FIVE
第五章 史蒂芬的疑惑
一
Wendelle Stevens had retired from the Air Force in 1963, after twenty-three years on active duty, over 4,000 hours of flying time, and top-secret clearance. Graduated from the Army Air Corps' first test pilot training school, Stevens at age twenty had been a project officer for the development of the P-47 fighter plane, and during World War II had commanded an aircraft maintenance squadron, seeing only limited combat in the Pacific.
溫得利．史蒂芬（Wendelle Stevens）於 1963 年自美國空軍退役，在 23 年的服役生涯中，他擁有超過四千小時飛行時數及擁有最高機密的清查許可證。由於畢業於空軍第一級試驗飛行訓練學校，使史蒂芬在 20 歲時便已經是 P-47 戰鬥機研究開發計畫的負責軍官了，在二次世界大戰中還帶領過飛機維修中隊，也目睹了一些太平洋戰役。
After the war, the Air Force assigned Stevens to the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright Field, where he screened thousands of documents and advanced aeronautical blueprints captured by the Americans when the Germans fled their factories and air design centers. Many of the documents had been seized from the Nazi drawing board, details of exotic flying machines and rockets. Subsequently, Stevens was reassigned to Alaska, briefing and debriefing air crews of the Ptarmigan Project, a weather reconnaissance program in which B-29 crews mapped and photographed the polar surface. Because of encounters with strange circular aircraft reported by these returning crews, UFOs had piqued Stevens' interest even before the term "flying saucer" was coined in June 1947.
戰後，美國空軍指派史蒂芬到位於萊特廣場（Wright Field）的空軍技術情報中心（Air Technical Intelligence Center），在此處他曾看過美國人從德國人手中（大部分是德國人撤離的工廠及航空設計中心）掠獲的數以千計檔案和先進航空設計藍圖，許多都是由納粹設計局扣押來的，其中詳細記載了不明飛行器和火箭，後來，史蒂芬又被派往阿拉斯加參加空軍“北極松雞計畫”（Ptarmigan Project），此一計畫成員為一組由 B—29 飛機所組成的氣象偵察隊，它的任務是對極地表面進行照相及繪圖。任務執行時有返回基地的組員報告曾經和奇異的圓形飛行器相遇，因此在“飛碟”（flying saucer）這個術語於 1947 年 7 月被創造出來之前，史蒂芬已注意到它並很有興趣。
Stevens' first involvement with a UFO came during a debriefing in which one of his crews claimed it had spotted a "bogey" flying at an altitude much higher than they were capable. Before long, Stevens' B-29 crews inside the Arctic Circle had reported dozens more such sightings involving speeds and aeronautical maneuvers unknown to our technology. Later, Stevens himself clocked one of these "bogeys" on radar. It was traveling 7,000 miles an hour.
史蒂芬第一次接觸到和 UFO 有關的事情是在一次簡報中，有一位隊員聲稱在遠高於他們飛機所能飛行的高度上發現了一個“小白點”。不久，在北極圈內的史蒂芬 B—29 中隊回報看見許多個小白點，他們行進的速度及操控能力都不是我們現有的知識所能理解的。後來史蒂芬曾在雷達螢幕上估計其中一個小白點的速度，時速居然高達每小時七千英里。
"Based on my previous experience in the Air Intelligence Center," Stevens said, "I was convinced that there was no earth technology capable of producing air vehicles that could fly at thousands of miles per hour and make sharp angled turns at such high speeds, stop and even reverse instantly, stand still in the air, descend and ascend vertically at low and high speeds, land on the ice and water, and submerge underwater and emerge again and fly away."
“根據我以前在空軍情報中心的經驗，”史蒂芬說道，“我確信地球上的科技是不可能製造出時速高達數千英里，並且還可以同時進行急轉彎，又可以瞬間停止及倒退，甚至於停在空中，以不同的速度垂直起降，也可以在冰上及水上降落，亦可潛入水中，或下潛後重新飛離水面的航空載具。”
The B-29s on the Ptarmigan Project came outfitted with still cameras and movie cameras, and many times the crews who reported witnessing such maneuverability also captured the exotic craft in photographs and on film. Stevens himself saw none of the physical evidence, because as soon as the exposed film arrived in its canister with the crew back at his base, Stevens sent it with the crew chief directly to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, where, according to Stevens, "the officer was met by Pentagon intelligence and taken someplace."
“北極松雞計畫”的 B—29 飛機裝備了固定式的照相機和攝影機，中隊曾多次回報目擊到這種詭異的飛行物，並且有照片及影片為證。史蒂芬本人從來沒有親眼看到過真正的證據，因為他的隊員一回到基地，那些感光過的底片就會被裝入小型的金屬容器中，史蒂芬便帶著底片和中隊隊長直接到華盛頓的安德魯（Andrews）空軍基地，根據史蒂芬的描述“飛行員被五角大樓情報處的官員接待，並被帶往別處。”
Hearing nothing further about any of the sightings, Stevens began collecting articles and books on the UFO phenomenon. In a short while, he had acquired some of the first UFO photographs ever published, and he began to exchange copies of these photos for new ones taken by amateurs, as sightings became more prevalent. By 1976, Stevens' library on UFOs included 700 books and nearly 3,000 photographs, probably the largest private collection in the world, and one that was utilized extensively by documentary filmmakers. For nearly thirty years, he had corresponded and exchanged evidence regularly with most of the world's UFO researchers and investigators, and had personally investigated over a hundred cases in Bolivia, Canada, China, Ecuador, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States; he had walked the sites, handled the evidence, and "looked the people in the eye." Occasionally, he had been warned by governments not to pry.
在沒有進一步的消息之後，史蒂芬開始搜集與 UFO 相關的文章與書籍。在很短的時間內，他已經獲得了一些從未公開過的 UFO 照片，在 UFO 事件為越來越多人知道時，他也與業餘者交換這些照片的拷貝，以便獲得更新的照片。到了 1976 年，史蒂芬有關 UFO 的藏書已有七百本，並且有將近三千張的照片，這可能是世界上數量最大的私人搜藏，而且廣泛地被紀錄片的製作人使用。三十年間，他定期與全世界從事 UFO 研究的人密切地通信與交換證據，並且親自調查過上百件的 UFO 事件，這些事件發生在玻利維亞、加拿大、中國、厄瓜多爾、日本、墨西哥、荷蘭、秘魯、波多黎各、西班牙、瑞典、瑞士和美國；他曾前往不同的發生地查證各項證據，並且拜訪目擊證人。偶爾他也會被政府官員警告不要再打探這些事情。
"When I first encountered the phenomenon in the Air Force," Stevens said, "I thought it was very interesting to know and I wanted to find out more about it. But then, I found out that the people I was passing information to were denying that it ever existed. And I was running into trouble trying to tell my stories to somebody else. That piqued my curiosity because of all the energy used to suppress the information. Why were they covering it up? If there was nothing to it, why worry about it? Then, when I got to investigating my own cases and found that witnesses had turned pictures over to authorities and they never knew really who these authorities were, and nobody could ever find the pictures again, I began to worry. Where were they all going? Who the hell was doing this and how?
“當我在空軍第一次遇到這種現象時，”史蒂芬說著，“我認為它是非常有趣的，並且想要深入地瞭解它，但是我發現當我把資料向上級報告時，他們都否認這些事件的存在。當我試圖告訴某些人我的故事時就會遇到麻煩，他們花這麼多人力來壓制這些訊息，反而引起了我的好奇心。為什麼他們要掩飾呢？如果那不是什麼嚴重的事情，他們又何必擔心呢？當我開始調查案例時，我發現那些目擊者已經把照片交給了有關單位，但是他們也不知道到底是什麼單位，只知道沒有人能夠再找到那些照片了。這時候我開始擔憂了，那些照片到哪裡去了？到底是哪些畜生做了這些事？以及是如何做到的呢？”
"The phenomenon itself seems to be interwoven in our society from its very beginning, and we don't even understand that. If you go back through the Old Testament with different eyes, you'll find some sixty-eight passages that describe UFOs. Eliza was taken up by a wheel of fire, and Moses was spoken to out of a burning bush. That's no more than a green fireball that hovers in front of the sofa in somebody's house and talks to him, which I've run into at least twenty times in my investigations.
“這種現象似乎從一開始就密切結合在我們社會中，我們甚至還不明白這點。如果你用不同的視角回顧《舊約》（Old Testament），你會發現大約有六十八段是在描述 UFO 的。例如：伊莉莎（Eliza）被一個火輪所接走，摩西（Moses）從燃燒的灌木叢中說話。這不過就是一個綠色的火球，盤旋在某人家的沙發前並和他說話，在我調查中至少遇到過二十次。”
"I think part of the reason I chase UFOs is that I find realities there that are not realities to most other people. And I wonder why. It's too widespread to be nothing but a mental aberration. There are 70,000 cases per year reported worldwide. That's far too much for accidental story telling. It's too much for a bunch of liars to be creating their own stories for their own prestige or status or whatever they seek as individuals.
“我想我研究 UFO 的部分原因是，我發現了一些大部分的人都不認為是事實的事實，這一點一直令我感到非常困惑。UFO 案例的發生多到我們不能把它當作不曾發生過，或當作只是少數人精神錯亂的幻想；每年有七萬個案例在世界各地被報導出來，所以不可能是意外發生的故事，如果說他們都是一些為了自己的地位，特權或任何理由而捏造故事的騙子的話，這騙子也未免太多了。”
"If I hadn't spent thirty years doing this, I wouldn't believe it if you told me. But I have come to accept it because I have seen so many cases and talked to so many different people who are not in touch with each other, who are sane, rational people with no ax to grind, and these things have happened to them."
“如果不是我花了三十年的時間去研究這件事情，既使你告訴我，我也不會相信。但我最後還是接受它了，因為我看了這麼多的案例，並且和許多不同的人談過，這些人彼此之間從未接觸過，他們都是清醒、理智並努力工作的人，但是這些事情卻在他們的身上發生了。”
二
Lou Zinsstag and Wendelle Stevens had never met, though they frequently had exchanged photographs and information on UFO cases. During his thirty years of collecting and investigating, Stevens had acquired a reputation for having a knowledgeable eye when it came to analyzing photographs. Zinsstag knew of that reputation, and in the summer of 1976, she had written to Stevens, telling him briefly about the Meier case and mentioning the photographs taken by this one-armed, unemployed security guard. Prior to her letter, Stevens had heard nothing of the Meier case, but he knew Zinsstag by reputation as well as through correspondence, and he doubted her fascination with the case was unfounded. Though she was vague about their content, Zinsstag had twelve photographs she wanted Stevens to see; and instead of sending them by mail as she had often done in the past, she wanted to bring them herself from Switzerland to Stevens' home in Tucson.
