Airliner Crew Reports UFO Sighting

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

The flight engineer had barely glanced outside when he said:

"Commander, we must report this to the ground."

But the beam of light suddenly opened up, turning into a brilliant luminous cone. From this moment, everyone saw what was taking place outside on the right. A second cone emerged, wider, but not as bright as the first one. Then a third one, broad and quite bright.

"Wait," the commander said, shrugging his shoulders, "what do we report? We have to see what happens further. And in general--what could this be?"

If anyone understands that you cannot ascertain distance by eye, pilots do. Nevertheless, all four had the same perception--an unidentified object is hovering over the earth 40 to 50 kilometers away. The copilot hastily began sketching a drawing of the unusual phenomenon. It was unbelievable, but on the ground, illuminated by the cone-shaped beam of light, everything would be clearly visible--houses, roads. How powerful this "projector" must be?!

The beam of the "projector" rose from the ground and focused on the aircraft.

Now they saw a blinding white spot, surrounded by concentric colored circles. The commander was still hesitating: should he report what is taking place or not? But something that put an end to the doubts happened here. The white spot flashed up, and a green cloud emerged in its place.

"He out in the engines and is running away," the copilot said, automatically shifting the phenomenon to the plane of an aviator's customary experience.

But it seemed to the commander that the object began coming closer at tremendous speed, intersecting the aircraft's course at a sharp angle. In short, it was rushing to intercept the path of the aircraft.

Cherkashin shouted to the navigator:

"Tell the ground!"

But there was a strange coincidence: after Ognev's very first words, the object stopped. It stopped coming closer, it seemed to the commander. It stopped moving farther away, the copilot decided.

The Minsk controller took the crew's report into consideration and politely said that he himself, unfortunately, sees nothing--either on the screen of the surveillance radar or in the sky.

"Well, now they will say that we're not in our right minds," Lazurin said, offended.

But the green cloud suddenly dropped down, rushing past the aircraft's altitude. Then it climbed vertically the same way. It was cast right and left. And again down and up. And finally, it fixed itself exactly opposite