Aliens out there? Please come to the rescue  IN the days when
the equivalent of £3:50 could provide a high tea, a night at the
cinema for two and a packet of premier cru wine gums, I
occasionally took girlfriends to Edinburgh’s Odeon cinema which
had an auditorium ceiling that indicated, decoratively but
inaccurately, the starlit heavens.  That was no barrier to me. I
would point out what I claimed were the Great Bear, Orion’s
Belt, Pegasus and the Pleiades. "Gosh, Albert, you must know
just about everything," said one lass, an assertion I did not
deny.  From my early, children’s matinee, cinema-going days
when, scrutinising the Moon, I could work out where Wanda, the
Venusian witch queen met the crab men from Mars, to the present
pictures of the Red Planet, a study of which has familiarised me
with practically every revealed pebble, I have been an ardent
space-watcher.  The universe has, however, disappointed me. I
have seen awesome pictures of Saturn and Jupiter, the tortured,
twisted or frozen surfaces of