Out there...waiting

IN 1976 a spacecraft landed on Mars, and took pictures. If memory serves, this was the first time this had ever happened, after many failures. The excitement was high, and people found thsmselves yearning for a martian lander that could drive around after landing on mars, and see the sights. But even in the one scene shown, a few people noticed that there appeared to be, written on the rocky sandy ground, the expression "BG2". For a few hours it raised quite a furor, until it was explained as a combination of light, shadow, and human imagination. Young handsome carl sagan sat on johnny carson's couch, and calmly asked "supposing a message were left in the martian soil by alien lifeforms, in the past, either the recent past or perhaps in the remote past. How likely is it that they would inscribe english letters and arabic numerals into the ground?" That pretty much shut everybody up. Sometimes logic is so compelling it cannot be ignored. Not often, but sometimes, and heaven knows we try to ignore it asbestos we can. Consider this. The american extraterrial life "community", or some members of it, of which there are many enthusastic, bless their hearts, have contended that a race of reptillian creatures called "hydrans" built a number of military bases on the bottom of earth's oceans, and that they were only recently removed, forced to do so by the benevolent galactic federation of light. Well, so be it. All well and good. At the same time, however, it has even been presumed that these beings originate somewhere in the constellation "hyrda". Isn't this all just a bit too convenient, and ostensibly coincidental? Or how about the being from the star Sirius, "Salusa", who channels his messages to earth through a human intermediary. How strange, that this entity would name itself after a planet in a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. Makes it seem as if some human being or other was imagining all this, and getting their own cultural connections too involved with aliens, making their own descriptions sound contrived. Maybe its not contrived, but it sure sounds like it. When telling fantastic but true stories, avoid the appearance of contrivances at all costs - those damned purveyors of logic are always out there, waiting...