The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel Part 3

We are so used to stories of "Bug-eyed Monsters" coming to Earth, that the idea of beings from other worlds looking and acting human seems fantastic. It should not. There is good sound scientific reason to believe that there is little chance of it being any other way. Life is a delicate and fragile thing when compared to cosmic extremes of temperature and environment in our universe. If life formed on earth as science now believes that it did, we must have had just the right size planet at just the right distance from a particular type of star.

While such extremely narrow limits are going to reduce the number of places in the universe where life can develop, it is also going to limit the _differences_. In our creation things operate by rule. The rule is that in similar circ.u.mstance there are similar solutions to a problem. Man is the solution of the problem of building the highest form of life on Earth. On a similar planet we can expect to find a similar solution. This is simply the extension of the theory of _parallel evolution_ to a cosmic scale.

If then, we were visited by people from another world, what were they doing here? Strangely enough, there is considerable evidence of what they were up to from Ezekiel's own testimony. Let us suppose that these creatures were very much like we expect to be in five hundred years. They have come from some other star system in a ship whose principle of operation is as yet unknown to us. We can a.s.sume that it was a rather large ship, being that there were five beings on board at once, and we can presume that enough of a crew remained aboard to return it home in case something happened to the explorers. How would we proceed in such a case?

It is not likely that such a large ship would be brought down to the surface of the earth. After arriving in the neighborhood of the earth, it would be put into orbit, and the surface of the earth would be studied through telescopes for days or weeks. The entire radio spectrum would be scanned to determine if there were inhabitants below, capable of operating electrical equipment. A small--manned or unmanned--flyer would be sent down into the upper atmosphere to determine the level of radioactivity, air components, spore and bacteria count and radio signals incapable of penetrating the atmosphere. From the ship the land areas would be mapped and studied.

Any large object on the ground that appeared to be of an artificial nature would be given particular attention. During the night-time hours below, these objects and areas would be very carefully observed for signs of light.

In the case of our visitors of twenty-six centuries ago, this is what they would have found: Quite a few artificial works could be seen.

Cultivated fields and large buildings would be easily visible in many places around the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The Pyramids were old even then. (The Great Wall in China probably had not been started.) There would be no radio sounds, except for an occasional lightning click. We do not know how well their cities were lighted at night, but they were probably too dim to see. Tiny orange pinpoints of light from outdoor bonfires could probably be seen around the globe, but there would be more of them around the Mediterranean and in the East and Near East than anywhere else. The radioactivity level would be low. Our visitors would conclude that the inhabitants were either in the early stages of civilization, or were once highly civilized and now sunk back to a primitive stage. They would know that this was due to something other than atomic war.

We have to conclude that these were moral beings. If the conditions below were as they seemed to be, that of an early civilization, they would not want to interfere. They would want to observe without being observed, so even if it were technically possible they would not want to bring a large ship down. They would send down as small and inconspicuous a vehicle as possible.

We usually picture such a craft as a small version of the larger ship, or a large--by our standards--rocket, or an aircraft similar to our Dyna-soar. For people this advanced technologically something a lot simpler might be used. It might be an open vehicle, similar to our flying platforms, but with vastly more powerful nuclear power plants.

The men going down would have to wear air-tight suits--s.p.a.cesuits, and would have to leave them on all the time they were below, for fear of becoming infected with molds and viruses that the natives would long since have become immune to. One man, the pilot, would stay with the platform while the others did the observing and recording.

The flying platform would have no need for rapid forward motion, at least inside the atmosphere and therefore would have little need for streamlining or protective covering for the pa.s.sengers, who would carry their equipment with them. Most of the equipment for the survey would be built into the suits. They would each carry a set of portable helicopter attachments so they could cover more ground in a hurry.

Like small helicopters of our time, these probably would have a rather limited speed and range, but they would be extremely maneuverable.

The platform on the other hand, being nuclear powered, would probably be very powerful and have almost unlimited range, but it would be less maneuverable. The products of its exhaust might be radioactive and therefore its operators would be reluctant to operate it above or near the natives of the planet, or places that they frequented.

As they push away from the mother-ship the s.p.a.cemen would be in free-fall and would tend to "float" nearby until they turned the bottom side of the platform toward the direction of their orbit and applied power. They would then drop toward the surface, but with almost unlimited power available they could keep the downward component of their fall within limits and prevent overheating. They could probably be on the surface in less than an hour.

The first and most likely area of exploration would be Egypt. The platform could be landed a few miles back from the Nile and be in completely unoccupied desert. The four helicopter-equipped explorers could put on their rotating-wing backpacks and by keeping low, come up very close to some center of civilization without being seen. By going up to a few thousand feet they could observe a fairly large area. Even if they were spotted, they would be small and unrecognizable, and cause a minimum amount of excitement.

Like any tourist in any age they would probably be most interested in the territory around the pyramids. When they had finished here they might want to look over the country around what is now Bagdad, but _then_ only near the capital city of Nebuchadnezzar's empire. This is about eight hundred miles away, an impractical trip by helicopter, so they would return to the platform, climb to a few hundred thousand feet, and scoot over in a few minutes. Here they would land again in some uninhabited spot and repeat the maneuver. This country was probably sprinkled with more people than they expected. Maybe that's why this is the legendary flying carpet country, or maybe not. At any rate, one lonely military prisoner, working by himself near the banks of a stream must have seen them. Even if they did notice him, what possible harm could he do? In the present state of the civilization who would remember what he said or even believe him? I do.

THE END