辛斯塔（Lou Zinsstag）和史蒂芬兩人經常交換 UFO 照片和訊息，但兩人從未見過面。史蒂芬經過了三十年的搜集與研究，在分析照片方面建立了一些名聲。辛斯塔獲知他的名氣之後，在 1976 年的夏天寫信給史蒂芬，告訴他有關邁爾的事蹟，並且提到了由這位獨臂且失業的警衛所拍得的照片。在她來信之前，史蒂芬從來沒有聽過邁爾的事情，只是從辛斯塔及其它的言談而得知他這個人，可是他仍然懷疑她這個沒有根據的案例。雖然她在信中講得並不清楚，但辛斯塔仍有 12 張照片想要拿給史蒂芬看；以前她經常都是用信件的方式寄給別人看的，現在她想要親自從瑞士帶它們到美國圖森市（Tucson）史蒂芬的家給他看。
In early September 1976, Zinsstag flew to the United States, accompanied by Timothy Good, to meet with some of the more prominent figures in American UFOlogy, and to conduct research on George Adamski. On the prearranged day, she called Stevens from the Greyhound bus station in Tucson, and Stevens picked them up, got them checked into a motel, then drove them out to his house. They first wanted to see Stevens' UFO library, which took up an entire wall of the living room, and another wall in his small study. In addition to the 700 volumes on UFOs collected from all over the world, thirty blue binders containing Stevens' collection of nearly 3,000 UFO photographs stood side by side in three tight rows.
在 1976 年 9 月上旬，辛斯塔飛到了美國，隨行的有古德（Timothy Good），他們打算一起去會見美國一些著名的 UFO 界人物，並且對亞當斯基（George Adamski）這個人進行瞭解。在雙方約好的時間，她從圖森市的灰狗巴士站打電話給史蒂芬，請他來接他們。接到之後先安排他們到汽車旅館，接著帶他們到他家。他們首先想看的是史蒂芬的 UFO 圖書館，他們看見客廳中有一整面牆從地板到天花板都是書，在餐廳的另一面牆，還有他的小研究室也都是如此。除了從世界各地搜集到的七百冊書籍外，在三十本藍色的裝訂本中還有三千張 UFO 照片，整齊地排成三排。
Briefly, they discussed various cases, but Zinsstag cut short the small talk when she pulled a folder from her satchel. As Timothy Good remembered, "Lou brought a sort of 'dossier' on Meier." Inside the folder lay a large envelope, which she opened carefully, then slid out a small stack of 5 X 7 photos. As she began laying out each photograph neatly on Stevens' dining room table, Stevens took one look and whispered, "I have nothing in my collection that even comes near the quality of these prints."
他們很簡短地討論了一些案例，當辛斯塔從她的皮包中抽出一個檔案夾時，便結束了簡短的寒暄。古德記得，“辛斯塔帶著一份與邁爾相關的檔案。”在檔案夾中有一個大信封袋，她很小心地打開，拿出一疊 5 X 7 的照片。在史蒂芬的餐桌上，她整齊地展示著每一張照片，史蒂芬拿了一張來看，並且喃喃自語說：“在我的搜藏裡從未有過品質這麼好的照片。”
When Stevens examined a UFO photograph, he looked first for relative focus, then for distance graying. "Distance attenuation is what I call it," he explained. "The further away an object is, the more moisture, smoke, and dust there will be in the atmosphere between it and the lens.
史蒂芬在檢視 UFO 照片時會先注意相對焦距，然後再注意它的灰暗差別程度。“我稱這種現像是距離衰減（Distance attenuation），”他解釋說，“因為大氣中遠處的物體與鏡頭之間充滿了濕氣、汙煙和灰塵。”
"Then, I would look for evidence of rephotographing. If it's got a fingerprint or specks on it, I turn it at an angle in the light. If what I'm looking at is not on the surface, then it's printed in the photograph, and that means that something preceded this picture. Also, the distance light travels has some relationship to the color that arrives at the lens. The closer the object is, the more red it appears; the further it is, the more blue. Another thing to look at is light scatter because the curved surface on a larger object scatters light differently than the sharply curved surface on a nearer object. A model can be perfectly realistic, but it will cast light differently."
“然後我希望找到重制照片的證據，例如照片上是否有指紋或汙點，在光線下旋轉到某個角度我就可以看見了，如果我所注視的物體不是在照片表層的話，那就可以證明它是被動過手腳的了；另外，光線行進不同的距離到達透鏡也會產生顏色的變化，越接近你的物體它顯現出來的就越紅，距離越遠的物體看起來就越藍；另一件要注意的是光的散射問題，對一個比較近的物體而言，光線在平滑大型物體曲面的散射和在近距離物體尖銳曲面的散射是不同的。模型可以做得和真的一樣，但是它的折光結果是不一樣的。”
Stevens examined each print carefully, holding it up to the light and tilting it. In thirty years of collecting and analyzing photographs of UFOs, Meier's photos were the most spectacular he had ever seen. Rarely was a UFO photograph more than a single accidental shot taken with poor equipment by an amateur who had no time to make adjustments for proper lighting, speed, and focus. Extremely rare was the photo taken in daylight, or with the UFO below the horizon, or with multiple craft in the same picture. And no one had ever taken a continuing series of photographs of the same craft.
史蒂芬小心地檢視每一張照片，一張張拿著朝光線看去，並且不停地傾斜來傾斜去。在他三十年有關 UFO 照片的搜藏和分析中，邁爾的照片是最值得一看的。以一個業餘的、僅有粗略儀器的拍攝者，且在沒有充裕時間調整光圈、速度和對焦的情況下，竟能拍得如此清晰真是令人讚歎，更難得的是邁爾的照片有白天拍得的，有飛碟出現在眼前的，也有一張照片中出現好幾架飛碟的。更何況至今沒有一個人曾拍到像這種同一個飛行器的連續照片，但是他拍到了。
In the Meier photos, shiny silver disks, glinting from the sun, hovered in a blue sky above nearby hills and trees. A distinct red band encircled the upper convex rise on many of the sleekly contoured disks. Others were adorned with equally spaced knobs around the perimeter and a rococo dome on top. In all, Meier had photographs of six variations of spacecraft, each taken in daylight, some below the horizon, and some with two, three, even four spacecraft in the same picture. And each of the photos was the sharpest and clearest Stevens had ever seen.
在邁爾的照片中有著發亮的銀色碟子，因太陽的照射而閃爍光芒，翱翔在鄰近的小山和樹林上方的藍天中。紅色的光環環繞著光滑的碟狀物，其它的光線則井然有序地裝飾在飛碟上方突起的圓頂周圍。邁爾提供的太空船照片有六種不同的造型，每一種都是在日光下拍得的，有些照片是在低於海平面時攝得的，有些照片中出現兩架、三架甚至四架太空船，而且每一張照片都是史蒂芬從未見過的清晰。
Timothy Good later remembered Stevens' reaction. "He became absolutely in the seventh heaven when Lou showed him the photographs. He was thrilled. Absolutely. Words to the effect, 'best pictures I've seen.'"
古德隨後回憶史蒂芬的反應道：“當他看見辛斯塔展示的照片時，他極度的興奮，他顫抖並斬釘截鐵地說：‘這是我所看過最好的照片。’”
三
When Zinsstag and Good had called from the bus station late that morning, Stevens had been entertaining friends down from Phoenix, Lee and Brit Elders. Lee Elders had been a close friend of Stevens for five years and was aware of Stevens' reputation as a UFO investigator. He and Brit were mildly interested themselves, having been educated in the phenomenon by Stevens. No one could go to Stevens' house and see the fat three-ring binders filled with pictures of flying saucers and not have his curiosity piqued. That afternoon, though, the Meier photos that Lou Zinsstag spread across the dining table amazed the Elders as much as Stevens.
那天早上接近中午時，辛斯塔和古德從巴士站打電話給史蒂芬，當時他正在招待從鳳凰城（Phoenix）來的朋友，李和佈雷特．愛德（Lee and Brit Elders）夫婦。李是五年來史蒂芬最親近的朋友，並且深知史蒂芬在 UFO 界的名氣，他和妻子佈雷特都對此深感興趣，他們兩人從史蒂芬那兒獲得了很多相關的知識。沒有人參觀過史蒂芬三大排的飛碟照片後會不產生好奇的。那天下午，辛斯塔在餐桌上層開了邁爾的照片，愛德夫婦吃驚的程度和史蒂芬相同。
"Photographs of UFOs," said Brit, "are usually fuzzy little balls in the sky that have no definition. And they are so far away and so much out of focus, they could be just about anything."
“飛碟的照片，”佈雷特說道，“通常都是非常模糊的，在空中只有一小點。一般人拍攝的距離都很遠，而且焦距都沒有對好，所以那也可能是飛碟以外的任何東西。”
She laughed. "Sure, somebody has taken a little tiny miniature setting, put it together, and filmed it. That's what that is."
辛斯塔笑著說：“當然也有人放置小的縮圖後再拍下就變成了那些照片。”
"Actually, Lee used to laugh at my UFO hobby," recalled Stevens. "When he saw the photographs, his position was, 'Ah, they're fakes. Anybody could look at those and tell they're faces.' They looked pretty good to me, but I had run across a lot of good pictures that were fakes, so I kind of half agreed. But I thought, man, these are the best fakes I've ever seen.
How did he do it?"
“事實上，李時常會譏笑我對 UFO 的嗜好。”史蒂芬回憶著說，“當他看到這些照片時，他直覺地認為：‘那是假的，任何人都看得出來。’對我而言，它們看起來太好了，但是我也看過很多偽造得很好的照片，所以我對這些照片半信半疑。可是我心裡在想，這可是我見過最好的偽造照片，他是如何做到的呢？”
For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, Stevens studied the photographs and listened to Zinsstag recount her experiences with Meier. She told him about Meier's living conditions in the Hinwil house, his wife and children, and the many people who came to see him. She explained her relationship with Meier and how she had acquired the photos. The man was poor, she said, had only one arm, and seemed sincere. How many pictures had he taken of the craft? Stevens wanted to know. Oh, replied Zinsstag, quite a few more. As he listened, Stevens perceived that Zinsstag was trying to relay a sense of the man and his experiences without telling the whole story, as though she were protecting Stevens from some sort of sensory overload. The pictures spoke for themselves, but it seemed that much of the story, perhaps most of it, remained untold. This perception intrigued Stevens.
從下午到晚上，史蒂芬一直在研究那些照片，並且聽著辛斯塔談論她和邁爾相處的經驗。她告訴他邁爾在欣維爾鎮的生活狀況，包括他的妻子、孩子們和許多與他接觸過的人，她解釋自己和邁爾的關係，和她如何獲得這些照片。她說這個人家境很窮，只有一隻手臂，但看起來蠻誠心的。史蒂芬想知道他到底拍了多少張太空船的照片，辛斯塔回答說：“喔！還不少。”他仔細地聆聽著，史蒂芬瞭解辛斯塔只傳播了邁爾的觀感和經驗，並沒有說出他全部的故事，像是要減輕史蒂芬某種負擔的感覺。這些照片本身就可以證明一切，但是感覺上似乎還有很多故事，也許大多數的故事都還沒有彰顯出來，這種感覺更引起了史蒂芬的懷疑。
The following morning, Zinsstag and Good left for Los Angeles. For the next year, Stevens corresponded with Zinsstag until he made contact with Meier himself and began a correspondence with him. Slowly, he realized that Meier had had more than a few contacts, that details of these contacts had been recorded, that perhaps many more, even hundreds of photographs existed, and that Meier may not have been the only one to have seen and experienced strange things in the forests surrounding Hinwil and now in the hills outside Schmidruti. In October 1977, a little over a year after Lou Zinsstag and Timothy Good had come to Tucson, Stevens decided the case was worth an on-site investigation, and he made arrangements to fly to Switzerland to meet Billy Meier.
