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20. People Who Ride in Flying Saucers Howard Menger not only successfully established contact with an alien, he married one. Or at least that is what Howard Menger said. The complete flying saucer story cannot be told without digressing a bit to examine the claims of the "contactees," those individuals who profess an ultimate relationship with alien UFO crews that extends to being invited on board space vehicles for inter-planetary flights. "Saucer-hopping" was an immensely popular pastime in the early and mid-Fifties, and of all those courageous souls, who boldly accepted a quick trip to Venus and back, Howard Menger undoubtedly had the most romantic spiel - at least until he more or less took it all back. According to Menger, back in 1932, when he was just a 10-year-old lad, he and his brother sighted a marvelous shining disc that landed in a nearby field. Being brave young fellows, they approached the glowing object and were greeted by an incredibly beautiful woman with long golden hair and golden flecks in her eyes. She was dressed in one of those form-fitting translucent jumpsuits that seemed to be standard dress for female space-travelers on all the old pulp science-fiction covers. As a healthy 10-year- old American boy, young Howard was able to notice that the beautiful golden lady truly had a form worth fitting. Although his conversation with the voluptuous alien was a brief one, Howard knew that he had fallen spiritually in love with her. It wasn't until June of 1946 that the Venusians and Martians really began to pop up in Howard's life with any great amount of frequency, but once he had won their confidence, he did all that he could in the interests of inter-galactic peace and good will. He instructed the aliens in the use of American slang and briefed them on local customs so that they might blend into the citizenry and observe the natives at work and play without being noticed. In turn, Howard was invited aboard their space ships, taken along on brief junkets to the moon, and allowed to snap all the photographs that he wanted. The photographs, which were widely reproduced in saucer publications, were always rather dark, distorted, and blobby, and Menger apologized that he was such a poor photographer.