Empire unusual suggested

40 PASSPORT TO MAGONIA
He touched it. It was not hot.
He observed no door or hatch of any kind. And yet two humanlike
creatures suddenly appeared. They were about four feet tall
and wore seamless clothing, with headdress and a full-face hood,
which did not allow Wilcox to observe any facial features. They
appeared to have arms and legs. They talked to him "in smooth
English/' but their voices did not come from their heads, as far
as Wilcox could tell, but from their bodies.
"Do not be alarmed, we have talked to people before. We are
from what you people refer to as Planet Mars," they said.
In spite of Gary's conviction that "someone must be playing a
gag on me," the strange conversation continued. The two beings
were interested in fertilizers and expressed considerable interest
in their use. They stated that they grew food on Mars, but that
changes in the environment were creating problems they hoped
to solve by obtaining information about our agricultural techniques.
Their questions were quite childish, and they appeared
to have no knowledge of the subject whatever. Each one carried
a tray filled with soil.
"When they talked about space or the ship, I had difficulty
in understanding their explanations. They said they could only
travel to this planet every two years and they arc presently using
the Western Hemisphere," Wilcox reported.
They explained that they landed only during daylight hours,
"because their ship is less readily visible in daylight," and they
said they were surprised that Wilcox had seen their craft. They
also volunteered information about space travel. Our astronauts
would not be successful, they said, because their bodies would not
adapt to space conditions. Finally, they requested a bag of fertilizer
but, as Gary Wilcox walked away to get it, the craft took off,
disappearing from sight in very few seconds. The witness left a
bag of fertilizer at the place; the next day it was gone. 12
A list, even incomplete, of similar cases would rapidly induce
tedium. In most of the South American landings, entities have
been described walking away with soil samples, plants, even boulders.
Everything in their behavior seems designed to make us believe
in the outer-space origin of these strange beings and their
craft. And, indeed, such incidents have greatly influenced the re-
THE GOOD PEOPLE 41
searchers who have "independently" concluded that the UFO's
are space probes sent by an extraterrestrial civilization.
On November 1, 1954, Mrs. Rosa Lotti-Dainclli, forty years
old, was going to the cemetery at Poggio d'Ambra, Bucine, near
Arezzo, Italy. A devout Italian woman, she was carrying a pot
containing flowers. Her mind at that moment must have been
very far indeed from science fiction speculation, and yet what
happended to her in the next minute constitutes perhaps the
slnmgest of the entire wave of 1954 incidents.
As Mrs. Lotti-Dainelli walked past an open grassy space, she
saw a vertical, torpedo-shaped machine with pointed edges: a
machine, in other words, shaped like two cones with common
hases. In the lower cone was an opening through which two small
scats were visible. The craft looked metallic. It did not resemble
anything the witness had seen before.
From behind the object, two beings appeared. They were three
;md a half to four feet tall. They looked joyful. Their smiles displayed
white and very thin teeth. They were wearing gray coveralls
and reddish leather helmets similar to those used by military
drivers. They had what seemed to be a "convexity" at the center
f their foreheads. Speaking an incomprehensible language, the
two closed in on the woman, and one of them took away from her
Hie pot containing the flowers.
Mrs. Lotti-Dainelli now tried to get her property back, but the
two beings ignored her and returned to their craft. The witness
slarted to scream and run away. But she returned to the spot with
other witnesses, including policemen. Too late. Not a trace of the
object was left. But it seems that other people saw the craft in
flight, leaving a red and blue trail.
These stories would be "amazing" and nothing more if it were
not for one fact known to students of folklore: a constant feature
of one class of legends involving supernatural creatures is that the
beings come to our world to steal our products, our animals, and
even—as we shall see in a later chapter—human beings. But for
I he moment, let us concern ourselves only with the "samplegathering"
behavior of these beings and their requests for terrestrial
products.
In an Algonquin legend embodying all the characteristics of an