On 11th June - 97 - 2.32am - the 62 years old Krapt suddenly saw a ray of light coming into his room. His wife was away for some days and he was alone. Suddenly he found himself transported to a big room together with some people apparent not from this earth. He spent the next three days being peacefully indoctrinated into a fascinating new world by extraterrestrials that called themselves "Verdants". They said they had been observing earth for nearly 1000years and had now decided that the time was soon ripe for humankind to be invited into the "cosmic family". He learned that hundreds of prominent world citizens have been and still being recruited to serve as emissaries to help smooth the way for the eventual extraterrestrial contact that is planned to occur by about or within ca. 2010. But they could not say exactly when - many factors came in. Philip H. Krapts task was to serve as an official chronicler for the planned event. He was given special help to remember the whole occurrence.

(Runes comment: some of such books have been written (ex. those from Sheldon Nidle) that talk of such plans - and this one seems to give a relative logic scheme - and it looks just evident, when reading this book, that Philip H. Krapt must have experienced this. And the book shows that he had no former insight into spiritual and cosmic thinking. He seems to be a normal materialist who didn't believe in a god or in higher/other states of existence. He was - for example - deep impressed of the information from them that all beings have an immortal soul.)

 

Meets a trusted "contact - witness" aboard.

Here we enter the book where he also meets a - for him - wellknown earth - person aboard the ship - but will not give the persons name. That person he met was to serve as one of the ambassadors that they were now educating as one of many trusted - esteemed, "contact - witness":

"...I was confused. "Wait a minute," I said. "I can drop out of sight for a few days and not be missed because I don't have a public. But how can you?"

 

He chuckled.

 

"Oh, my wife and I are on vacation in Hawaii. Well, that's where we're supposed to be," he said with a wink.

"Your wife is with you?" I asked.

 

"Oh, definitely. We came up together. Now that's what I call a ride," he said with obvious merriment.

I was surprised to learn this in light of what I had been told. What was it they said - only lone individuals were chosen? (they has said that just before). Of course, there was no longer any need for secrecy, so the policy against multiple abductions to prevent corroboration (bekreftelser) apparently was no longer operational. That made sense. In fact, corroboration was actually an asset (aktivum) now that the extraterrestrials were about to reveal themselves.

"See you down below," he said as he continued his stroll.

 

"Gina (the ET - person of feminine sex that showed him around in some of the ship - and the name was some earthlike she was given for identification) and I resumed our walk down this long, wide corridor.

 

Actually, Gina pointed out, unlike the visitor we had just met, many of the potential Ambassadors were not able to disappear for any length of time without arousing great suspicion, or, even worse, alarm that might bring the police or other authorities to investigate. In those situations, it was necessary to return the visitors to their beds each night so they could maintain their public visibility and avoid unexplained absences.

 

This meant, of course, that the POEI (Preparatory Orientation, Education and Indoctrination) - program had to be dragged out over a period of several weeks, or even months, depending upon the availability of the potential Ambassadors. The Verdants preferred to complete the program in one intensive three - or four - day session, such as the one that I was currently going through, but these extended exercises were simply unavoidable at times.

 

High - profile personages simply did not have the luxury of being able to drop out of sight for several days at a time. And, of course, the nighttime sessions had to be limited to no more than two or three hours at a stretch lest the visitors become sleep - deprived and be unable to function properly while pursuing their duties on Earth the following day.

Thus, numerous trips back and forth from their beds to the ship over a period of weeks or months were required before they completed the program.

 

"What happens if the person doesn't cooperate?" I asked. "Then you've got a very prominent person - not some obscure rancher - who can get a lot of attention and blow your cover if he goes back and starts talking."

 

"Give us a little credit," she replied. "A thousand years of studying the human species - including its psychological makeup - has given us complete insight into the workings of the human mind. We can predict with 100 percent accuacy how any particular individual will react to any given set of circumstances. We have never made the mistake of bringing anyone aboard who does not fit the profile that we are looking for."

 

"So there's a particular type that you select?" I asked.

 

"Of course. Visionaries," she said.

 

More guided tour on the ship

Gina was explaining all of this as we walked, but I had no idea where we were going. We passed many doorways. Some of the doors were open and looked into large rooms with an array of equipment so strange that I wouldn't even be able to describe it. Although there was the usual assortment of electronic consoles, with their peculiar lights glowing screens, and crazy dials and gauges, most of the gear was so foreign to me that I had never seen anything like it - not even in science fiction movies and TV shows.

My idea of his look in the controlroom in their spesial robelike garments that mr. Krapf also got. The picture is not of mr. Krapf - but quite similar according to picture on the backcover of the book.

 

The ETs had small noses but bigger ears than earthpeople - but no hair on head.

 

'Why aren't we weightless?" I inquired.

Without turning to look at me or breaking stride, Gina said simply, "Artificial gravity."

