Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/144

144 and murderous, yet who inherited from their ancestors the knowledge of how to handle them well in battle). These battle weapons are handed down among them just as the muskets of the camel-riding Arabs are handed down from father to son.

But if they live through such an attack, they call it "over," and go back to ducking the income tax.

HERE are good and bad rulers in the caves, good and bad factory owners down there. Some would like the restrictions that hamper their trade with the surface removed; some want the system that assures them cheap labor kept.

I often feel I shouldn't exert myself to expose the Elder world in the face of the egregious incredulity of the average man—I just shouldn't bother. Let the monopoly roll on over all possible future development for the human race. It will anyway.

I know the work is vitally necessary, but it seems so impossible in the face of "officialdumb's" attitude in the face of revelations like George Murmans. I know that all criminal investigators are not so blind as not to know there are influences that are real behind such tales. Of course they know; there is so very much of it going on. They don't know how to face the neighbor's assumption they have gone "nuts," and they don't dare open their mouths! BUT THEY KNOW, and they know plenty.

This work is necessary to prevent such crimes as those dictated by "voices." If Heirens had known what such phenomena indicated, that he had acquired an underworld dero who would get him in trouble, he could have avoided it, would have had some chance of mentally fighting off the criminal suggestions of the degenerate mind that at last managed to gain control of his actions. Heirens was under this influence for years before he murdered. The truth about Heirens is that he showed remarkable resistance to these controlling telaug suggestions. I wish there were some way to show what it really was that caused his downfall. I am trying, here.

O RESUME with the "fish-bones" and "proofs" in the form of words and snatches of conversations heard over just such rays as drive people to murder, except that they are in the hands of sane members of the cavern's society:

"IN HOT COUNTRIES THEY BURST BREASTS."

The sentence means that in South America, Africa and other jungled country's there are cavern wild dero who use force rays up through the rocks to the surface people to burst maidens' breasts and cause their death. I wonder how one of our "explainers" of Fortean and Shaver phenomena would explain this occurrence.

"BOSS RAISES HELL WHEN WE'RE SEEN."

Means when they go out to gather firewood or get groceries, to milk the unsuspecting farmer's cows, or similar clandestine excursions, they get plenty hell if they let anyone see them!

"ARE ALL GYPSIES, GYPSIES?"

The voice suggests that long excursions are sometimes made by cavern people masquerading as gypsies. Not a difficult masquerade, it is?

The firewood practice suggests a method of proof—for yourself, though don't expect any "normal" person to believe you. Watch the broken dead branches in the woods near a cavern suspected entrance. Note missing branches—see if you can find who collected them? Listen with hidden sound devices from a distance. When you try a few things like this you will run into discouraging or encouraging phenomena immediately. You will learn, in a hurry.

More:

"Last light is gone. Car ahead I 'Fraid to go after wood now, someone might see us."

"Sticks are cheapest fuel. Boss's fuel costs money. It is hard to get money."

"Found an ice-skating robot! Beats all what you run into."

"If he had the money to be ruined...."

"You know, we've got to double-seal all these entrances."

"Last census was 58,900 inhabitants known and under control by..." (Tampered out the rest. Most of these informative sentences are through tamper and are incomplete.)

"Lady Estelle put together. You'd swear she was human." (Words about another robot, which I saw in projection, which was very human in appearance. From my daily notes on "voices.")

"Centenarian devils filled with pep and pride."

"The fire is of books of magic, and on the fire cooks human flesh."

"We get little meat, some of it is human flesh; sometimes sold in a market; no one inquires whose flesh."

"Stockholm, Sweden, best place to go for good white ray, and good treatment from them for persecuted surface men." (I wish I could go.)

"I don't have to wear anything? Or have anything to wear!" (Cavern girl's voice.)

"Granny got Ladies' Home Journal years ago. Now they don't get it here anywhere. Verboten, subscriptions. (No address.)

"A sin and dance place."

"The Satanic government was very strict about virtue." (Figure that out.)

"The boss is very large. Grab hold and lift anything, he can. But a sourpuss by the look of him." (Effects of long ben-ray on boss.)

"I couldn't even outen' my cigarette. Now dripping, now shaking. Sorrow, pain, splendor, foolishly intermingled." (Account of stim experience on forcing table, idiotic intermingling of all sensual sensations from crazy operator.)

"Some tried to sell some caves to some nation's governments. They were too "modern" to believe us. Scared to talk to us, or meet us anywhere." (Meant: long ago, other countries tried