Aboard a Flying Saucer: Truman Bethurum and the People of the Planet Clarion (2 page)

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 desert spaces, the extreme heat, the scarcity of water in the arid landscape around them – to which she concluded, cryptically, "I expect to be around for a thousand years, but the water in your deserts will mostly be tears."

She allowed him to touch her arm and shoulder, to assure himself of her reality, that he was not dreaming. They ex-changed family stories, the tiny, seemingly youthful Captain Rhanes revealing that she was a grandmother, with two small grandchildren back on Clarion.

The conversation turned again to the social conditions found on Earth. She spoke sadly about the continual strife her crew had observed among earthlings, concluding that the inhabitants of other planets are much too busy improving the welfare of their people to have time for even minor controversies.

Other planets, Bethurum questioned? He explained that scientists on Earth believed that life was not possible on any other world. She said that such a view was understandable, in that, in her experience, signs of life on any world were virtually impossible to detect from a great distance. All one sees is a hodgepodge of lights and shadow. Nothing even hinting of life can be discerned on any planet until it is approached at close-range by an interplanetary vehicle like the Clarion scow.

Bethurum's last questions focused mainly on the mechanical operations and capabilities of the saucer itself. But each time he asked for technical details, his questions went unanswered, or were gently deflected back toward issues of philosophy and social conditions on Earth. He allowed Captain Rhanes' direction in this, recognizing that this wise and beautiful woman from another world was not prepared to trust him, or any earthling, with the secrets of so powerful a technology whose potential might be perverted for destructive purposes, even turned against the Clarionites themselves someday, by his own primitive and warlike race.

She sent him back to the desert with a promise to return yet again. He only needed to think of the time and place, and they would appear. Dawn was just breaking in the east as the gleaming saucer shot like a meteor back into the heavens.

On the night of August 25, 1952, the Clarion scow returned. Bethurum, desperate for independent confirmation of his encounters, had convinced Whitey Edwards to accompany him on his night shift for a while, in hopes that he might see the saucer and meet the Space People for himself. But on that night, Whitey was called away for a brief errand, leaving Bethurum once again alone on the mesa, and the Clarionites chose just that moment to make their appearance.

"Hello. You know that we are here," came a voice from beside his truck. Bethurum jumped out of the vehicle and turned to discover Aura Rhanes standing near him, the silvery glow of moonlight giving her smooth, clear skin the appearance of sculpted marble. He did not see the saucer until he turned slowly to the southwest to find the massive ship behind him, where it must have landed so silently that he had remained unaware of its presence where he sat in his truck, mere yards away. Several of the diminutive crewmen were milling about the vessel, conversing together in their mumbling language.

Bethurum followed the beautiful captain again to her cabin, where he asked her a series of questions his friends at work, as well as many of the neighborhood children, had given him to pose to the visitors.

First, he wanted to know if Clarion, the name they used for their home planet, might actually be known to earthlings under another name, perhaps Mars, Jupiter or Venus.

Captain Rhanes assured him that Clarion was unique and completely unknown to and invisible from Earth, being located "... on the other side of the moon..."

She stated that, from space, the Earth itself looks like a lifeless moon, that all the abundance of our world was invisible at a distance, just as our moon's abundance was invisible from Earth. She said that illusory, phantom planets inhabit our solar system as well, mirages cast into space by light refracting off the moisture in some planets' atmospheres. These mirror-image globes could not be distinguished from real planets until an observer was in immediate proximity.

He asked about Mars, which Captain Rhanes described as a beautiful place to see, a great manufacturing planet with many human inhabitants who live in large, flowered country estates. But she obviously considered Clarion to be even more beautiful, and suggested slyly that earthlings might soon be allowed to visit her world to observe its beauty and learn its peaceful ways firsthand. But she refused to give details as to when or how this might be accomplished.

Bethurum had brought a camera to this encounter, and he asked if he might be permitted to take the lady captain's picture as proof of his contact.

"I think not," she replied coolly, pointing out that a picture wouldn't do Bethurum any good, anyway. "Merely a woman in a room. A picture wouldn't prove anything."

After this exchange, he found himself being escorted from the saucer – but, again, with the promise of a return visit. Once outside the ship, he made a casual comment to one of the little men about the immensity of the ship, wondering aloud at what its massive weight must be.

Captain Rhanes laughed from the doorway, and suggested that he try to lift the ship with his bare hands.

Bethurum wedged his shoulder under the protruding rim of the saucer and heaved – the whole craft rose easily at his touch. He tipped the disc several feet off the ground before lowering it again to its hovering position.

The little men scurried past him to reboard, and in a flash, the ship was gone.

Around 3:30 AM, on August 27, 1952, Bethurum was enjoying a late night snack of pie and coffee with Whitey Edwards in a small Glendale, Nevada diner when he felt an elbow in his side. Edwards gestured eagerly toward the lunch counter, where a small man was seated next to a tiny woman wearing a black and red beret, a black, velvety blouse, and a brilliant red pleated skirt... It had to be Aura Rhanes and one of her crewmen!

Bethurum looked, and confirmed Edwards' suspicion. Would he like to be introduced?

Edwards, strangely put off by the presence of the celestial visitors, refused and began gathering his things to leave.

