mind rebelled. For years, I had been accustomed to thinking in
comic-strip terms of any possible spacemen--Buck Rogers stuff, with
weird-looking space ships and green-faced Martians.

But now, if these sightings were true, the shoe was on the other foot.
We would be faced with a race of beings

{p. 63}

at least two hundred years ahead of our civilization--perhaps
thousands. In their eyes, we might look like primitives.

My conjectures before the take-off had just been idle thinking; I had
not really believed this could be the answer. But now the question
came back sharply. How would we react to a sudden appearance of space
ships, bringing that higher race to the earth? If we were fully
prepared, educated to this tremendous adventure, it might come off
without trouble. Unprepared, we would be thrown into panic.

The lights of Philadelphia showed up ahead, and a thought struck me.
What would Philadelphians of 1776 have thought to see this DC-6 flying
across their city at three hundred miles an hour? What would the
sentries at Valley Forge have done, a year later, if this lighted
airliner had streaked over their heads?

Madness. Stampede. Those were the plain answers.

But there was a difference now. We had had modern miracles, radio,
television, supersonic planes, and the promise of still more miracles.
We could be educated, or at least partly prepared, to accept space