"I remembered the devotion of those belonging to the Manson 'Family' or the 'People's Temple' of Jim Jones or the Branch Davidian Sect or the 'Heaven's Gate' sect of Marshall Applewhite It wasn't how much the 'Heaven's Gate' believers believed that there was a spaceship hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet, waiting to take them to paradise; only the actual existence of such a spaceship really mattered."