Lehal Library

weekend, and without further ado just left them. The "car" outside proved to be a high-wheeled Jeep, and Axel himself was the driver. We sped out of the SRI grounds in silence. Axel made it to the freeway heading toward San Jose. Then: "Have you ever seen a UFO?" he asked. "Yes, I think so." "Can you describe it?" "Well, when I was in high school in Tooele, Utah, I used to climb to the top of a large hill called Little Mountain. "From there you can see across the vast Bonneville Valley and see the Great Salt Lake to the north. It has big islands in it, you know. The view of this vista was just wonderful. "I used to take naps up there in the late afternoon, but on this particular day I noticed a speck of light really high in the sky over what must have been Salt Lake City, "It was flying west, and I thought it was an airplane moving really fast. "But at a certain point in its westward flight it abruptly made a right angle turn downward, not a curved turn down but exactly 90 degrees. "It plunged straight down, and fell into the shadows of the islands or mountains because the sun was lowering in the west and making shadows go to the east. "I stood up, thinking that the plane had exploded or crashed. "But as I did the thing rose directly straight up, out of the shadows. "It rose up to its former elevation, like about 35,000 or 40,000 feet up, and once there disappeared directly into the west in a burst of speed, which was dazzling. "I didn't know what to think of this, but years later decided it must have been a UFO after I had learned that some of them make right-angle turns. "Why it did what it did is beyond me. The whole of this down and up and speeding away took place in less than a minute. All I really saw, though, was a speck of light." Axelrod was silent. It was hot, the Jeep had no air conditioner. Then: "We may have an opportunity to see one of them rather close up. Are you game?" Even among all the astonishments available in the Axelrod scenario, nothing could have amazed me more. "You mean there's one around here! You've captured one?" "Oh, no, not that. We have to take a trip, then a hike to a place where one shows up at intervals. Are you game?"