Close Encounters of the Third Kind (25 page)

Inside Neary’s cubicle, the M.C. was still going on. “This last document is merely a formality. You see, we have a possible problem in the area of canon and common jurisprudence outside of the parameters of our astronomy. The case could be made that you are, in effect, technically speaking . . . dead. This paper just certifies that should such a judgment be rendered, that you will accept it. It’s merely a formality.”

Roy didn’t know what the hell the guy was talking about or what papers he found himself signing.

He caught sight of the twelve astronauts filing out of the chapel, and then he and the master of ceremonies left their cubicle and joined the procession. The M.C. kept on briefing him feverishly, giving him a cassette player and a satchel full of tapes. A medical technician was listening to his heart through a stethoscope while they walked, and someone else was checking the electrodes in his suit and testing the portable transmitter that was hooked up through a battery pack to the computers in the medical cubicle.

Now the priest was chanting again. “By the guidance of a star, grant these pilgrims, we pray, a happy journey and peaceful days so that with Your divine angel as their guide they may reach their destination and finally come to the haven of everlasting salvation. God, who led Your servant Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans and kept him safe in all his wanderings, may it please You, we pray, also to watch over these servants of Yours.”

The procession was now surrounded by dozens of little visitors, chittering and blinking. Obviously, they wanted the line to halt.

The priest stopped walking, but continued chanting in a louder monotone. Clearly, he was also very, very frightened. “Be to them, Lord, a help in their preparations, comfort on the way, shade in the heat, shelter in the rain and cold, a carriage in tiredness, a shield in adversity, a staff in insecurity, a haven in shipwreck, so that under Your guidance they may happily reach their destination and finally return safe to their homes.”

Two of the humanoids entwined themselves around Roy and separated him from the others. Then they left him standing there alone, as if free to make up his mind. Neary turned, looking for Jill and Barry, but he couldn’t find them. Then he spotted Lacombe. They looked at each other a long moment, and the Frenchman nodded his head encouragingly and smiled.

Roy turned and took the first step forward. Then he started walking slowly, then faster toward the ship’s negative gravity zone, and the fiery, lighted opening. The twelve astronauts began to follow him.

The little humanoids formed a blinking, twittering file on either side of the column of astronauts and accompanied them up the brilliantly lighted stairway toward the glowing interior of the great mother ship.

One little creature separated himself from the procession and flowed over to Lacombe. He reached out one armlike thing and made the first of the hand signs, corresponding to the first note. Lacombe, deeply moved, responded. Then the creature and the Frenchman went through the other four hand signs.

Lacombe looked down into its . . . face. It was changing—from something embryonic, unformed, into a face of something a thousand years old. Suddenly, Lacombe knew that all the wisdom, all the superintelligence, the experience that it had to take to build these vehicles, to travel these dozens of light years was there in the aging countenance and the . . . yes, the smile of this fantastic little creature. Lacombe smiled back, and then the little thing flowed away after the others into the phantom ship.

Neary was almost inside now. Incredibly, he was thinking and hearing a song in his head. It was from
Pinocchio.

When you wish upon a star,

Makes no difference who you are.

Anything your heart desires will come . . . to . . . you.

He took another step up the ramp of fiery brilliance into the center of the starship. Around him the blaze was almost blinding, yet he seemed to be able to see . . . everything. And the music in his head grew louder.

If your heart is in your dream,

No request is too extreme,

When you wish upon a star as dreamers do.

Roy turned to make sure the twelve astronauts were still with him. Then he waved one last time to Lacombe and to Jillian and Barry. He hoped they could still see him.

Outside, on the cement strip, the figures of Neary, the astronauts, the little creatures, were dematerializing into fiery light and energy.

Like a bolt out of the blue,

Fate steps in and sees you through.

When you wish upon a star your dream . . .

comes . . . true.

Neary walked forward again, leading the way deep into the fiery heart of the mystery.

The great, brilliant opening started sliding shut.