 

"What is our position?" I asked. My curiosity was growing with every step.

"I don't think you would understand if I merely told you," she replied.

 

"Try me," I said.

 

"You'll see. It's better that I show you."

 

She turned into one of the open doorways, we walked several hundred feet through the room, came to another doorway, and continued along another corridor. Then we entered another one of those mysterious "elevators," and got the impression but not really the sensation of "going up." Ten to fifteen seconds passed, and the "elevator" door opened. We stepped out, and the sight that greeted us was so stunning that my knees actually buckled.

 

The room was a giant, transparent bubble. The view from an observation tower in a skyscraper would be a distant cousin to what I beheld, because instead of looking down upon a city of lights, we were looking out into the endless cosmos. A billion stellar diamonds sparkled brilliantly upon the black velvet backdrop of space.

 

The giant ship itself stretched out before us for what seemed to be at least a mile, and I watched perhaps half a dozen shuttle craft come and go from several ports along the bow of the superstructure. Large floodlights played across the ship, and a thousand portholes shone with interior lights.

 

The room we were in was very dark, with just enough light to allow us to keep from bumping into objects or each other. Gina took my hand and led me to a raised circular platform in the middle of the dome, with two steps running around its perimeter. We stepped up to a bank of about 20 plush, upholstered chairs occupying the platform, and she guided me into a seat and took the one next to me.

 

At the time, I thought that her grip on my hand seemed to be a little tighter than was necessary, that there was - how can I put it? - a certain vague intimacy about it. (He had earlier not seen any particular expressions in their actions.) I immediately dismissed the thought as imagination on my part.

 

A recessed walkway circled the dome along the transparent walls. The platform was high enough, and the walkway recessed enough, so that anyone standing on the esplanade would be sufficiently low so as not to obstruct the view of those in the seats. As soon as we had settled into our chairs, the interior lights went out completely, but the illumination from outside was bright enough for me to see details in the room, including Gina's profile. It would be useless to try to describe her, because I was incapable of distinguishing one star traveler from another. They all looked alike to me, as if they had been cloned. But I suppose there were distinguishing characteristics that would make each individual recognizable. (similar as a people here north perceive "all black people" to look alike - rø)

 

About the best analogy I can think of is if a person entered a kennel containing one breed of animal such as a dog or a cat. Assuming that the animals were all of very similar coloration, it would be difficult upon first glance to distinguish one from another. Yet, as any pet owner knows the ability to recognize individual animals grows with increased familiarity and exposure to them.

 

If that were true of these E.T.'s, I had not yet reached the point where I could make such distinctions.

 

We were essentially in a half-sphere that provided us with a sweeping view of the heavens. Gina used her right hand to toggle a switch that allowed the chairs to swivel 360 degrees. Another switch was activated, and the porthole lights and exterior floodlights that illuminated the ship itself flickered out. Without this corrupting light source, the stars themselves leaped into even more brilliant contrast against the pitch-black of space.

 

"Did you turn them out?" I asked.

 

"No, I just accessed a filter to screen out the artificial lights. Only the natural light from the heavens is now visible," she said.

I was mesmerized. Nearby stars, unfiltered by atmosphere, shone in stark contrast against the blackness of the surrounding space with a clarity that I had never experienced on Earth. They were more sharply defined than I could ever imagine. Some were large, maybe two to three times the size of the brightest objects visible in the night sky from Earth, save for the moon.

They ranged from a brilliant glitter many times brighter than any star or planet seen by the naked eye - to mere pinpoints of barely perceptible light. Some were a fuzzier, and were actually distant galaxies of millions, perhaps billions, of individual stars. Together, they bathed room with a level of illumination that was perhaps one-quarter as bright as a moonlit night at home.

It was a spectacle of such beauty that my eyes stung and glistened with emotion. I was literally speechless as I drank in the grandeur of it. But if I was incapable of speaking, Gina showed no signs of being so affected, because she launched into a patter that reminded me of the monotonous recitation of a bored tour guide. I suppose this could be expected. After all, a tour guide would view the Grand Canyon with a perspective far different from a first-time visitor.

She rattled off facts and figures like an old pro.

 

She told me that the ship was a medium-size star cruiser, one of thousands in service throughout the universe, designed specifically for monitoring any planet to which it was assigned. This particular one was built 200,000 Earth years ago. Its name, literally translated, was "Goodwill." It was home port to several hundred smaller shuttle craft that are capable of traveling at sublight speeds to the surface of the planet under observation.

 

A larger mother ship about 20 times this size is always within close range and is capable of speeding to the monitoring ships within a short period of time, although the distances can be hundreds of trillions of miles of separation. She didn't say if that was in "conventional" travel mode or through those mysterious black holes that they had mentioned earlier.

