near Henderson,
Nevada, where he parked and sat behind the wheel, watching the stars, wishing
hard for a visit from his space friends.
Soon a vivid blue flash appeared in the sky over Nellis
Air Force Base. The light danced several looping circles across the
starry expanse of the night sky, then, within seconds, the scow appeared,
hovering silently over the sands within 50 feet of his truck.
DEFENSIVE ANSWERS
By the time the first of the little men had disembarked,
Bethurum was already out of his truck, anxious to go aboard the saucer.
"Surprised to see us here?" the lady captain greeted
him as he stepped into her quarters.
But he was not surprised. It had all become familiar
to him, even routine. He moved right to his question about the flashlight.
Captain Rhanes had said Clarionites never killed anybody, but if they made
an attacker disappear – forever, she had said about the flashlight – would
that person disappear forever? And to where? And doesn't that
mean he would die?
The lady captain laughed and looked engagingly into his
eyes. "It's true, we never kill anybody," she said, soothingly. Our
enemies fall and disappear before us. Then we go away. They
may rise and go about their business – if they have done no real damage.
There is such a thing as teleportation…"
THE COSMIC CHRISTIANS
Bethurum's mind was eased, even though he had not completely
understood her explanation. He decided to move quickly to his next
question. A young waitress from the Glendale restaurant were he had
once spotted Aura Rhanes and her crewmen had given him a letter, a personal
question for the Space People, written in French. He had claimed that the
Clarionites could speak all languages fluently, and the letter was a test.
The girl had encoded her question in a language Bethurum himself clearly
could not read or speak, and she wanted the reply to come back in that
language as well. Only then would she believe that Bethurum was sincere
in his stories of interplanetary contact.
He gave the letter to Captain Rhanes, and requested that
she respond not only in French, but also in Chinese, to really bring home
the point that the intelligences behind the flying saucers were far greater
than his own. The lady captain held the letter up briefly to the
cabin wall behind her, with the writing facing away. Then she sat
down at her desk, produced pen and paper, and began to write freely in
strange Chinese characters.
As she wrote, Bethurum heard in the distance the familiar
sound of a typewriter clicking away. One of the little men appeared
through the cabin door and handed the captain a thin, typed sheet.
Bethurum could see that the words on the typed sheet were in French.
Had the crewman read the waitress's letter through the
solid wall as his captain had briefly held it up? Had Aura Rhanes
telepathically dictated an answer to him in French, even as she wrote out
a corresponding answer to the girl's question in Chinese? With all
Bethurum knew about these remarkable Space People, he found himself, once
again, amazed.
TRANSLATION OF THE FRENCH LETTER
Dear Maria:
On this planet, exactly as on Earth, human beings are
of the same nature and have to confront the same problems as you and I.
It seems, however, that civilization, such as we find on Earth, has brought
many misfortunes to men. We are Christians here and on this point
we have not retrogressed as I see from here the dreadful paganism which
is gnawing at modern countries. You come from a country where customs
and manners are stricter and, on the other hand, there are in America more
liberties and greater licentiousness to which one must adapt oneself.
If, on the contrary, either your husband or you do not place yourself on
guard against the lures and mirages of attitudes based on negligence and
selfishness in your marital relations, it is often difficult to keep the
love of a husband who has strayed from the straight path without any apparent
cause on your part. Try then to convince him by your unlimited fidelity
and your complete devotion, refusing to permit your heart to revolt or
to reproach past weakness. But, above all, learn to place your faith
in God, and, by Christian effort which will be an example to him, try to
lead him back to a sincere faith or to increase in him the practice of
religion. Here, God has saved us from our inclemencies and has spared
us many social misfortunes. We are not acquainted with divorce, adultery
and infidelity to the dangerous degree that it exists on the Planet Earth.
Learn from us about the power such as we have already displayed it; some
day Earth will no longer be what it is if men do not change; they are destroying
themselves by inches.
From your friend without equal to those on Earth,
Madame Aura
"I fancy this letter will be the talk of the town, when
it gets around," Aura Rhanes said lightly, placing the letter into
Bethurum's hand. She promised him that soon he would
journey with them to visit Clarion itself. Then
she led him out of the saucer. Before he reached his truck, the scow
vanished into the clear desert sky.
Part V: Good-Bye, Aura Rhanes
Between September 16th and November 2nd, 1952, Truman
Bethurum was visited by the scow from Clarion, and its beautiful lady captain,
five more times. With each visit, he learned more about the culture
and customs of the Clarionites, and each time the promise of his personal
visit to their distant world was renewed - although the trip itself always
seemed to be postponed until the scow's "next visit." He was instructed
to make plans for his eventual flight into space by inviting six trustworthy
friends, all men, and making sure they all brought "sturdy shoes."