隔天的早晨，辛斯塔和古德動身前往洛杉磯。在接下來的一年裡，史蒂芬開始與辛斯塔通信，直到他聯絡上邁爾，並且與他通信為止。慢慢地他瞭解到邁爾有過許多次的接觸經驗，而每次接觸都作了詳細的記錄，另外還有更多將近好幾百張的照片，而且邁爾可能不是唯一在欣維爾鎮外的森林裡及西密魯提林外的小山上看見和遭遇神奇事件的人。1977 年 10 月，也就是辛斯塔和古德到圖森後一年多一點，史蒂芬認為這個案例值得去實地探訪，於是他準備飛到瑞士和邁爾見面。
"I'm just going to go over real quick and take a look," he told the Elders. He hoped to get prints of some of the Meier photographs for his collection, and mainly "to look the man in the eye to see if he's telling the truth."
The Elders laughed. "Tell us what happens when you get there," they said.
“我只是想到那兒很快地瞭解一下狀況，”他告訴愛德夫婦。他想要獲得一些邁爾的照片作為搜藏，當然更重要的還是，“親自去看看此人講的到底是真還是假。”
愛德夫婦笑著說道：“你回來後一定要告訴我們結果如何。”
四
Stevens flew to London, then took the train to Wiesbaden, Germany, where he delivered a UFO lecture. The next day, he took another train to Zurich, where he rented a car and began his drive to the Meier farm, as picturesque a drive as one could imagine. In October the green countryside lay dotted with the bright reds and yellows of turning leaves, and many tree trunks supported burlap sacks filled with fresh-picked apples and pears. On nearly every hillside roamed light gray dairy cows with the Glocke or the Treichle dangling from their necks, tinkling as they grazed. Already the farmers had stacked winter wood head high, the split logs forming a face as smooth as a puzzle.
史蒂芬飛到倫敦後便搭火車到德國的威斯巴登（Wiesbaden）市，在那兒他發表了一場有關 UFO 的演講。隔天他便搭乘另一列火車前往瑞士的蘇黎世，到達後他租了一輛車，開往邁爾的農場，這是一段美麗的旅途。十月，綠色的鄉野點綴著紅黃相間的葉子，許多果樹上掛滿了小袋子來保護剛結實的蘋果和梨子；山邊遊牧著乳牛，脖子上還吊著小鈐鐺，吃草時便發出叫叮噹當的聲音。這時節農人們已把冬天生火的木材堆得比人還高了，劈好的木材形成像拼圖一樣平滑的表面。
The Meier farm stood not so picturesque. Meier and his family had been living at the farm now for only six months. Mud still lay everywhere, and Stevens saw outbuildings standing askew, their roofs sagging. The main house, which shared a common wall with the barn, had no upstairs, only open rafters, and the roof leaked. The only bathroom facilities sat behind the house, a lean-to built over a pit. In the kitchen a pressure pump now brought in cold water from a holding tank, and Meier had wired the kitchen and the main room of the house with electricity for only two bare light bulbs. Most of the floors were still of dirt.
邁爾的農場看起來就沒有這麼詩情畫意了，邁爾一家住在這個農場上只有六個月，到處都還是泥濘不堪，有些週邊的建築物仍是歪歪斜斜的，屋頂都快掉下來的樣子。主建築和穀倉共用一面牆，沒有二樓只有外露的椽木，而且屋頂也會漏水。唯一的浴室是在主建築物的後方，一個搭出來的斜頂小屋。廚房裡有一個馬達把水從蓄水池抽上來，邁爾在廚房和主要的房間裡接好了電線來供應兩盞舊燈泡的電力；大部分的地板上都還是灰塵。
When Stevens arrived at the farm, he saw two cars with people waiting to see Meier, one from Munich, one from Berlin. A few young Europeans, hitchhiking, or on bicycles or motorcycles, had pitched tents on the driest piece of ground they could find and lived there for
a few days, working in the field or garden during the day, and talking to Meier in the evenings. Invited by the Meiers to stay at the farm if he liked, Stevens himself slept in a bedroll in the rafters above what used to be the barn. He felt that any case worth investigating deserved time, and it appeared that the Meier case deserved more than most. He wanted to get as close as he could.
當史蒂芬到達農場時，看見兩輛車，車上的人等著拜訪邁爾，一部車從慕尼黑來，另一輛從柏林來。幾個年輕的歐洲人搭便車或騎單車、摩托車來到這裡，就在比較乾燥的地方搭起帳篷，這樣他們就可以在這裡住上幾天，白天在花園或農場上工作，晚上則和邁爾談一些事。如果史蒂芬願意，邁爾將邀請他住在農場裡，史蒂芬決定用鋪蓋睡在舊穀倉上方的小閣樓裡。他認為所有值得研究的案例都需要花時間去研究，而邁爾的案例則需要花更多的時間，因為他想要盡可能地接近邁爾。
A year earlier in Tucson, Zinsstag had told Stevens only that Meier had had more than one contact and that he had taken at least a dozen other photographs than the ones she had brought with her. In his first day at the farm, after meeting Meier and talking with a few other people, Stevens confirmed his earlier suspicion that Zinsstag had held back some of what she knew about the case to avoid overwhelming him at the outset.
一年前在圖森時，辛斯塔只告訴史蒂芬，邁爾有超過一次以上的接觸經驗以及一打以上的其它照片，比她帶給他看的照片要多；然而，在他到達農場的第一天，在與邁爾及一些人談論之後．史蒂芬確定了他早先的懷疑：辛斯塔曾隱瞞某些事情，以免他產生先入為主的誤解。
Much to his surprise, Stevens found that Meier not only spoke passable English, but had a colorful way of expressing himself. When the two men met, Meier even offered him a challenge: he said he hoped the colonel would ask questions not asked by everyone else.
許多事情出乎史蒂芬意料之外，他發現邁爾不只是英文尚可，還能以各種方式來表現他自己。當這兩人見面時，邁爾甚至於向他提出挑戰：他說希望這位上校所提出來的問題和一般人不同。
"He had so many different faces coming and going," said Stevens, "and he had answered the same questions so many times for so many different people, he got sick of it. He didn't want to talk about it at all to outsiders because he'd explained to somebody else yesterday and somebody else the day before, and another one the day before, and another one the day before, and he didn't care. If you didn't ask the right questions, you didn't get the answers.
“總而言之，他是多方面的，”史蒂芬說道，“由於不同的人曾經向他提出過太多同樣的問題了，使得他對於一再回答相同的問題感到很厭煩，他不願意再和外行人談這些了。由於他已經和不同的人重複解釋相同的問題，所以現在如果無法提出很好的問題，是無法獲得他的解答的。”
During his four days in Switzerland, Stevens accompanied Meier on several long walks into the forest behind the farm, and when the weather turned bad he sat with Meier in the kitchen for hours poring over photo albums and talking. When Stevens asked about recent pictures of the beamships, Meier gave him 130 photographic prints, charging him only for the cost of printing. Through an interpreter, Stevens also interviewed Popi, the children, and half a dozen other witnesses, including Jakobus, Hans Schutzbach, and Herbert's friend Harold Proch, who was visiting with his sister. Each had his or her own stories to tell, and each was so convinced the contacts were taking place that when Stevens asked if they believed them, the common answer was, "I don't believe. I know."
在瑞士的四天裡，史蒂芬陪邁爾進入農場後方的森林中好幾次，天氣不好時，他們就會坐在廚房裡仔細看著相簿裡的照片並且談論著。當史蒂芬問到有關太空船最新的照片時，邁爾給了他 130 張，並且只收取了成本價。透過翻譯，史蒂芬也可以與波比、孩子們和其它的目擊者交談，其中包括了傑卡布、漢斯和藍哥的朋友伯奇，伯奇是和他姐姐一起來拜訪他的，他們每一個人都訴說了他（她）自己的故事，每一個人都確信發生過接觸事件，當史蒂芬問他們是否真的相信時，共同的答案是：“我不相信，但是我知道。”
五
With the weather socked in, cold and damp, and visibility at the sites poor, the Gasthaus zum Freihof in Schmidruti provided Stevens with a quiet place to get away from the farm and sit in a warm parlor heated by a large wood stove. One gray morning, he retired to a table by the French windows that overlooked the road spiraling through the village, and began to read the background on the contacts. Meier's alleged experiences appeared to be far more complicated than a simple meeting three years earlier.
當天候又冷又濕時，接觸現場的能見度很不好。在西密魯提村內的佛瑞荷福酒店提供了農場外的另一個安靜場所給史蒂芬，在溫暖的大廳中有一個可以燒木材取暖的大火爐。在一個灰暗的早晨，他移開酒店法國式窗戶旁的一張椅子，從那裡可以俯視穿過村莊的一條彎曲鵝卵石路。他開始研究接觸事件的背景，邁爾聲稱他的接觸經驗已遠比三年前的一次簡單會面要複雜多了。
Stevens thumbed through the voluminous pages of contact notes, beginning with Meier's account of his first contact with Semjase, a Tuesday afternoon, January 28, 1975, in a field not far from Hinwil.
史蒂芬翻閱了邁爾第一次與 Semjase 接觸的筆記本，那是在 1975 年 1 月 28 日一個星期二的下午，在距離欣維爾鎮不遠的一個原野上。
According to the notes, that January had been unseasonably warm in eastern Switzerland, and the winter had been unusually dry; little snow clung to the lower elevations. Meier wrote that in the early afternoon he had been at his house in Hinwil when the twinkle of a thought had entered his consciousness, and then words and symbols had formed a message, one he had been expecting but not quite so soon: he was to leave his house and bring with him a device for taking pictures.
根據筆記本的記錄，那個一月的冬天瑞士東部異常的溫暖和乾燥，只有一點點雪覆蓋在低海拔處。邁爾寫道，下午剛過，他還在欣維爾鎮的房內，一個閃動的念頭進入了他的意識，接著一些文字和圖形形成了一個訊息，這他已預期到但沒想到這麼快就到來了。他離開房子並且帶了裝備去照相。他帶了一架外殼有些破裂、焦距鏡頭很髒的奧林帕斯 35 釐米相機，因為它構造簡單，可以很容易地用單手操作。
Responding to the message, Meier had departed on his moped, taking with him an old Olympus 35mm camera with a broken viewfinder and a focus that jammed just short of infinity. He used this camera because the film advanced with a simple thumbwheel he found easy to operate with his one hand.
