Sean Pruitt had worshipped these larger-than-life characters and I empathized. As a teen, I’d seen Campbell and Ryoko in numerous appearances on Nova and Wild America, and occasionally hosting their own specials, delving into lesser-known aspects of the natural world. Their strings of abbreviated titles and honorifics were confounding. They wrote apostate bibles of zoology, biology, anthropology, and several related disciplines.

Eccentric scientists who’d gotten rock-star famous by operating on the fringe during the wild and woolly ’70s and ’80s, the old boys’ prestige had diminished since their glory days. The duo had been categorically dismissed by the legitimate scientific community, and faded light-years beyond career resuscitation. Mainstream science wasn’t enamored of a pair of Fortean charismatics who dabbled in “exposing” Cold War black ops programs, Hollow Earth civilizations, cryptozoological secrets, or Illuminati conspiracies. Today, Campbell and Ryoko were closing in on ninety; forgotten except for a handful of scholars and the occasional grad student beguiled by fringe theories and VHS documentaries. Not even the History Channel featured them to wax professorial in its guest sound bites about cryptozoology or ancient alien astronauts.

The current scene occurred at a tropical campsite. Grainy waves of static pulsed through the image of Campbell and Ryoko, hearty middle-aged adventurers in pith helmets and khakis, holding court by a firepit. Dr. Ryoko finished monologuing in response to an innocuous question. No questions were safe from monologues or soliloquies. This was before Campbell had managed to completely drag Ryoko into the mud, academically speaking. It was a work in progress.

Dr. Campbell smiled urbanely at the camera. He adjusted his glasses.

With due respect to my esteemed colleague, we are hardly alone. I posit that Earth may merely serve as the body farm of an extraterrestrial civilization. Should that civilization choose to make war on us? The outcome depends upon several factors, but it can be boiled down to this: Are the invading aliens moderately more advanced than us? Ah, then we’ll be eradicated as were the indigenous people of North America and Australia, for example . . . Are the invaders exceedingly advanced? In that case, imagine a family moving into an old, decrepit house infested with ants and wasps. The insect colonies will survive temporarily . . . in the cracks and beneath the ground.

Certainly, the world is an ordinary place. The supernatural exists in the cracks; it presses in against the biodome that preserves mundane reality. Ineffable mysteries confound our sensibilities. Impact craters in South Africa and Argentina are fascinating examples. Paleolithic tribesmen carved images on the walls of the dikes that were formed by lava after the asteroid hit. Petroglyphs of animals inside the dike structures—

Dr. Ryoko interrupted, gesturing impatiently.

Cattle mutilation, extraterrestrial visitors, ancient global conspiracies . . . None of that nonsense exists. Thousands of reports, thousands of misidentifications and hoaxes.

It merely requires a single verifiable incident to be authenticated, Dr. Campbell said, mild and mannered, unflappable. He’d been around this particular maypole on countless occasions. Laurel to Ryoko’s Hardy. One and that’s the ball game for the die-hard skeptics.