In his conversations with Captain Rhanes, Bethurum began
to conceive a clear picture of life on the heavenly home world of his strange
friends, and of their mission here on Earth:
Clarion children are educated from birth to value honesty, neatness and order.
All Clarionites continue their education throughout their long lives. The purpose of all education on Clarion is to bring each individual to the greatest fulfillment of his or her personal potential.
Clarionites consider education and its use for enhancing the lives of their people to be the true purpose of life and society. Their visits to Earth are for the purpose of learning and expanding the quality of life for Clarionites and Earthlings alike.
Much education on Clarion is made possible by a device called a "retroscope" which allows them to view any point in space or time, granting them a remarkable grasp of cosmic history.
Clarionites love to dance and sing, and hold many large public celebrations where they can join together to appreciate the splendor of their lives and their world.
Food is grown on Clarion on vast, high-tech farms. When harvest season arrives, everyone pitches in to gather the crops, which are freely shared by all.
Personal transportation on their world is accomplished with "Nutronic Jeeps" which are computer controlled, making them incapable of collision, a feat made possible by a system of "magnetic flashes."
The Clarionites do not find it surprising that most earthlings do not believe in life on other worlds, because they, too, did not accept the possibility until they began their interplanetary expeditions and discovered life on earth. They have since discovered that many planets harbor human life. An interplanetary human community exists in space, into which we will be welcomed when we are ready.
It is possible that beings from worlds other than Clarion are visiting the Earth, probably out of fear of what we might do now that we have developed nuclear weapons. Should we blow ourselves up, it would set loose considerable confusion in space, and many ET races would be negatively effected.
Clarionite visitors to Earth keep their distance from us because of our tendency to attack that which we do not understand. They are secretive out of self-protection, and out of a desire to never hurt an Earth human, even in self-defense.
Clarionite saucers can be easily distinguished in the
night sky from meteors because "falling stars" always fall in a downward,
perfect arc, changing colors as they burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
Any light moving in a straight line, at high speed, and maintaining one
color is probably a Clarion scow or other type of interplanetary craft.
AN EXPLOSIVE GIFT
As Bethurum was walking back to his truck after his tenth
meeting with Aura Rhanes, he came across a strange package lying in the
desert sands as if dropped from the sky. A tag on the package bore
his name. Inside were two long, black flares – to be used, he was
certain, to signal the Admiral's Scow to land if he again wished a visit
or required his friends' intervention. When he got back to his room,
he stored the flares carefully away.
In October, 1952, Bethurum's job at Mormon Mesa ended,
and he soon found himself laboring in a work-camp near Kingman, Arizona.
He worried that the Clarionites might not locate him at the new site, so,
after no further visits had occurred by November 2nd, he set out into the
Arizona desert to test the signal flares. Within moments of the first
flare's bursting into fiery life, the familiar ship appeared, and Bethurum
once again had an audience with Captain Rhanes. The time for his
trip into space was soon, he was informed. He should prepare for
departure.
But when the beautiful lady captain and her magnificent
ship vanished this eleventh time, it was to be their final visit with Truman
Bethurum. His promise of space travel was never fulfilled.
When igniting the second signal flare some weeks later
brought no response from the sky, Bethurum became disconsolate and disappointed.
He guessed that urgent business elsewhere had diverted Captain Rhanes from
her promise, perhaps even recalling her to her heavenly home world.
But still, he felt abandoned and sad.
When the Arizona job ended, he returned home to his wife
and daughters in Redondo Beach, California. His wife, Mary, still
refused to believe his saucer stories, and forbade him to speak of his
experiences in their home. Bethurum's depression deepened.
AN ASSURANCE FROM ABOVE
One day a letter arrived in the morning mail that changed
everything in the Bethurum household. World-famous extraterrestrial
contactee George Adamski had heard about Bethurum's experiences among the
Space People, and was inviting Truman and Mary to visit him on Mt. Palomar,
where he lived and shared his own stories of interplanetary contact.
That so prominent a public figure had taken a serious interest in her husband's
stories softened Mary's resolve, and she agreed to join him in the visit
to Mt. Palomar.
Adamski made a tape recording of Bethurum telling his
story in detail, a tape destined to be played for the many visitors to
Mr. Adamski's home, and shared among his fellow saucer researchers.
The tape was a sensation, and soon saucer enthusiasts were knocking on
Bethurum's door at all hours of the day and night, and calling him from
every corner of the globe. At Mr. Adamski's urging, he enlisted a
professional ghostwriter, Ms. Mary K. Tennison, to help him compile his
stories and notes into a definitive narrative of all his Clarion contacts.
Truman Bethurum never made it into space on a Clarion
scow, but his book Aboard a Flying Saucer established him as the second
great contactee of the 1950s, and launched him forever into the firmament
of stars that make up the true Golden Age of Flying Saucers.