CHAPTER S
Ih£ Enduring Enigmu
t happened on July 20, 1 969. A silvery object, twinkling against inky black
ness, hurtled through space at an astonishing rate of speed. A small, vaguely buglike craft disengaged from the obj ect and descended smoothly, landing in
a cloud of fine, light-colored dust. A trapdoor inched open; a ladder descend ed, and two humanlike, white-clad figures clambered down. Lumbering about the surface, they peered this way and that with what appeared to be enormous, single, insect eyes that reflected everything before them. The creatures- whose names were Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldri n - were the first humans to leave their blue-green home planet behind and travel to the moon. Space travel. for so long the province of visionaries and science-fiction writers, was a fact. Flying objects really were capable of
visiting alien worlds. It had become slightly less heretical to suggest that space travel was not necessarily a one-way street or that reports of anomalous flying
objects deserved serious scientific study. But just as the age of space travel was dawning, the era of the UFO seemed to be coming to an end. The Condon report had said there was nothing to the persistent stories about UFOs; in 1 969 the air force slammed shut the doors of Project Blue Book. Meanwhile, the number o f sightings had dwindled, and the news media seemed to have lost interest. Many people were ready to assign the records of the U FO phenomenon to some back shelf. During the ensuing two decades, however, only twelve men would visit the moon, while thousands of people all over the world would continue to see UFOs. In the United States, they would have to wonder where to report their sightings. Ignored by the air force, the government, and the scientific estab lishment, these startled and often frightened people would have to seek out organizations of interested civilians in order to report what they had seen and get information about other UFO sightings. Ironically, the resulting investigations would in many cases be more
complete, and more rigorously conducted, than any the air force had done.
The 1 9 70s and 1 980s would be marked by new themes and directions in UFO research, thoughtful new methods for collecting data, fascinating new spec ulations about the nature of the phenomenon, a decreased tolerance for