SPECULATIONS BoTH GRIM AND HoPEFUl.
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trip. At one point, he was told to stand behind a glassy screen of some kind for three or four minutes, where he was apparently scrutinized. Immediately afterwards, he was told that he was not what they needed, and a short time later he was returned to his parked carnper.12 Higdon, in fact, is sterile, having had a vasecto my. These incidents support the unsettling theory that extraterres trials need something from humans-possibly a certain kind of genetic structure-so presumably they must check through a large number of people to find what they want. "Diversity. He kept talking about diversity, which he was very interested in . . . about how important biological diversity is." Virginia Horton's recollection of her captor's words further under lines the point, and leads to another startling possibility. "It was as though they had a puzzle that they were working on and it was important to them . . . . 'We need a little bitty piece of you . . . Ito) take a little, teeny piece of you home.' " Philip Osborne's memory of his childhood cut: "I see a sort of a representation of j ust being opened up very cleanly and something taken out and then j ust put right back together." Virginia Horton 's second episode, ten yea rs a fter the first: "It was as though they had finished a research proj ect. . . . They wanted to share it with me beca use . . . this research used their visit with me . . . my contribution had been really helpful fo r them . . . . It was something more than abstract research." A central difference for Virginia during this second abduction was the presence of ". . . someone . . . like a younger person, more like my age. . . . It had the feeling of being more like a contemporary, and it was a female feeling, like a friend . . . . There was sort of a female friend on the ship. . . . It seems like she was a relative that got to come along and meet me." Virginia said the female's covering was lighter, more creamy colored, and that she " felt like a younger person. Like a bounder quality . . . more bubbly . . . . I didn't think she was really my age . . . she was still a schoolgirl or whatever." Blonde, clean-complexioned, sixteen-year-old Virginia ob viously identified with this creamy, bouncy n ear-contemporary who appeared fully-formed aboard the U FO ten years after a deep layer of cells was removed from Virginia's leg. The obvious and disturbing connection between these circumstances had gone