The Captain’s Logs
— Book Three of Her Greatest Adventures
The Annals explore the relationship between Aura Raines from Clarian and Aura Rhanes of Clarion. It is a story in itself.
Some attribute the obvious similarities between the two Auras to a rip in space and time that occurred when Captain Mark Richards was experimenting with his home multidensity dimensional override machine that he built for a college history course. Others think it is another example of Jungian synchronicity theory.
The similarities have led to some confusion. This in part was alleviated when Aura Rhanes grew tired of earthlings and Truman Bethurum’s need for her attention. She transferred to the Andromeda sector as the Clarion representative on the Galactic Council. Still, the two meet from time to time and enjoy working together when they are called for special missions.
Those who need a quick refresher should remember that Aura Raines is the one who has never worn a beret and is a friend to geocachers all. Aura’s ship, Rusty, serves as her science advisor as she seeks world peace.
The Aztec UFO crash was said to have occurred before Roswell, at a time when craft were crashing left and right. Aura has done work at a number of crash sites but the Clarians had no knowledge of this one until Behind the Flying Saucers told the story. Aura investigated using an experimental time transfer device but did not find evidence of a saucer crash. Still, the Pleiadian craft of that era was known to be unstable and there were crashes when nuts and bolts became loose.
Perhaps more can be determined if a repatriation agreement to return alien bodies is reached at the next interstellar treaty conference in 2075. Prior attempts to reach an agreement have been unsuccessful because the Terrans are concerned about its potential impact on litigation over patent rights and technology obtained through reverse engineering.
There are those who try to explain the moai statues by asserting that the culture must have had extraterrestrial help. Aura briefly explained that no help had been given. The Island holds the key to its own mysteries. For her part, even Clarian space captains enjoy time to see the wonders of the area as all tourists do.
Aura can’t do everything but her knowledge is important when investigating reports of strange things. It is common knowledge that raptors love to go antiquing, so when there were reports if a flying saucer that left strange marks on an aircraft, our investigation led us to suspect that a Raptor had been involved. Aura confirmed that raptors had dropped into nearby antique stores, but there was more to the story than could be revealed at the time.
Aura later revealed that certain Raptors had gotten excited after seeing a chocolate bar in the cockpit of the F-86. A young Aura acted quickly and was able to prevent antique destruction when a chair was dropped during the episode. Still, the incident increased tensions, which led to a dramatic meeting with then Captain Ellis Richards — the Dutchman — who was able to avert a war with the Raptors. Today, the Exeter Interstellar Treaty discourages raptors from leaving claw marks on planes or dropping antiques.
Although one should not read too much into rock art symbolism, the image here was labeled as a potential space craft by the BLM. Aura Raines knew that Aura Rhanes was interested in the subject — Rhanes had once been so engrossed in looking at a panel that she did not see Truman Bethurum approaching. That led to several awkward moments and the more that Rhanes tried to avoid Truman the more he kept finding her. Rhanes still gets teased about it.
In any event, the design of the Venusian craft was very popular and it was used in many toys distributed in this sector of the galaxy. Our Aura had brought a guidebook to try to narrow down the design used in the Mount Irish site so Rhanes’s expertise was helpful. They used an image recalibration analyzer to see if they could retrieve part of the rock art that was faded. It turned out that the original version of the craft included Venusians waving goodbye as the ship took off. It was a typical Venusian thing to do.
Other adventures will be added to this page soon. At least as defined in Clarian time.