Aboard a Flying Saucer: Truman Bethurum and the People of the Planet Clarion by Frank G. Wilkinson Read Free Book Online Page B

and gone aboard a flying saucer? Had it all been a dream or heat-induced hallucination?
     
    But on the night of August 3, 1952, he encountered the gleaming disc again, confirming forever, at least for himself, the physical reality of his experience, and the real presence of extraterrestrial vehicles and their occupants on Earth.
     
    Still working the night shift, Bethurum was just completing repairs to several trucks on the camp's perimeter when he saw what looked like a meteor streaking through the night sky, pulsing brightly from bluish-green to yellow, orange, and back again. The "meteor" fell from the sky, vanishing silently behind the duned desert landscape about a half mile east of the site of his initial encounter. Sure the saucer had returned, Bethurum lit out across the desert in his own small truck, bumping and bouncing over the rough terrain, too eager even to bother searching out a road toward his destination. He found the ship again hovering close to the ground, only a mile from busy Highway 91, the main thoroughfare through Salt Lake City.
     
    A group of small men milled about in front of the saucer, talking together in that same mumbling language whose rumble had awakened him in his truck when they first met. A doorway opened and the lady captain appeared, beckoning for him to approach with a wave of her hand. He followed her into the ship and down the long corridor to her cabin. The captain gestured for him to take a seat on the curving couch, then sat beside him, smiling.
     
    They talked openly together, like old friends. She explained that the nature of earthlings and of her own people were very similar, that the people of her world were human beings, too, sharing the same feelings and foibles, the same natural talents and challenges. Her people, however, had met these challenges directly, and had chosen a less destructive course than the one presently being pursued by the people of Earth. She was unimpressed by Earth technology and military might as well, lamenting our invariably destructive use of these resources. She valued Earth's politics and politicians no more highly.
     
    "These things are sad," she answered in response to questions concerning economic inequality and juvenile delinquency. "I'm glad we're troubled with neither on Clarion."
     
    So, their home world was called Clarion . What a place it must be, Bethurum thought! A world without trouble of any kind. A world very much like an earthling's dream of Heaven...
     
    After only half an hour, the lady captain from the planet Clarion signaled that the visit was over. As soon as Bethurum placed his feet on the sandy ground outside the great saucer, the disc was gone, streaking away into the night sky as mysteriously as it had appeared.
     
    He glanced at his watch, but it had stopped. Even the winding gears of the now-useless device appeared to have given out under the assault of the saucer's magnetic filed. He shoved the broken timepiece into his pocket and started toward his truck.
     

A PROPER INTRODUCTION
     
    Barely two weeks later, on August 18, 1952, the "scow" returned, this time streaking down from the sky to a spectacular, silent landing less than 200 yards from Bethurum's small truck. He joined the captain again in her cabin, this time armed, in anticipation of their conversation, with a list of questions he had compiled since their last meeting.
     
    Topping his list was the lady captain's name. His friend and boss, Whitey Edwards, had inquired about the name of the heavenly feminine creature Bethurum had so enthusiastically described, and, when he had to admit that he did not know, that he had never even thought to ask, Edwards had chided him, "Then you haven't been properly introduced yet!" He would remedy that!
     
    "Aura Rhanes," she told him, then she spelled it out loud, in English, so that he could accurately record it among the growing notes he had begun to keep of his encounters.
     
    They spoke together of the vast