mch

8 OUR ANCESTORS CAME FROM OUTER SPACE
in an Air France Boeing 707 at Orly airport and an hour later
was in a Renault convertible, dashing down the Autoroute du
Sud on my way to St.-Tropez, without even taking one look back
at Paris. There would be time enough for Paris later on. First I
had to get to St.-Tropez. Why St.-Tropez? For several reasons,
although not all of them shall be discussed here. St.-Tropez is
the home of my friend Robert who owns one of the most famous
restaurants on the Moorea beach in nearby Pampelone and is my
best friend in France. Although I was bom in Paris, every time I
go to France I feel most at home in St.-Tropez, and that is where
I spend most of my vacation time. The Paris that I knew as a
young man does not exist any more, and so far I never had
enough time to acquaint myself with the new Paris, so I go to
St.-Tropez, where I know everything and everybody.
I was back in Paris only two days before the congress of astronautics
started when I received a telephone call from somebody
I had never heard of and whose name I will not mention
here. He informed me that he was greatly interested in space
communications and extraterrestrial Hfe and that he would be
glad to meet me for dinner to discuss these topics. Since I had
nothing else to do that day and since this man intrigued me, I
accepted the invitation. It was a fascinating evening. After I had
told him just about everything that I knew about Apollo, I
learned from him about a lot of things of which I had no knowledge
whatsoever, like ancient civilizations that probably had
been brought here by astronauts from space many, many thousands
of years ago.
My presentation at the congress went very well. I lectured on
space communications in general and about the Apollo systems
in particular and was swamped with questions
not only about
the spacecraft communications, which I expected, but also about
the possibility of contacting extraterrestrial civilizations and the
consequences that these contacts would produce. For that I was
not quite prepared.
The congress should have been primarily interested in
questions
concerning the ApoUo spacecraft and the exploration of the
moon, but the most lively discussions developed about the possibilities
offered by the huge dish antennas of radio telescopes to
explore the universe. The Russians were all well versed in these