Page Content (OCR)
Other details were as follows: the object made a sound similar to that of a giant beehive and the air seemed strangely warm around it. Two of the men were standing on the ground near a ladder; the third one was on a telescopic elevator, the base of which touched the ground, and was holding something near a group of pipes: this produced the sparks seen by Facchini. They were about five feet nine inches tall, dressed in gray diving suits with an oval transparent glass in front of their faces, which were concealed behind gray masks. From the fore portion of the masks a flexible pipe emerged at the level of the mouth. They wore earphones. Inside the craft could be seen a series of oxygen-type containers and many dials. When Facchini offered his help, the men talked among themselves in gutteral sounds, and one of them took a camera-like device from around his neck and projected a beam of light on Facchini, who tumbled away for several yards. He was then caught by a rush of air and thrown again to the ground. They subsequently ignored him as they recovered the elevator and brought it inside the craft, which took off. After a sleepless night, Facchini returned to the site and found some metal fragments left by the soldering operation, also four circular imprints and patches of scorched grass. He revealed the observation only ten days later, when his doctor treated him for the pains and bruises resulting from his fall and advised him to call police. Ministry of Defense technicians who examined the metal samples found them to consists of an "anti-friction material very resistant to heat." The incident had other witnesses, who testified privately. Had Mr. Facchini been exposed deliberately to a faked apparition of space beings? What could be the purpose of such an elaborate hoax? Who can afford to contrive such a complex scheme, for so little apparent result? Is human imagination alone capable of playing such tricks on itself? Or should we hypothesize that an advanced race somewhere in the universe and sometime in the future has been showing us three-dimensional space operas for the last two thousand years, in an attempt to guide our civilization? If so, do they deserve our congratulations? Are we dealing instead with a parallel universe, another dimension, where there are human races living, and where we may go at our expense, never to return to the present? Are these races only semihuman, so that in order to maintain contact with us, they need crossbreeding with men and women of our planet? Is this the origin of the many tales and legends where genetics plays a great role: the symbolism of the Virgin in occultism and religion, the fairy tales involving human midwives and changelings, the sexual overtones of the flying saucer reports, the biblical stories of intermarriage between the Lord's angels and terrestrial women, whose offspring were giants? From that mysteious universe, are higher being projecting objects that can materialize and dematerialize at will? Are the UFOs "windows" rather than "objects"? There is nothing to support these assumptions, and yet, in view of the historical continuity of the phenomenon, alternatives are hard to find, unless we deny the reality of all the facts, as our peace of mind would indeed prefer. The problem cannot be solved yet. If we absolutely must have something to believe, then we should join one of the numerous groups of people who have all the "answers." Read Menzel's books or the Condon Report, that fine piece of scientific recklessness. Or subscribe to the magazines that "prove" that "flying saucers are real and from outer space." I am not writing for such people, but for those few who have gone through all this and have graduated to a higher, cleaner level of perception of the total meaning of that tenuous dream that underlies the many nightmares of human history — for ale a eee et ate atta te Late Lt Conjectures It may seem useless to conjecture about a mystery that, according to all evidence, remains unidentified. But in this book we have already seen that the UFO phenomenon has left a clear series c 1 woe tou , 1 1 tema dt of marks in the beliefs and attributes of our contemporaries, in a pattern not only identifiable but also by no means unprecedented. It is not pointless to try to devise critical tests, both sociological those who have recognized the delicate levers of the collective unconscious.