Lacombe, Laughlin, and the others stood silently, watching.

And then, slowly at first, then faster, the great phantom starship began to lift off, easing away from its scaffold of light. The scaffold started to rise up around it. Soon it formed a brilliant, multicolored stairway up to the heavens, and the huge black ship, glowing at the edges now, rose up through layer after layer of clouds. Until this great city in the sky became the brightest of the brightest stars.

Jillian and Barry watched it all together. Jillian took one last picture of it all, the last of the most important pictures in the history of the world.

THE END

EPILOGUE  

by Dr. T. Allen Hynek

Director, Center for UFO Studies

Thus we leave
Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
most of us with the feeling that the story we have just been told is just that—a story, but one which might come to pass. For where is the fine line between fantasy and that which is actually possible? Submarines, airships, and travel to the moon were once strictly out of Jules Verne. Yet, many of us observe the transition from fantasy to fact in our own lifetimes.

What then about Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Are these too only fantasies? Emphatically, no, if we can believe the many reports. In the book
The UFO Experience
, chapter ten was entitled “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” In it, there were many accounts of allegedly real experiences of just such encounters with occupants of UFOs. Such reports have come to me from many parts of the world. The events portrayed in the novel
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
were based in part on such actual reports. In particular, the appearance of the “extraterrestrials” in the novel were based on the most frequently reported features of such beings. It will undoubtedly surprise most readers to learn that there exists a catalog of some eleven hundred cases in which a UFO occupant has been reported. This defines the term Close Encounters of the
Third
Kind.

There are also Close Encounters of the First and Second Kinds. The former is one in which a UFO is seen very close up but no occupants are noted nor is there any interaction with the immediate environment. The latter, or Close Encounters of the Second Kind, involve UFOs which leave some definite mark of their presence. These can be burned patches of ground, swirls of matted vegetation, broken tree branches, or even evidence of radiation. The effects might be on animals such as cows which refuse to give milk for days after their UFO encounter. Or they might be on purely inanimate matter such as moving vehicles whose engines “conk out” in the presence of a brilliantly glowing object that passes over or close to them. (Once the glowing object has departed, the vehicle’s engine is once again normally operable.)

These Close Encounters of the Second Kind are of particular interest scientifically, for they enable us to “bring the UFO” into the laboratory, so to speak, to analyze the affected soil or plant samples, burned leaves or branches. The Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois, has many hundreds of each kind of close encounter in its files. These bizarre and baffling cases and the other kinds, too—the strange lights seen at night, disc-shaped objects seen during the day, and unexplained objects picked up on radar (and seen visually as well)—are being received, logged, and investigated by the Center for UFO Studies on an almost daily basis.

The UFO phenomenon is indeed real. Once the many false reports, based on misidentifications of normal objects or events, and the outright hoaxes have been sifted out, there remains a substantial and significant residue of unexplained reports that makes this subject truly worthy of serious scientific study; not just by the physical scientist but by the sociologist and the psychologist as well. The study of UFOs is indeed an interdisciplinary subject, and it is this approach that the Center has taken in its quest for the solution to the UFO problem. And if one asks why bother to solve the problem, the history of science has repeatedly given the answer: research in pure science has almost always led to the advancement and welfare of mankind. We never know where the quest for knowledge may lead.

If this book has stirred your imagination and curiosity and you should wish to learn more about current UFO sightings and particularly about the close encounters and what is being done about their study, we can do no better than to recommend the
International UFO Reporter.
The
Reporter
is a monthly newsletter which gives a round-up of the latest reported UFO cases and their analyses by qualified scientists and other experts who have studied and investigated actual UFO experiences.

The important work of the Center for UFO Studies is partly financed by subscriptions to the
International UFO Reporter.
In turn, the
Reporter
is the Centers major vehicle for keeping the public informed of progress toward the solution of the UFO phenomenon. The address for inquiries and subscriptions is
International UFO Reporter
924 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, Illinois 60202.