On his motorbike, he had ridden aimlessly through the village, turning when the glimmer of a command directed him to. After an hour, he found himself far from the village, on a remote road bordering a nature conservancy where he received a final command to stop his motorbike and wait. After several minutes, a sudden stillness descended upon the meadow, and then a large disk-shaped object shot soundlessly through light clouds, slowed in a wide graceful arc, and crossed the meadow four or five hundred feet from where Meier stood aiming his camera. But the moment he snapped a picture, the disk had vanished.
他騎在摩托車上遵照著指示前進。一小時之後，他發現自己已經離村莊很遠了，並且騎到一條人跡罕至的路上，在此，他接到了最後一個命令要他停下來並且等待。幾分鐘之後，草地上忽然一片寧靜，一個大的碟形物體無聲無息地從薄雲後面冒了出來，停在草地的上方離邁爾拿著相機瞄準站立處四、五百英尺，那時邁爾出其不意地照了一張照片，那個碟狀物就消失了。
When the disk reappeared again, it hovered above a truck parked at the edge of the meadow, only a hundred feet from where Meier stood. He watched the disk suspended quietly no more than three hundred feet off the ground.
當這個碟狀物再次出現時，它翱翔在草地邊緣的一株大樹幹上方，僅離邁爾站立處 100 英尺左右，他看著它安靜地懸浮在離地 300 英尺左右的空中。
Meier estimated the disk to be about twenty-one feet in diameter, with reddish rectangles, like windows, encircling its upper mound. Beneath the craft, the hull, exceedingly old in appearance, seemed to undulate "as if little waves ran continuously through the lower side of the ship." The waves radiated downward, creating an aura around the truck. Meier took a second picture, and again the spacecraft abruptly broke its hovering pattern, rushed toward the east, and disappeared into the clouds.
邁爾估計這個碟狀物的直徑約 21 英尺，上半部環繞著紅色的四方形，像是窗戶，太空船的下半船身外觀看起來很舊，似乎是波浪狀的，“就像小水波在船的下方不停地移動一樣”。水波向下輻射，在樹幹周圍產生一股氣味。邁爾照了第二張照片，太空船再次改變翱翔的方式並且突然快速地往東飛去，消失於雲中。
Climbing onto his moped, Meier had then headed out across the meadow in the direction he had last seen the disk. Only moments passed before he felt a stillness suddenly descend upon the meadow. Then, the disk came streaking through the clouds again, faster than any jet Meier had ever seen. It dropped speed quickly, banked slowly over the forest, and began its descent toward the clearing. Meier took two more pictures as the craft, without a sound, dropped lower and lower, and then landed.
跨上他的機車之後，邁爾通過草地朝向他最後看見碟狀物的方向騎去。不久，草地上已一片死寂，一會兒，它又穿越雲層回來了，它的速度比邁爾所知的任何噴射機都快，它減速的速度也很快，它在森林上方慢慢地傾斜，並且開始朝空地下降。在它靜靜地慢慢下降然後著陸時，邁爾又拍了兩張照片。
In the warm parlor of the Freihof, Stevens put down the notes and sipped his hot tea. The encounter Meier was about to describe in the notes, he now knew, was only the culmination of a series of phenomena in Meier's life that Meier claimed had been set in motion thirty-five years ago. Before he read further, Stevens wanted to question Meier about the earlier experiences.
在佛瑞荷福溫暖的大廳裡，史蒂芬放下筆記本喝了一口熱茶。他現在明白邁爾遭遇的大部分都詳述於筆記本中，這些都是邁爾生活中一連串事件的精華，邁爾聲稱這些行動在 35 年前就已經決定了。於是在往下讀之前，史蒂芬想要問邁爾一些早年的經驗。
六
Back in the kitchen at the farmhouse, Meier did not hesitate to tell Stevens the long story of his involvement with the Pleiadians, a story that began in his childhood. He said his first sighting of an alien spacecraft occurred one morning when he was only five and a half years old.
在農場的廚房裡，邁爾毫不遲疑地告訴史蒂芬他和昴宿星人之間的長篇故事，這是一個在他小時候就開始發生的故事。他說他第一次看見外星太空船是在一個早上，當時他才五歲半。
"This was in 1942 together with my father," said Meier. "He was behind the house under a walnut tree, it was summertime. When I saw the ship flying, it didn't necessarily seem strange to me. It did look strange in our world, but somehow I had the feeling that it was something familiar. It fell down from the sky, to the tower of the church, and then it came to us and left westward. It was very, very fast. Altogether, I watched it fall for maybe one and a half minutes, and then when it left westward, there were seconds only."
“那是 1942 年，我和父親在一起，”邁爾說道，“當時是夏天，我父親在房子後方的胡桃樹下。我看見一艘船飛在天空時，我並不覺得奇怪，但在我們的世界中它卻是奇怪的，不過，無論如何我都覺得它很熟悉。它從空中落下來，到教堂的塔頂，向我們飛來後又朝西方飛去，它的飛行速度非常非常的快。總之，我看它下降了約一分半鐘，然後它就以幾秒鐘的時間向西方飛走了。”
The object had reminded Meier of a huge discus, shooting overhead only 600 feet off the ground, completely soundless, and disappearing over the Horagenwald.
He asked his father, "Daddy, what's happened here?"
But his father only replied, "It's a secret weapon of Adolf Hitler."
這個東西讓邁爾想起了一個大鐵餅，它在離地只有 600 英尺的高度完全無聲地飛過去，消失在天空。
他問父親：“爸爸，這兒發生了什麼事情？”
但他父親僅回答說：“那是希特勒的秘密武器。”
"I was thinking that can't be true," said Meier, "that's something else. I don't know if my father realized what he saw because he didn't bother with it anymore. I started to watch the sky day and night."
“我當時想那不是真的，”邁爾說道，“那一定是別的東西。我不知道我父親到底知不知道他看到的是什麼東西，因為他從來沒有因此事而感到煩惱。但是爾後我開始日夜不停地看著天空。”
Meier told Stevens that two months had passed before he again saw the silvery flying disk, this time descending slowly toward a field where he was playing alone. But as the disk neared the grassy surface, suddenly, without a sound, it had vanished. Within moments of the disk's vanishing, something "similar to a voice" arose inside Meier's head. Accompanied by the drawing of vivid pictures in his mind, the voice thereafter spoke to Meier once a day. It requested that he answer, and seek answers of his own.
邁爾告訴史蒂芬，兩個月後他又看見了銀色的太空船，這次它慢慢地下降到他獨自玩耍的原野上。當這個碟狀物靠近草地表面時，突然間又毫無聲音地消失了。在碟狀物消失的同時，某種東西 ——“就像是一種聲音”在邁爾的腦中響起，並且還有活生生的圖像出現在他的腦海中，自此以後，這種聲音每天都會和邁爾說一次話，它要求他回應，並且要他自己去尋找回應的方法。
"In the beginning, I didn't receive entire words or sentences," he explained to Stevens. "It was more like pictures. As time went by, these pictures became words and sentences. Later, I received messages in symbols. Once, I tried to draw one of these symbols, but I was not able to do it."
“剛開始時，我無法接收到所有的字或句子”他向史蒂芬解釋道：“它更像是一幅幅的畫，過了一些時日，這些畫就變成字串和句子了。後來我接收到的是符號的資訊。有一次我嘗試畫出這些符號其中的一個，但是我卻無法做到。”
"Troubled by the voice and the pictures in his head, Meier had told Parson Zimmermann, the Protestant minister in the village, of the great flying disk he had seen and of the voice that had come into his head soon afterward. Zimmermann had a reputation in the village as somewhat of a mystic, far more liberal in his thinking than the parochial outlook of his parishioners.
他腦中的這些聲音和圖畫困擾著他，於是邁爾告訴齊默爾曼（Zimmermann）牧師，他是村中新教徒的牧師。邁爾告訴他看見太空船和在腦中出現聲音的事。齊默爾曼在村中對處理某些神秘事件上有些名氣，而且他的想法比教區居民更開通。
"I knew Parson Zimmermann," said Meier. "He was the family priest, and I used to play with his children. Another reason I probably went to see him was that even as a small child, I heard talk that he occupied himself with mystical matters. I told him about the experience I had together with my father, and then the voices I heard inside of me, the telepathic calls. That's why I went to him, because I though I was going crazy. I used to go after school; it was not far from the schoolhouse. He told me that he knew about these flying objects; back then, they were not called UFOs; this was nothing new to him. The people who flew in them would come from another world, not from earth. He told me that he understood this, but that he could not talk about it. He was a priest and he would shock the people. He told me to try to learn telepathy, to try to give answers. So I tried as I was told. After a few weeks, it worked, and I was able to answer. I remember very well that Father Zimmermann told me not to talk about it to anyone, otherwise everybody would say I was crazy."
“我深知齊默爾曼，”邁爾說道，“他是我們家的好朋友，我經常和他的孩子玩。我去看他的另外一個理由是因小時候就聽說他處理過一些神秘的事情。我告訴他我和父親在一起所看見的奇異景象，和我自己聽到來自內心感應的聲音。這使我不得不去找他，因為我覺得我快瘋了。我都是在放學之後到他那裡的，那兒離學校不遠。他告訴我說他也知道這些飛行物體的事情，那時他並不稱它們為 UFO，這件事對他而言並不是什麼新鮮事，他說那些坐在太空船裡的人是來自另外一個世界，而非地球。他告訴我他瞭解這些事情，但是他不能夠討論它，因為他是一位牧師，他說了之後會對人們產生很大的震撼。他告訴我嘗試去學習心靈感應，並試著給他們回應。所以我就開始嘗試了。幾個星期後有了成效，我開始能夠回應了。我記得非常清楚，齊默爾曼牧師提醒我這件事不能告訴任何人，否則別人會說我瘋了。”
Now, whenever he heard the voice speaking to him, the young Meier would try to direct his thoughts inward, and before long, he felt as if those thoughts made contact with something.
現在，每當他聽到有聲音在和他說話，年輕的邁爾就會試著引導自己的思緒，不久，他就覺得好像這種思緒已與某些東西接觸了。
"The first reaction from the other side," he recalled, "was like a gentle and fine laughter, which I heard deep inside of me and felt, pleasant and relaxing. I still hear that laughter, but I can't define it. It was a very lovely laughter." Then, the contact faded away once more, and Meier neither heard a voice nor realized pictures. Suddenly, all was quiet again.
“第一次的反應是從另外一個方向來的，”他回憶著，“那是一種很像溫和而美好的笑聲，它來自我的內心深處，給我的感覺是愉快和放鬆的。我現在仍然可以聽到那種笑聲，但是我不知如何形容它，它是一種非常可愛的笑聲。”但當接觸次數逐漸減少後，邁爾就沒有再聽到聲音，也不再有影像出現了；突然間，所有的事情都回復了平靜。
On February 3, 1944, Meier's seventh birthday, a new voice, low and clear, came into his conscious mind "and ordered me to learn and to collect knowledge transmitted to me." Meier feared that the clarity of this new voice meant he had finally succumbed to insanity.
