    15

    pro

    udly in a strained, high pitched voice, "And not a plan has gone

    astray!"

    But twelve o'clock passed, and there was no whirring of

    anti-gravity engines, no great rush of air from above, no luminescence

    lighting up the lawn outside the windows.  The believers sat stock still,

    their faces frozen.  The researchers noted that "it became clear later that

    they had been hit hard."

    Finally, the faithful stirred.  In desperation they went over the

    messages and the original prediction to see if they had made an error

    in calculation.  They argued one explanation for the delay after

    another.  Then, at four A.M., Mrs. Keech began to cry.  Reported the

    researchers, "She knew, she sobbed, that there were some who were

    beginning to doubt but that the group must beam light to those who

    needed it most and that the group must hold together."  The catalyst

    that might, indeed, save them from dissolution arrived at 4:45 AM.

    Mrs. Keech's hand suddenly jerked across the page of her writing pad

    with a new message from The Guardians.  The faith of the believers, it

    said, "had spread so much light that God had saved the world from

    destruction."

    Then the Guardians delivered an even more significant directive:

    publicize the fact that the believers had saved humanity!  Mrs. Keech

    leaped to the phone to call the very newspapers whose reporters she

    and the others had chased away just the day before.  When she hung

    up,  others rushed to the phone, seized with a sudden sense of

    purpose, and dialed more media outlets whose inquiries they had

    shunned in the previous weeks.  The saucer group had found a new

    mission:  to increase the size of their congregation by winning new

    converts.  New converts to a belief that had been proven false.21

    Why did the failure of a prediction trigger a spasm of new

    activity?  Because the only measure of a web of memes is not its truth.

    The real purpose of a myth, a hypothesis or a dogma is often

    something else--to serve as social glue.  If a belief system performs that

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