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49 or, if it seemed a peaceful exploration, would we bc intrigued by the thought of a great adventure? It would depend entirely on the space visitors' motives, and how the world was prepared for such a revelation. And yet it hadn't been too long since airplane flight was considered an idiot's dream. This scene here at La Guardia would have seemed pure fantasy in 1900--thc huge Constellations and DC-6's; the double-decked Stratocruisers, sweeping in from all over the country; the big ships at Pan-American, taking off for points all over the globe. We'd come a long way in the forty-six years since the Wright brothers' first flight. But space travel! The gateman checked my ticket, and I went out to the Washington plane. It was a luxury ship, a fifty-two-passenger, four-engined DC-6, scheduled to be in the capital one hour after take-off. By morning this plane, the Aztec, would be in Mexico City. The couple going up the gangway ahead of me were in their late sixties. Fifty years ago, what would they have said if someone had predicted this flight? The answer to that was easy; at that time, high-school songbooks featured a well-known piece entitled "Darius Green and His Flying Machine." Darius, it seems, was a simple-minded lad who actually thought he could fly. Fifty years. That was the time the Air Force had estimated it would take us to start exploring space. Would Americans come to accept space travel as matter-of-factly as the people now boarding this plane? The youngsters would, probably; the older ones, as a rule, would be a little more cautious. In the oval lounge at the rear of the plane, I took out the file of old sighting reports. Glancing through it, I, saw excerpts from nineteenth-century astronomical and scientific journals and extracts from official gazettes. Most of the early sightings had been in Great Britain and on the Continent, with a few reports scattered around the world. The American reports did not begin until the latter part of the century. {p. 57} watched the lights of Manhattan and Greater New York twinkling below. The Empire State Building tower was still above us, as the plane banked over the East River. We climbed quickly, and the familiar outline of Manhattan took shape like a map pin- pointed with millions of lights. The more I thought about it, the more fantastic thc thing seemed. The DC-6 rolled out and took off. For a few minutes I