1944 年 2 月 3 日是邁爾七歲的生日，一種新的、低沉又清楚的聲音進入了他的意識中，“並且命令我學習和搜集他們傳送給我的知識。”邁爾開始憂慮這種新的聲音表示他真的精神失常了。
"I was afraid because as a small boy, I hadn't any experience with the telepathic way. I again had to go to ask Parson Zimmermann what was happening, and he informed me, and I slowly understood."
“我實在很害怕，因為當時我只是個小孩子，我沒有任何心靈感應的經驗。我又去找齊默爾曼，告訴他發生了這些事情，他向我解釋一些事情，我也慢慢瞭解了。”
The low, clear voice Meier now heard belonged to an entity named Sfath, whose thought-transmitted teachings continued frequently through the summer of 1944. Then, one day in September, as Meier walked alone in a meadow, Sfath suddenly announced himself telepathically and told the boy he should wait there and not be afraid.
邁爾現在所聽到的這種低沉而清晰的聲音是屬於 Sfath的聲音，Sfath 於 1944 年的夏天持續地對邁爾進行心靈感應教育。9 月中的某一天，邁爾獨自走在草原上，Sfath 突然用心靈感應告訴這個孩子要他在這兒等，並且叫他不要害怕。
"This was some time later and far from our home," said Meier. "It was three or four miles away behind a very big forest, a lonely place. There, I saw something falling down from the sky, very, very slow and it became bigger and bigger. It was something like a metallic pear. Then, this ramp opened and it came out, going down like an elevator. I entered the ship and we went up very high above the earth. There was a very old man who looked to me like a patriarch. His name was Sfath. He was a human being, like each other one here on earth, only very old. We talked for hours, then he brought me back to the ground. The funny thing was, he knew my mother tongue better than I."
“那時時間已經很晚了，而且離我們家很遠，”邁爾說道，“差不多有三或四英里遠，那地方在一片很大的森林後面，是一個寂靜的地方。在那兒我看見有東西非常、非常慢地從空中降落，然後變得越來越大，像極了金屬的梨子。接著太空船的梯子打開了，往下延伸，像是個電梯。我進入了船內，然後太空船上升到非常高的高度。船艙內有一位非常老的人，他看起來像是一位長老，他一直注視著我，他的名字是Sfath。他曾經是一個地球人，就像現在生存在地球上的人類一樣，只是非常老罷了。我們談了幾個鐘頭之後他就帶我回到了地面。更有趣的是，他比我還通曉我的母語。”
The venerable Sfath told Meier he would remain his spiritual mentor only through the early 1950s, when a much higher form of life would assume the responsibility for further teaching. Meier had been selected for a mission, but Sfath revealed only that decades would pass before the boy knew its nature. Until that time, Meier had to be prepared to meet with many things, some that would cause him again to question his sanity, others that might bring physical harm. At the end of four hours, Sfath returned Meier to the meadow then departed, never to be seen again by the young boy. For many years thereafter, though, he had continued transmitting thoughts to Meier, preparing him, Meier felt, for the next step in his spiritual evolution. Then, on February 3, 1953, when Meier turned sixteen, Sfath's voice had ceased in his mind forever.
年老的Sfath 告訴邁爾，在 50 年代初，他將是邁爾的心靈導師，以後會有更高層的生命來承擔更高深的教育責任。邁爾被挑選要去執行一項任務，Sfath 僅透露這個孩子還要經過幾十年的時間才能夠瞭解這項任務的性質；當任務派遣的時間到時，邁爾將要準備面對很多事情。有些會影響到他的心智，有些甚至可能會帶來身體上的傷害。在經歷了四個小時之後，Sfath 把邁爾送回草原便離開了，這個小孩以後就再也沒有見過他了。在往後的幾年裡他繼續不斷地傳送想法給邁爾，邁爾是這麼感覺的，以便為他下一步的心靈進化打下基礎。到了 1953 年 2 月 3 日，當邁爾 16 歲時，Sfath 的聲音就再也沒有出現在他心中了。
Several months passed before the silence was again filled with a new voice, at once present and talking to him. Unlike the soft and harmonic tone of Sfath, the new voice sounded young and fresh, full of force. She was named Asket.
安靜了好幾個月後，一個新的聲音又來了，並且與他交談。這個新聲音聽起來既年輕又中氣十足，不像Sfath 那麼輕柔而和緩，充滿了說服力，她的名字叫 Asket。
七
Asket came from the DAL Universe. "To your universe, it is unknown," she instructed Meier, "but our universe is parallel to yours. It lies reckoned in your time on an equal plane. Many of the universes lie in time planes and spaces completely unknown to you. Because of technological developments, the barrier has been opened from our universe to yours."
Asket 來自 DAL 宇宙。“你們的宇宙還對它一無所知，”她教導邁爾，“我們的宇宙和你們的宇宙是平行的，我們的時間和你們的時間是在同一平面上並行的。很多位於時空中的宇宙是你們完全不知道的。科技進步已經把我們宇宙和你們宇宙間的障礙打開來了。”
When Meier was twelve he spent eight months in a tuberculosis sanatorium, and at fourteen, the local guardianship office sent him to the boys' home at Albisbrunn for being consistently truant. At Albisbrunn, he ran away three times before authorities returned him to his parents, and then he quit school before completing the sixth grade. As a young man, he worked at many jobs, from laying sewer pipe to milking dairy cows. Once, with several other young men, he was picked up by police for stealing and sent to a detention center at Aarburg, from which he again ran away, this time to France, where he joined the Foreign Legion, went AWOL a few months after completing training, and returned to Switzerland and the detention center. He told Stevens that after his teenage years of reformatories and odd jobs, Asket had encouraged him to venture out into the world, to explore and to learn. Inspired by her telepathic teachings and her reassurance, Meier said he began his first travels into the Middle East in 1958.
當邁爾 12 歲時，他在結核病療養院中待了八個月，14 歲時因遊蕩而被當地保護局送到亞比斯堡（Albisbrunn）的男童之家。在管教權交還給他父母之前，他在亞比斯堡有過三次逃跑紀錄，後來他在完成六年教育之前便休學了。在年輕的時候，他做過許多種工作，從鋪設下水道到擠牛奶的工作他都做過。有一次他和幾個年輕的同伴因為偷竊行為被警方捉去，並送往阿伯格（Aarburg）鎮的拘留中心。從那兒他又再次逃跑，這次他跑到了法國，在那裡他加入了外國軍團，在完成訓練後幾個月他不假而別，又回到了瑞士的拘留中心。他告訴史蒂芬他的青少年時期大都是在少年感化院中度過的，並且從事過許多工作，此後，Asket 便鼓勵他到世界各地冒險，既可探險又可學習。由於她的鼓舞和心靈感應教學的啟示，邁爾說他於 1958 年開始他有生以來的第一次旅行 —— 中東之旅。
"I was told to go over there myself and see what is really there," he said, "because there is a connection with previous lives. The most important places were Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Jordan. Very important again were West Pakistan, the foot of the Himalaya Mountains, and then India, mainly New Delhi and Mehrauli. And I have to add Turkey to this. All this has a connection with Emmanuel; that was his route and where he lived. I was told to get in touch with certain people, some of whom expected me, they were informed. In Mehrauli, I learned the teachings and philosophy of Buddha from a Buddhist monk."
“我被告知要我一個人到中東去看看它的真面目，”他說道，“因為那裡和前人的生活有關。最重要的地方是耶路撒冷、伯利恒及約旦，其它重要的地方則包括西巴基斯坦、喜馬拉雅山腳，以及印度（主要是新德里及馬奴里）。而我自己又加上了土耳其。這些都與以馬內利（Emmanuel）有關；這是一種信仰的路線。她告訴我去見一些事先安排好的人，在馬奴里，我跟一位佛教僧侶學習了佛教的教義與哲學。
Weeks, even months had passed between contacts with Asket. Then, suddenly her voice would be inside his head again, indicating she desired to transmit information to him.
他與Asket 的兩次接觸間隔了幾星期，甚至幾個月。她的聲音突然再次出現在他的腦海中，顯示她想要傳遞訊息給他。
"Do you have time?" she would say.
Most often, he would say yes because her instruction was more important than anything else. And if he said yes, she would say, "Would you go to this place tomorrow and meet with these people?" Or, "I want you to go here and look at this." Or, "I want you to go there and learn this."
“你有時間嗎？”她會這麼說。
通常他都會說有時間，因為她的教導比什麼都重要。如果他回答有時間，她便會說：“明天你可以去這個地方和這些人見面嗎？”或者“我要你到這個地方去看看這個。”或者“我要你到那裡去學習那個。”
"It is something very normal," he explained to Stevens. "It's as if you called me and asked, 'Billy, do you have time for this?' Same thing."
“對我而言，這感覺是非常平常的，”他向史蒂芬解釋道，“就好像你叫我，並且問說：‘邁爾，你有時間做這件事嗎？’一樣。”
Meier viewed such wanderings as part of the mission he had been given as a young boy. It was "instructive." As he explained to Stevens, he was "to get to know man, the soul of man, life of man, the background of the teachings." He was also to learn about nature.
邁爾認為這次旅行就是他在青少年時期必須完成的部分任務，它是“很有教育性的”，他向史蒂芬解釋說：“它使我瞭解人類、人類的精神、人類的生活和教導的背景。”他同時也學習到和大自然相關的事物。
"You learn a lot from nature," he said. "You observe plants and animals, how everything exists, how it comes to life, how it dies, how it can live together. That's how I learned the laws and commands of nature. The laws and commands of nature are the same as the laws and commands of Creation. Creation is not a separate power, Creation is in everything."
“你可以從自然界學習到很多東西，”他說：“你可以觀察行星和動物，思考各項事物是如何存在的？它們如何生存？它們為何會死亡？它們如何能生活在一起？這些都是我從自然界學習到的法則和它的訓示。自然界的法則與「造物的法則」是一致的。「造化」（Creation）不是一種分隔開的力量，而是存在於萬物之中。”
［中文編輯者註：“Creation”一詞據理解應是指宇宙間最高層級的能量，是一切生命與萬物的原創力，也被稱為神聖本源（Divine origin）。在後續之翻譯中，優先選用中文較貼近的譯名「造化」，部分翻譯視語意選用「造物」、「造物主」、「創世」、「創生」、「創造」等。
「造化」一詞有關解釋，請參閱漢典與漢語網之註解：“自然界的創造者。亦指自然。”等。］
【在本書中，除非必要，有關「造化」一詞不再另作說明。】
Working his way from Greece to Turkey, down through Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, into Saudi Arabia and out again through Kuwait, into Iran, further east to Pakistan and finally into India, Meier had traveled "by land, in cars, by hitchhiking, by bus and by train and by ship." He found employment as a snake catcher and a gardener, drove a nitroglycerine truck, sang in the streets, waited tables, herded pigs, sailed an oceangoing tug, sold pots, pounded nails, supervised a youth hostel, prospected for rubies and gold, posed as a veterinarian, coached, worked as a male nurse, picked grapes, designed jewelry, performed puppet shows, raised chickens, and taught German - all, he told Stevens, under the tutelage of Asket. During his travel, he acquired the nickname "Billy," as a result of his infatuation with the American West and folk heroes Billy the Kid, Buffalo Bill, and Wild Bill Hickok.