 

Communication between the cruisers and the mother ship cannot even be explained by a mere Earthling such as myself. And I'm not talking about just laymen (lekmann). I mean that the most brilliant scientific minds on Earth probably would not be able to grasp the principles involved. They are utterly beyond the realm of human experience and comprehension. At least that's what Gina told me. I have to take her word for it.

Simple radio waves for communication are totally unfeasible because of the distances involved. Suffice it to say that some kind of inexplicable energy link exists between the various ships to keep them constantly in touch with one another and the home planet. This link is like a giant umbilical cord of energy that is reeled out as the ship travels through space from its home planet.

 

It is infinitely elastic, is never broken, and constantly keeps the ship in touch with the home planet - no matter how far the craft ventures into the vast reaches of space. To put it in simpler terms, imagine the seafaring ships of old that laid transoceanic telephone cables on the ocean bottoms to connect the continents. The farther they went the more cable they reeled out, which kept them connected to their home ports.

Whereas it might seem that this connection would be necessary so that the mother ship could speed to the star cruiser in the event of an emergency, that is not the purpose of this system. It is strictly for routine communication, much as the telephone on Earth keeps family members, friends, business associates, and neighbors in contact with one another.

 

A constant and voluminous stream of information flows from the various ships throughout the universe to the home planet's Space Exploration Operations Center (SEOC). Almost all of it is of a routine nature. Crews must be rotated and orders forwarded. Monitoring ships must report new planet discoveries. Status reports must be filed. Field assignments must be made. Captains' logs must be transmitted.

 

All of this information flowing into the central brain center provides the basis for the millions of decisions that must be made. They could be as routine as reassigning a particular star cruiser to another sector or could involve complex matters dealing with the High Command.

Although the mother ships are always nearby, astronomically speaking, the likelihood that any would be required to respond to another ship to deal with an emergency exists only in theory. In reality, there hasn't been an accident or other emergency situation that required such action in several million years. For all practical purposes, the Verdants' technology has virtually eliminated the possibility of any real emergency.

 

No Verdant spaceships have ever crashed on Earth or on any other planet, Gina said.

The Roswell incident

 

"So there's nothing to the Roswell stories?" I asked.

 

"That was not a Verdant ship," she replied. "Yes, a spacecraft did crash near that New Mexico town in 1947. It belonged to a race of people from a planet in what your astronomers call the Large Magellanic Cloud. That's a galaxy about 200,000 light - years away from Earth and is visible to the naked eye in your Southern Hemisphere."

According to Gina, the ship was a shuttle craft and was on a routine assignment. There was an official investigation by an IFSP board of inquiry, which concluded that the accident was caused by "mortal error," meaning that the pilot made a big mistake. On Earth, if the captain of an airliner made a miscalculation that caused his plane to crash, we would call it "human error."

*

 

The starship on which the shuttle craft was based, was passing through Earth's solar system for a standard visit to the Goodwill, the ship that I was currently on. The ship had slowed to sublight speed travel mode as it was approaching the moon - when the Verdants requested the Capt. make a stop on Earth to pick up some soil and air samples from a nuclear test site in the American Southwest. The Verdant scientists aboard the Goodwill were closely monitoring humankind's emergence into the nuclear age and wanted the samples for tests they were conducting.

 

Of course, it was understood that the star cruiser itself would not land on Earth but would dispatch a shuttle to run the errand. It was a rather routine request, and a subordinate officer was assigned the duty of carrying out. Unfortunately, this race of people was extremely inexperienced in such tasks because they had been in the IFSP for only a few thousand years.

The subordinate officer himself, who was piloting the shuttle craft, had made no more than two or three landings on any planet except his own. Because this species' home planet has an extremely thin atmosphere, the pilot was not familiar with the heavier type of atmosphere envelops Earth. He approached Earth too fast and was buffeted out of control when the ship slammed into the surprisingly heavy gaseous envelope.

 

"He was able to regain some control after a few moments, but not enough to avoid the accident, and he crashlanded," Gina said. "After the board-of-inquiry hearing, steps were put into effect to ensure that such an event would not be repeated. The alien bodies were recovered by your military. Naturally, we were concerned that mass hysteria could ensue, but thanks to the military mind and its proclivity for secrecy, that was avoided."

 

The military put such a tight lid of secrecy on the event that even the highest civilian authorities of the land were never informed of the discovery. When questioned by members of Congress and the president, the military brass completely denied the story. All military personnel who had any knowledge whatsoever of the event were sworn to secrecy and denial.

 

Violation of the order carried an automatic and immediate death sentence from which there would be no appeal. No courts would be involved, no hearings, no trial. Just simple assassination with dispatch, Gina told me.

 

Eventually, the incident became a non-event. It simply never happened officially.

"So no current government leaders have any knowledge of your presence in our neighborhood?" I asked.

 

"None," she replied. "Does that answer all of your questions?"

I said it did, and she continued her tourguide monologue