"If you do," Bethurum cautioned, "stand near the door so you can see what they get into and which way they go when they come out."

Then he approached his extraterrestrial friends. "I beg your pardon, Lady, but haven't we met before?"

No, she insisted to each of his repeated requests for recognition, no, no. He turned to pay his check, and the pair were gone. He rushed outside and demanded Whitey Edwards' report – where had they gone?

"Honest, Tru," his friend responded, "Not a blessed soul passed through that door until you came out."

For some months now, Bethurum had been working to convince his wife, Mary, to join him in Mormon Mesa, in hopes that she, too, might witness the spaceship landings and meet the people of the planet Clarion. But circumstances had continually frustrated his ambition. Mary was caring for a friend's child, the heat was too much, and on and on.

Finally, he wrote her a long letter, the first to mention his experiences among the Space People, laying out his encounters to date in detail and begging her to come and be at his side. Again, she refused, this time voicing grave concern for his state of mind, and insisting that he forget all about flying saucers so as not to draw negative attention to himself or his family.

Her response left him angry and dejected. Worse yet, he was beginning to hear just the sort of negative rumblings from his coworkers that Mary so feared. Some of the men, with son's fighting in Korea, had come to believe that if Bethurum was really consorting with strange foreigners in flying machines, the strangers must be Korean spies, making him out to be a traitor to his country. The men had threatened to follow him on his nightly desert excursions, and to shoot him and anyone coming down out of the sky at the first sign of collusion.

The scow appeared for a fifth visit on September 5, 1952. After the usual session of hard questions and vague answers, Captain Rhanes fixed Bethurum with a concerned look. She acknowledged that he appeared distraught and worried, and asked with sincerity how she might ease his mind.

He confided, then, about his wife's concern, and the threats made by his fellow workmen. Was he endangering his new-found friends by continuing to meet with them?

She laughed, lightly and deliciously. "Why, Truman," she said, "do you imagine anyone on Earth can harm us? They might annoy us, yes, but never harm us. None of your Earth people have anywhere near the powers which we control."

What if they attacked, he questioned? Would they be killed?

Captain Rhanes insisted that her people killed no one, and that the hostile parties would simply disappear.

She escorted him out of the saucer, pausing at the doorway to request that Bethurum hand over some small material object with which she might demonstrate the true power possessed by the people of Clarion.

He unclipped a small flashlight from his belt and held it out before her. Without a sound, the device vanished before his eyes. He stared into his empty hand with amazement.

"Yes, it's gone," she said quietly. "Forever."

"Forever..." Bethurum echoed solemnly. He stepped away from the saucer, stunned, forgetting even to say goodbye. When he turned to offer a belated wave, the ship was gone.

Bethurum could not get the disturbing image of the disappearing flashlight out of his mind. Aura Rhanes had said that it was gone forever, in the same way anyone attacking a Clarion vessel would be made to disappear forever. And yet, she had also proclaimed that her people never took life. Wasn't vanishing forever the same thing as death? He would have to ask her that question if he ever again had the opportunity to see her and her magnificent spaceship.

After only a few hours of sleep, he rose early in order to make his visit as planned with Whitey Edwards and his family in Las Vegas. His laundry has been returned by the hotel cleaners, and he opened the bag to discover that his nearly-new work suit was in ruins, the whole left side of the shirt and the rear top of the trousers completely gone, as if eaten away by acid.

He'd had no contact he could remember with hazardous chemicals, not even spilled battery acid from the trucks he repaired for a living. What could have caused such damage?

He was about to march angrily into the hotel laundry room when it dawned on him that the ruined suit had been the one he was wearing when he had lifted the Clarion saucer the night before with his bare hands. Could the craft's magnetic field or some volatile substance in its makeup have disintegrated the fibers of his clothing? Yet another question for the mysterious Captain Rhanes.

As soon as he reached Las Vegas, Bethurum stopped for a haircut. He wanted to look his best when he met his friend's family.

But he was to have no vacation from his extraterrestrial contacts. As the barber was finishing, Bethurum spied a tiny woman passing the shop, wearing a familiar pert beret, black, velvety blouse, and red skirt with small, flat pleats – Aura Rhanes!

He jumped
from the barber's chair, scatter
ed his payment across the counter, and rushed to try to catch her. As he stepped out onto the street, the woman acknowledged his presence with a nod that seemed to cue him that she did not wish to be publicly recognized. She quickly vanished into a crowd.

That evening, over dinner, Bethurum entertained Whitey Edwards' family with retellings of his saucer encounter stories to date. Anxious to convince them of his honesty, he hit upon an idea. He asked the whole family to follow him out to a distant desert spot where he would attempt to summon the Clarion scow telepathically, as Captain Rhanes had assured him from the beginning that he would be able to do just by thinking about the time and place.

But his friend wanted no part of the plan. Feeling dejected and stubborn, Bethurum decided to go to the desert alone to carry out his experiment. He got into his truck and drove to a spot near Henderson, Nevada, where he parked and sat behind the wheel, watching the stars, wishing hard for a visit from his space friends.

Soon a vivid blue flash appeared in the sky over Nellis Air Force Base. The light danced several looping circles across the starry expanse of the night sky, then, within seconds, the scow appeared, hovering silently over the sands within 50 feet of his truck.