邁爾從希臘出發，經土耳其、敘利亞、約旦、伊拉克，進入沙烏地阿拉伯後再經科威特進入伊朗，再往東到巴基斯坦，最後到達印度，他此次的旅程是“靠走路、坐汽車、搭便車、搭巴士、搭火車和坐船完成的。”他曾做過捉蛇者及園丁、開過載運硝化甘油的卡車、在街頭唱歌賣藝、在餐廳帶位、看守豬隻、在船上拉帆、賣過器皿、看管過青年旅舍、挖過紅寶石及金礦，做過冒牌的獸醫、擔任過教練、當過男護士、採過葡萄、設計過珠寶、演過木偶劇、養過雞和教過德文 —— 他告訴史蒂芬，這些全部都是在Asket 的指引之下完成的。在這一次的旅行中，他獲得了一個小名“比利”（Billy），這是他著迷於美國西部和民間英雄比利小子、水牛比利和野蠻的比利．希考克（Wild Bill Hickok）而得名。
As Meier wandered from country to country, job to job, Asket had continued the telepathic teachings begun by Sfath, imparting to him even greater spiritual awareness.
當邁爾周遊各國，一再更換工作時，Asket 仍然繼續用心靈感應來教導他更深層的精神感知能力，而此法最初是由 Sfath 啟蒙的。
"You are selected as truth offerer," she had revealed to him, "like numerous others at very early times before you. You have to become greater in knowledge than every other earthly human being of your time. Because of this, you have come under the controlling guardianship of a certain form of life which had to protect, lead, guide, and educate you. This embodies a law of the Creation which cannot be acted against, even by will, for truth offerers are not called for their mission at a certain age; they are destined from the time of procreation. Such a life will be difficult, for the creature concerned has extraordinary things to perceive."
“你是被挑選出來提供真理的，”Asket 給邁爾心理建設，“就像很久以前存在過的許多人一樣，你必須比與你同時期的其它地球人要知道更多的知識。因此，你必須在被保護、引導與教育的方式下受到管控地生活著。造物的法則是不可以反抗的，即使是意志上的抗拒都不可以，因為提供真理的人不是到了一定的年紀才會被賦予使命，他們的命運在出生時就已經註定了。這種人生是很痛苦的，因為他必須見識到許多不尋常的事物。”
Near the coastal city of Iskenderun, Turkey, on August 3, 1965, winding his way out of the Middle East, Meier was riding in an old bus when it collided with another bus, throwing him out of a window. The accident severed his left arm just above the elbow. Meier told Stevens he had been left for dead by the side of the road and lay unconscious for several hours before a doctor happened by, checked him for signs of life, and had him taken to a local hospital. He spent two weeks there, and when he felt well enough to travel again, he continued on to Greece, where he settled into a hotel in Thessaloniki, selling shirts "with German, with my hand, my eyes, my mouth, with my feet, with a pencil and paper." At a party on Christmas Day of that year, he had met a seventeen-year-old Greek girl named Kaliope Zafireou.
離開中東地區後，他幾經輾轉於 1965 年 6 月 3 日到達土耳其的海岸都市伊斯肯德倫（Iskenderun），邁爾坐在一部舊巴士裡，當它和另一部巴士相撞時，他從窗戶摔出車外。這次意外使他的左手臂以下被截肢，只剩手肘以上的部分。邁爾告訴史蒂芬，人家把他丟在路旁任他自生自滅，他在路旁失去意識好幾個鐘頭，直到一位醫生經過，發現他還有生命跡象，才將他送往附近的醫院，他在醫院住了兩個星期，當他覺得他可以繼續旅行時，便又繼續前往希臘，他在那裡住在希賽羅尼克（Thessaloniki）的一間旅館裡，做推銷襯衫的生意。他說：“我靠德文、我的手、我的眼睛、我的嘴、我的腳和一份紙筆努力地工作著。”在那一年的聖誕舞會上，他遇見一位 17 歲的希臘女孩，名叫凱莉普．劄佛魯（Kaliope Zafireou）。
While Meier was in India in 1964, Asket had allowed him to photograph her spacecraft high above the Ashoka Ashram on the outskirts of Mehrauli. In the photograph, the craft appeared distinctly disk-shaped, topped by the slight rise of a dome, but otherwise undetailed. Meier still had the photograph and showed it to Stevens.
1964 年邁爾在印度時，Asket 允許他在馬奴里郊外的阿荷卡阿斯朗（Ashoka Ashram）的上空拍攝她的太空船。照片中的太空船很顯然是碟狀的，上方是稍微突起的圓頂，但是其它地方就不清楚了。邁爾仍然保有這張照片，並且曾展示給史蒂芬看。
That year, Asket, as Sfath before her, had left him. In her final contact, she had informed Meier that for his own benefit as well as that of his new contacts,' he would be monitored for the next eleven years. At the end of that time, if assured that he had achieved the proper spiritual plane to allow face-to-face contact, the new beings would reveal their presence to him.
那一年，和以前的 Sfath 一樣 Asket 也離開了他。在她和邁爾最後一次的接觸中，她告訴邁爾為了他好、也為了新的與他接觸的導師好，在未來的 11 年裡他將受到監視，如果 11 年後他的心靈達到了適當的水準，他將被允許做面對面的接觸，屆時，新的教化者就會出現在他的面前。
"Your forefathers came from the Constellation Lyra," Asket had told Meier. "And when you have become mature enough to hear the new explanations concerning these matters, you will have the answers from the descendants of your forefathers themselves. The eternal truth remains for all times the eternal truth."
And so ended Meier's story of his youthful encounters.
“你的祖先是來自「天琴星座」（Constellation Lyra）的，”Asket 告訴邁爾，“當你成熟到足以聽懂這些事情的時候，你將會從你祖先的後裔那裡獲得解答。”
以上就是邁爾年輕時所遭遇的故事。
八
Early the next morning, Stevens returned to the warmth and quiet of the Freihof's small paneled dining room, where he drank more strong tea and waded through the awkward English translation of Meier's first contact with the new life-form, the Pleiadians. He had left off with the spacecraft finally alighting in the meadow. As Stevens began reading again, Meier's notes described the craft, which, now landed in the meadow, seemed to pulsate. Its nearly translucent, golden-silver skin glinted in the sun. Except for the portholes around the dome, the smooth, contoured surface remained unbroken by projections or seams and unmarked by symbols.
隔天清晨，史蒂芬返回佛瑞荷福親切又安靜的小餐廳，他在那裡一邊喝茶一邊吃力地閱讀邁爾與昴宿星人第一次接觸的英文翻譯。史蒂芬曾到過太空船著陸的草原上，當他再次閱讀邁爾手記中描述停在草原上的太空船時，一切都仿佛親眼所見一樣：它幾乎是半透明的、金銀色的外殼在陽光下閃爍；除了舷窗圍繞著圓頂外，它平滑順暢的外殼在光的投射下沒有一點裂痕和介面，他看不到任何標誌或記號。
Meier had walked toward the craft for a closer look and better pictures, but when he had come to within a hundred yards, something suddenly checked his progress, "as if I were running against the winds of a soundless storm," he wrote. "With all my power, I fought against it to move forward. I even succeeded in this, but only for a few meters, then the counteracting force was simply too great, and I sat down on the ground, stared over at the object, and waited for what was to come."
邁爾走向太空船以便把它看得更清楚，並且拍攝較好的照片，但是當他前進到一百碼以內時，便感覺有東西阻止他前進，“就好像我正朝著一個無聲暴風雨跑去受到的阻力一樣，”他寫道，“我用盡全力頂著它向前移動，我拚盡九牛二虎之力才只移進幾公尺而已，但是反作用力實在太大，我只好坐在地上凝視著太空船，並且等待即將發生的事情。”
In less than a minute, a figure had appeared behind the craft. As the figure approached, Meier could see that it was human in form, walked upright on two legs, and had two arms at its side. It was covered up to its neck by a tight, thin one-piece suit, dull gray in color and rough - almost like the hide of an elephant, he thought. A hard ring collar encircled the base of the neck, and the suit ended in darker, ankle-high boots.
不到一分鐘，太空船的後方出現了一個影像，當這個影像靠近時，邁爾可以看出他具有人類的外形，也是用兩隻腳直立行走，而且有兩隻手臂。她穿著一件合身的、直到脖子的連身薄外衣，它的顏色是灰色的，質料很粗，看起來很像大象皮。她的脖子上圍繞著堅固的項圈，腳上穿著顏色較深、長及腳踝的長筒靴。
The being, of course, was the Pleiadian Semjase, a woman with eyes an unusually pale blue. Her amber hair was parted in the middle and fell to her waist, framing her small nose, delicate mouth, and exceedingly high cheekbones. Meier had noted at the time that only two of Semjase's features truly differed from that of an earth human: her small ears joined her head in a straight line instead of a gentle curve; and her white skin was so pale and so perfect it approached luminescence.
這個生物當然就是昴宿星人 Semjase，她的眼珠是獨特的淡藍色，她那中分的琥珀色頭髮直垂腰際，鼻子小巧，嘴形美麗，顴骨高聳。邁爾記載 Semjase 有兩個特徵和地球人是完全不同的：她的小耳朵幾乎貼在她的頭上，而且線條很銳利並不圓滑；另外，她的白皮膚看起來是那麼的蒼白且完美，甚至接近發光的樣子。
Semjase had walked confidently and gracefully toward him, touching his arm and gently helping him to his feet; then the two of them walked to a tree near which Meier had left his motorbike. There in the grass, for an hour and a quarter, they had talked, Semjase speaking German so that Meier could understand.
Semjase 充滿白信而優美地走向他，輕觸著他的平臂並溫柔地引導他，接著他們兩個走向靠近邁爾停放摩托車的那一棵樹。在那片草地上他們交談了一小時 15 分鐘，因為 Semjase 是用德語與他交談．所以邁爾能瞭解她所說的話。
Meier wrote in the notes that for a long while the Pleiadians had desired contact with an earth human who was sincere in assisting them with their mission. They had nurtured and observed him since he was five years old, and since he responded adequately to each of several levels of communication, he had continued to be contacted. In January1975, he finally was ready to learn of the Pleiadian presence and to understand the simple mission for which he had been selected.
邁爾的筆記本中寫到，長久以來，昴宿星人就一直想和一位地球人接觸，但接觸者必須誠心地協助他們完成他們的任務。從他五歲開始，他們就開始栽培他和觀察他；由於他在每一級的溝通中都做了適當的回應，因此他們便一直和他接觸。1975 年 1 月，他終於夠資格學習昴宿星人的禮儀及開始瞭解一些他被指派的簡單任務。
Semjase first explained briefly that Pleiadian civilization originated many thousands of years ago, not in the Pleiades, a star system much younger than our own, but in the Constellation Lyra. When war ensued, before the planet was destroyed, much of the population migrated to other star systems, in the Pleiades, the Hyades, and to a planet orbiting a nearby star known as Vega. On one interstellar journey, the new Pleiadians discovered Earth and its early life evolving in an atmosphere hospitable to their own. Since that time, according to Semjase, Earth had been destroyed twice by its own inhabitant: first by a civilization evolved from early Pleiadians who remained behind and mated with primitive earth humans; and second, when a later generation of Pleiadians colonized Earth and produced advanced technology until war again destroyed the planet. Semjase and the Pleiadians who had chosen to return again to Earth were descendants of a peaceful Lyrian faction that now felt responsible for guiding Earth in its spiritual evolution, so the earth humans could avoid the setbacks long ago experienced by their Pleiadian ancestors.
