in temperature, hardly
perceivable, like walking by a brick building in the evening after
the sun has set. He hadn't thought anything about either the odor or
the heat at the time but later, when they became important, he
remembered them.

Paying no attention to these sensations then, he pushed on through
the brush, looking up occasionally to check the north star, so that
he could keep traveling straight east. After struggling through about
30 yards of palmetto undergrowth, he noticed a change in the shadows
ahead of him and stopped to shine the flashlight farther ahead of him
to find out if he was walking into a clearing or into one of the many
ponds that dot that particular Florida area. It was a clearing.

The boy scouts in the car had been watching the scoutmaster's
progress since they could see his light bobbing around. Occasionally
he would shine it up at a tree or across the landscape for an
instant, so they knew where he was in relation to the trees and
thickets. They saw him stop at the edge of the open, shadowed area
and shine his light ahead of him.

The scoutmaster then told us that when he stopped this second time
he first became consciously aware of the odor and the heat. Both
became much more noticeable as he stepped into the clearing. In fact,
the heat became almost unbearable or, as he put it, "oppressively
moist, making it hard to breathe."

He walked a few more paces and suddenly got a horrible feeling that
somebody was watching him. He took another step, stopped, and looked
up to find the north star. But he couldn't see the north star, or any
stars. Then he suddenly saw that almost the whole sky was blanked out
by a large dark shape about 30 feet above him.

He said that he had stood in this position for several seconds, or
minutes--he didn't know how long--because now the feeling of being
watched had overcome any power of reasoning he had. He managed to
step back a few paces, and apparently got out from under the object,
because he could see the edge of it silhouetted against the sky.

As he backed up, he said, the air became much cooler and fresher,
helping him to think more clearly. He shone his light up at the edge
of the object and got a quick but good look. It was circular-shaped
and slightly concave on the bottom. The surface was smooth and a
grayish color. He pointed to a gray linoleum-topped desk in the
intelligence officer's room. "Just like that," he said. The upper
part had a dome