Cups or Saucers?

People just wouldn't believe him, decided the law professor, and so for nearly a year he kept his little secret. Finally he let the word slip out to a friend. Last week all Brazil was abuzz about the reluctant claim of Joao de Freitas Guimaraes. 48. a wealthy, respected professor of Roman law at Santos' Catholic University. Did the professor really take an hour-long whirl through outer space in a flying saucer?

As the professor tells it. he was lolling on the beach at Sao Sebastiao last summer after tidying up a messy inheritance case when suddenly a 60-ft. saucer appeared before him. The disk was about 18 ft. high, and rested on a pawnshop-type landing gear of three balls. Two 6-ft.-tall men got out of the saucer, and Guimaraes tried small talk in English, French. Spanish and Italian, but got no answer. Then the strangers started to transmit on the professor's wave length. "They were communicating with me telepathically," he explains. ''They were inviting me aboard."

Once aboard, the saucermen (blond hair, green eyes, yellowish shoes) took the professor for a rise. When the saucer once vibrated sharply, one of his hosts reassured him telepathically: "Have no fear. We are leaving the atmosphere of your planet." An hour later the saucer landed back on the beach. Guimaraes was politely deposited in a daze, and his new acquaintances whirled away.

After the story leaked out, reporters besieged the high-flying professor, and the Brazilian air force nervously put a fighter cover over the rendezvous beach. With a sigh, Guimaraes last week took to television to get the matter straight once and for all. But he refused to elaborate on his telepathic talk with the saucermen. "It is wiser not to divulge it. The authorities know all the details." Guimaraes' TV lecture left many viewers convinced that he had been in his cups rather than in a saucer. But as the hoots grew louder, friends and colleagues joined ranks around the wiry, balding professor, father of four, community pillar, model of rectitude. Summarized his faculty dean: "Everyone is entitled to his own convictions, but nobody can make me believe Guimaraes is a liar or insane."

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