Semjase 首先解釋的重點是：昴宿星人的文明起源於好幾千年前，但是它並不是起源於這個比地球年輕許多的昴宿星系中，而是起源於天琴星座。當戰爭不斷發生，以致星球瀕臨摧毀前，許多居民便移民到其它星系中，如昴宿星、畢宿星及織女星的衛星上。在一次星際旅行中，昴宿星人發現了地球，那時地球上早期生物的生存環境與他們的家鄉極為相近。根據Semjase 的說法，從那時候開始，地球曾被它自己的居民摧毀過兩次；第一次是由未進化的昴宿星人與原始地球人的後代所創造出的文明所摧毀；第二次是後來的昴宿星殖民在地球上創造了先進的科技卻造成再一次的戰爭而摧毀了地球。Semjase 與其它被挑選重返地球的昴宿星人都是和平的天琴座人後裔，他們現在覺得有責任要引導地球人進化心靈，這樣地球人才可以避免重蹈昴宿星人祖先所犯的錯誤。
To help them in their mission, the Pleiadians had contacted many earth humans telepathically, but the chosen ones eventually proved to lack knowledge, willingness, or loyalty. The few who possessed these qualities feared exposure, and so, remained silent about the contacts.
昴宿星人的任務是要幫助地球人，他們曾和很多地球人做過心靈感應，但有些人最後被證明為缺乏知識、意願或誠心。有些具備這些特質的人不願曝光，所以他們一直對接觸事件保持沉默。
"In the past, we have witnessed those who were unable to determine the truth and were frightened by it," Semjase told Meier. "They claimed they would be accused of insanity, and that others would plan conspiracies to prove they were lying. This serves no purpose for the earth human or ourselves. If such humans had been sincere, we would have offered them the chance to take clear photo proofs of our beamships. We have allowed you this already, and in the future will come even greater opportunities."
“過去我們也碰到過一些目擊我們的人類，他們無法判定事實，而且還對這個事實感到恐懼，”Semjase 告訴邁爾，“他們聲稱他們將會被指為精神異常，而其它的人也將會聯合起來證明他們是說謊者，這對地球人和我們都沒有好處。如果這些人是誠心的，我們將提供機會供他們拍攝清楚的太空船照片去證明我們的存在。我們已經允許你這麼做了，並且在將來還會有更多的機會。”
Taking photographs of the Pleiadian beamships was to be part of Meier's mission; pictures provided proof that the Pleiadians existed, and this reality was a necessary step before earth humans would begin to accept the truth that they belonged to a network of galactic societies. The Pleiadians themselves were only one of many millions of cosmic races that traveled freely in space.
拍攝昴宿星人的太空船是邁爾的使命之一，照片證明瞭昴宿星人的存在，他們認為這是必須的步驟，可以讓地球的人類接受自己是宇宙社會一分子的事實。昴宿星人只是幾百萬種可以在時空中自由旅行的宇宙族群中的一族。
"The earth human calls us extraterrestrials or star people, or however he wants," Semjase had continued. "He attributes to us supernatural abilities, yet knows nothing about us. In truth, we are human beings like the earth human being, but our knowledge and our wisdom and our technical capabilities are very much superior to his.
“地球人稱我們為外星人，星球人或其它的名字。”Semjase 接著說，“地球人只知道我們具有超能力，卻對我們其它的事情一無所知。事實上，我們也是人類的一族，就像地球上的人類一樣，只是我們的知識與我們的智慧以及我們的科技都遠遠超過你們。”
"One of our concerns is aimed at your religions and the detrimental effect they have had on the development of the human spirit. One thing above all has power over the life and death of each creature. This is the Creation, laws which are irrefutable and eternally valid. The human being will recognize them in nature, if he troubles himself to look, for they show him the way to spiritual greatness. While the earth human indulges in religion, the real spirit dwindles.
“我們所關心的其中一件事，就是你們的宗教與其對人類靈性發展上所造成的不利影響。有一種駕臨萬物生死之上的法則，就是「造物」（Creation）的法則，那是不能違抗而且永遠有效的法則。人類可以從大自然中認識到它，從而體會通往靈性的偉大之路。如果地球人類沉迷在宗教之中，他們真正的靈性就會逐漸衰落。”
"On Earth," she added, "charlatans have spread the lie that we come by order of the Creation as angels, to bring to the earth humans the long-hoped-for peace, the truth, the protection, and the order of your God. This is a lie, for we never have received such orders and we never will. The Creation never gives commands. It is a law unto itself, and every form of life must conform to it and become a part of it. Bring this truth to the light of the world."
“地球上有一些騙徒會散撥謊言，說我們是造化派來的天使，會為地球人類帶來永久的和平、真理、保障以及上帝的指示。這些全是謊言，我們從未接到這種指示，而且永遠不會有。造化從不發號施令，這是高過它自己的法則，而所有生命都必須順應並融入這項法則，將這項真理展現為世界之光。”
Before they parted that afternoon, Semjase had promised Meier that many contacts would follow, and that she also would transmit thoughts to him telepathically.
"Do not worry that I will do this at an unsuitable time," she had said. "I know to regard your character and your will for independence; thus I will always take my directions from you. The time will come when we will meet together in my beamship, and you will be able to fly into space with me. I will inform you later about this."
那天下午他們分開之前，Semjase 答應邁爾以後將會再進行好幾次接觸，而且她仍然會用心靈感應傳遞訊息給他，“不要擔心，我會在適當時間做這件事情的。”她說，“我知道，我會注意你的性格及你希望獨立的意願，因此，我會依此來修正指導你的方向。我們在太空船內會面的時間會到來的．你將可以和我一起進入太空。我將會再給你這一方面的訊息。”
Semjase had then walked back through the meadow to her beamship. Once she was inside, waves again emanated from the craft, distorting the shapes and colors of everything around it. A blue-red corona radiated outward. Meier took several more pictures as the beamship rose slowly above the pine trees and drifted to the north. It was exactly four o'clock when he exposed the last frame on his film; an instant later, the beamship shot straight up into the clouds and disappeared from Meier's view. And once again, the stirring had returned to the meadow.
於是，Semjase 通過草原走回她的太空船。當她一回到太空船裡，船內便發射出光波，把四周所有事物的顏色和形狀都改變了，同時有一道紅藍色的光環向外輻射。當太空船慢慢上升到松樹上方時，邁爾照了好幾張照片，接著它便往北方飛去。當他拍下最後一張照片時，剛好是下午四點。一會兒之後太空船便直直地飛向雲層，消失在邁爾的視線外。
九
One afternoon, with a break in the weather, Stevens asked Meier to take him to one of the contact sites. On his moped, Meier guided Stevens and the interpreter to a grassy bluff near Hasenbol, about forty minutes from the farm. On the bluff, Meier had taken a series of photographs in which a beamship approached in the distance.
一天下午，就在惡劣的天氣稍微好轉時，史蒂芬要求邁爾帶他去接觸的現場之一。騎著他的摩托車，邁爾引導史蒂芬和翻譯到靠近黑森堡（Hasenbol）附近一處長滿青草的斷崖，那裡距離農場大約四十分鐘。邁爾曾經在斷崖上拍攝了一架太空船由遠處飛近的一系列照片。
"The pictures," recalled Stevens, "showed the object beginning as a speck, just a little dark speck, and getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it's the craft hovering behind a tree."
“由這些照片，”史蒂芬回憶著說，“可以看出這個物體開始時只是一點，只是一個小黑點，接著越來越大，越來越大，一直到船翱翔在樹後為止。”
Driving up to Hasenbol, Stevens was impressed by the terrain and puzzled at how Meier could have rigged the photographs to make the beamship appear to fly toward the camera from a point out over a deep valley. But as they neared the site, another problem arose that had never occurred to him. The only way to get to the top of that bluff was by climbing a dirt road barred by a locked gate. Beyond the gate, the road narrowed and finally became two ruts separated by a wide swath of thick grass cutting through meadow, then traversing steeply up the side of the bluff.
在開往黑森堡的路上，史蒂芬對此地的地形印象頗深，他納悶著，如果是造假的，邁爾如何在這麼深的峽谷中使一架太空船出現，並且飛向相機。但當他們接近現場時，另外一個從來沒有在史蒂芬心裡出現過的問題也出現了，因為要到達斷崖頂端的唯一方法就是沿著泥土小路爬上去，但這條路被一個上鎖的門擋住了。在門的後面是一條很狹窄的路，有一段只剩二條車軌，車軌中間長滿了高草，穿過這條路才能到達陡峭的斷崖。
At the gate, Stevens stopped the car, located the farmer who owned the land, and had his interpreter ask for permission to pass through the gate and proceed across the meadow.
史蒂芬在門前停下了車子，並且找到擁有這片土地的農人，翻譯人員請求農人允許他們通過門及越過草原。
"When we went through there, he looked at everything," remembered Stevens. "He didn't open it, but he came and looked on the back of the moped and at the car, and wanted to know what we were going to do. And I don't think that he would have allowed Meier across there with a moped loaded with disks and rigging equipment. He might have let him in there with all that rigging, but at least he would have known about it."
“他一直在注意我們，”史蒂芬回憶著說，“他走過來看著摩托車的後面和汽車內，想要知道我們到那裡要做什麼。我不認為他會允許邁爾騎摩托車載著太空船及架設儀器進入他的土地；就算他同意讓邁爾到那裡架設儀器，但至少他也會知道這件事吧！”
While the farmer looked over the contents of Stevens' rental car and Meier's motorbike, Stevens asked through the interpreter, "Do you remember Mr. Meier here?" The man said, "Yes, he was here over a year ago."
就在農人查看史蒂芬的車子及邁爾的摩托車時，史蒂芬透過翻譯問他：“你可記得邁爾先生曾到過這裡嗎？”這個人回答說：“是的，一年以前他曾來過此地。”“那時他是否曾帶什麼不尋常的東西？”史蒂芬問。
"Did he have anything unusual with him at the time?" asked Stevens.
"What do you mean?" countered the farmer. "He had cameras and a roll pack strapped on his back, and a tripod on his moped."
"No, I didn't see anything like that," replied the farmer.
“你是什麼意思呢？”農人回答著，“他的背上背著相機和涼席，摩托車上放著一個三角架。”
“我不是問這個，”史蒂芬說，“他有沒有帶任何碟狀的東西，像汽車的引擎蓋之類的？”
“沒有，我沒有看到類似那樣的東西。”農人回應著說。
"Meier stood next to Stevens, as Stevens asked the questions. "He knew what I was after," Stevens said later, "but he never objected to me asking these questions of him or of anybody else."
當史蒂芬提出上述的問題時，邁爾就站在史蒂芬旁邊，“他知道我在尋找什麼，”史蒂芬隨後說道，“但他從未阻止我向他或任何人詢問有關他的任何事情。”
Later, as they drove back to Schmidruti, Stevens mulled over three things about Hasenbol: the locked gate, the stern and inquisitive farmer, and most of all, the steep drop below the grassy bluff. "That and the fact that the object approached from a gray spot in the distance in the haze, getting bigger and bigger and bigger all the way, from over this valley. I don't see how he could do it."
後來，當他們開車返回西密魯提時，史蒂芬仔細想了有關黑森堡的三個問題：首先是上鎖的門；接著是嚴格且好問的農人；更重要的是綠色懸崖下陡然下降的地形，“在這些情況下，造出一個物體由遠處一個模糊小灰點逐漸逼近，越過山谷，然後變得越來越大，我不知道這該如何做到。”
By now, several witnesses had described to Stevens the strange landing tracks left by the beamships, and Stevens wanted to see a set for himself. Two weeks before his arrival in Switzerland, there had been a contact in a meadow and a set of three tracks had been left behind. If nothing had disturbed them, they would still be there in the short grass. With Meier directing, Stevens drove to the site, where they got out of the car and walked through the woods to a clearing. Stevens recognized the indentations immediately and understood why they had puzzled so many people before him.
到目前為止已經有許多目擊者向史蒂芬描述太空船著陸後遺留下的奇異痕跡，所以史蒂芬也想親自去看一看。在他抵達瑞士的兩週前，草原上曾發生過一次接觸，並在太空船離去後留下三個一組的痕跡。如果沒有任何干擾，它們現在應該仍維持原狀。在邁爾的指引下，史蒂芬一夥人開車前往現場；他們離開了車子之後走進了森林，到達一片草地。史蒂芬立刻就看到證據了，並且明白為什麼在他之前有這麼多人都感到困惑。
"The tracks I looked at had stems bent over that weren't broken and they never stood up," he recalled. "And that's mysterious. How can that happen? All grass stands back up again if you haven't broken the stem. I have never been able to figure out what kind of equipment he could have used to produce those tracks in wet grass without leaving a track to and from, except the one Semjase walked out on. You could salt the ground, but the salt would not make the grass grow greener, and it probably wouldn't grow at all if you salted it too much. When I asked him he had a ready answer, didn't even stop to think about it.
“我看到那些草都星彎倒著，但是卻沒有折斷也站不直，”他問憶著說，“那真是個謎，到底是如何發生的呢？”所有的草類，只要你沒有折斷它，壓下之後它就會再站直。我不知道他使用什麼設備可以使草變成這個樣子，而且在濕的草地上完全沒有留下任何足跡。你可以撒些鹽在地上，但是鹽不可能使草地變得更綠，如果撒了太多鹽，草甚至都不能活了。當我向他詢問時，他不假思索就已有答案了。
"I said, 'how come the grass doesn't grow back up?'
"He said he asked the Pleiadians and they told him it was the magnetic vortices under the landing pads that produced a change in the magnetic orientation in the plant, and the plant grew horizontally in its induced field rather than vertically in a normal field. I could be misreading it; I could be seeing it all wrong. But how in the hell was he going to do that a dozen times over and never get caught?"
“我說：‘為什麼草不會重新站直起來？’他說他問過昴宿星人，昴宿星人回答他說這是因為在太空船降落的下方產生了磁化旋渦，因而導致植物磁場方向改變，使草在感應場中向水平方向生長，而非慣常的垂直方向。我可能是解釋錯誤了，也可能是誤解了。但是他怎麼能夠造假這麼多次卻從未被捉到呢？”
Stevens had investigated over a hundred cases in a dozen countries. He had walked landing sites, handled evidence, and talked to witnesses. But the Meier case was different. In Stevens' mind, what set it apart was the number of principal witnesses who had seen something for themselves. Too many seemingly honest people had too many stories about Meier that couldn't be explained - people who had watched him closely, had waited for him to slip, and who had never seen anything suspicious. One of the most common stories Stevens heard was about the time the Pleiadians had teleported Meier out of his office. The office had one window and one door, both locked from the inside with a key. One afternoon, at least two people saw Meier enter the office, but no one saw him leave. Yet later in the afternoon, when everyone thought he was working in his office, he suddenly showed up on the road in front of the farm briefly disoriented, and three men had to break down the office door to get back in.
史蒂芬曾在許多國家研究過上百個案例，他曾走在降落現場上，處理過很多 UFO 證據，也和許多目擊者談過。但是邁爾的例子卻完全不同，因為史蒂芬認為有太多人親眼目睹邁爾的事蹟了，有太多誠實的人都知道許多有關邁爾無法解釋的故事，有太多的人注意及接近他等他露出破綻，但是他們都沒有發現任何可疑的事情。史蒂芬最常聽到的故事之一就是昴宿星人利用心靈傳送將邁爾移到書房外。這間書房有一個門及一扇窗子，而兩者都從房內上了鎖；有一天下午，至少有兩個人看見邁爾進入書房，但是沒有一個人看見他離開，可是下午稍後，當每個人都認為他還在書房裡工作時，他卻突然在農場前的路上漫無目的地走著，必須靠三個人的力量破壞書房的門才能回到裡面。
After Stevens heard the story, the next time he and Meier sat down for a question-and-answer session, he asked Meier to define for him the precise moment he was teleported from earth to a beamship. Meier, in English, tried to explain, using the example of being in his office.
史蒂芬聽了這個故事之後．當他有機會詢問邁爾時，他就請邁爾；正確地說明他從地球被傳送到太空船的事，邁爾以他在書房的例子，試著以英文解釋給他聽。
"I maybe sit by the typewriter at the window," he began, "and suddenly I feel a very, very strong force clearing up everything in my head, but still holding the position of my body by the table... because I am already going into the ship with Semjase. And in that same moment, I know I am sitting in front of the typewriter by the table. But a very short moment only, because I forget everything that is happening here. And then, in this moment, I am there, and not here."
“我可能是坐在窗戶邊的打字機旁，”他開始說道，“突然間，我感覺有一股非常非常強的力量正在清理我腦中的一切，但是卻一直讓我留在桌子旁的位子上… 因為我將準備進入太空船去會見Semjase。在此同時，我仍然知道我坐在打字機的桌子前。但是突然間，我忘記了這裡所發生的一切，同時我已經到了那裡，而非在這裡了。”
This led to another question. Stevens wanted to know "where" Meier was when he met with the Pleiadians.
這又引申出另外一個問題，史蒂芬想知道當邁爾和昴宿星人會面時他本人到底在哪裡。
"If I am now in the ship staying on the ground," said Meier, "or a little bit over the ground, or if we fly off in the atmosphere, or out of the earth into space, or if we are walking around the ship, it is exactly the same. You see, there is the force field, and you always are inside there."
“如果我現在是在地面的太空船中，”邁爾說，“或是在離地面不遠的地方，或者我們飛進了大氣層，或離開地球進入了太空，或者在太空船內走動，都是完全一樣的。太空船裡面有重力場存在，所以我確實一直都在裡面。”
But Stevens wondered if during the contacts Meier was somehow in another dimension, or if the experiences with the Pleiadians were similar to astral travel, "a state of ecstasy, exhilaration," he suggested. He was implying that perhaps Meier's contacts took place solely on a mental plane and not a physical one.
但史蒂芬懷疑邁爾在接觸時是否是在另外一個象限中，他與昴宿星人接觸的經驗是否就像是在神遊，他認為是一種失神、興奮的狀態，他懷疑邁爾的接觸只是一種精神上而非肉體上的。
But Meier answered, "I know what this means, astral travel. It isn't anything like that. It's so real, like we are sitting here. You see," he said, "they are really material."
但邁爾回答：“我知道你的意思，事實並不完全像神遊，它是那麼真實，就好像你真的坐在那裡。你看，”他說，“它們都是真實的。”
十
Stevens understood now why Lou Zinsstag had been reluctant to tell him everything she knew about the Meier case. The four days in Schmidruti had been crammed with reading, questioning, viewing, thinking, and wondering. For the first time in thirty years, he felt overwhelmed. He returned to Tucson with 130 new color photographs, many of them far better than the original twelve he had seen Lou Zinsstag arrange across his dining room table. He had several hundred roughly translated pages of the contact notes, and many statements from witnesses who described seeing things unimaginable.
史蒂芬到現在才瞭解為什麼辛斯塔會那麼不願意告訴他所有有關邁爾案例的事。在西密魯提的四天裡，他的時間被閱讀、提問、察看、思考和懷疑填滿了。這是三十年來他首次感到打擊。他帶了 130 張新的彩色照片回到圖森，其中許多照片比辛斯塔以前在餐桌上展示給他看到的 12 張照片要好許多。他還有好幾百頁粗略翻譯的接觸筆記，以及許多目擊者描述看見不可思議事情的敘述。
"Some of them told me they saw him return in the middle of three men standing in a group in a rainstorm. Looked like he just popped out of the ground, and he didn't have any raindrops on him. That's unique, that a real trick. I never had people present where the witness was teleported.
“有些人告訴我，他們看見邁爾在暴風雨中返回時，站立在一群人中間，他仿佛是突然出現的，而且沒有一絲雨滴在他身上。這些事情真是奇怪，令人一頭霧水。我從來沒有碰到過有人目擊心靈傳送者突然出現的情形。”
"No, Meier's a smart man and he's got a good mind, but he has only one arm, and he's limited in equipment, and he's watched by a lot of people. I don't see how he can do all these things."
“不，邁爾是個聰明人，而且他的心地很好，但是他只有一隻手臂和有限的裝備，況且他又被許多人注意著。我實在看不出來他是如何造假的。”
Stevens went back to Tucson and told his friends Lee and Brit Elders, "If this man is perpetrating a hoax on the world, he is also successfully fooling his wife and his closest friends, and has been doing so for two and a half years."
史蒂芬回到了圖森，並且告訴他的朋友李和佈雷特．愛德夫婦：“如果這個人準備在這個世界上騙人，那他也非常成功地騙了他太太和他最親近的朋友，而且他已經騙了兩年半了。”
"Steve came back shaking his head," remembered Brit. "He didn't know what to do. He spent three days at our house saying, 'you're not going to believe it. You've got to go. You're not going to believe it.'"
“史蒂芬搖著頭回來，”佈雷特回憶著說，“他不知道該怎麼辦，他花了三天的時間在我們家說著：你們是不可能相信的。你們必須親自去一趟。你們不會相信的。”
"I was worried about him, added Lee, "because I had observed so many UFO cases he'd been on in the past. He's had a hundred field investigations. But this time, he comes back saying, 'you've got to go over there. This is bigger than all of us!'"
“我很擔心他，”李補充說道，“因為我曾經觀察過太多他過去接手的 UFO 案例。”他已經研究過上百件案例了，但是這次他回來卻說：“你們必須去那裡看看，這次的案子比我們以前所看到的都要大得多！”
（第五章 結束）
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