Part 3 (1/2)

How can this be? Can the mind conceive that there are no such things as Groles, that, like so many other things, they are only a lie of the State?

These last words I write now.

The Groles are coming! We can hear their murmuring sounds through the pa.s.sages. We say goodbye to each other.

They are very close now--very--

ALVAREZ COUNTY DAILY RECORD

_Inhabitants of Earth's Interior Come to Alvarez_ by Franklin Williams, Staff Writer

Alvarez, May 9, 2204.--An almost unbelievable event of the greatest significance not only to Alvarez, or the United States of the Western Hemisphere, but to the entire world, occurred in our Alvarez County yesterday. Visitors on the early morning tour through Alvarez Caverns, came upon an astonis.h.i.+ng spectacle. Two men and a young girl of indescribable strangeness of manner and dress were seated on the floor of Atom Cave. All were in the last stages of exhaustion and exposure, and even the little light from the electric hand lamps seemed to blind them. Fortunately, in the tour was Dr. and Mrs. Ferguson of New Was.h.i.+ngton, and Dr. Ferguson, appraising himself rapidly of the situation, led the trio out of the Caverns and drove them to Alvarez Hospital. Dr. Ferguson says they seemed completely dazed and unable to speak. They came with him without resistance.

After an examination by Dr. Stutfeldt of Alvarez Hospital which completely confirmed Dr. Ferguson's earlier diagnosis, the strange visitors were put in a darkened room, in which they surprisingly had no difficulty seeing, and were given simple nourishment.

Late in the evening, after they had slept and rested for many hours, they were questioned. In the presence of a distinguished group which included Mayor Whitehead, Professor Lorraine Johnson (a very charming young lady) of the Alvarez University, J. W. Wilson, Chairman of the Alvarez Chamber of Commerce, and your reporter, they told an amazing, but according to Professor Johnson, entirely credible story.

Speaking slowly with an accent strongly reminiscent of twenty-first century North American, but with somewhat peculiar grammatical formations, the oldest of the group told of their having walked for many weeks from their State deep within the Earth.

Undoubtedly, they will have much more of interest to tell, but Dr.

Stutfeldt refused to let them talk for more than a few minutes. He says it will be many weeks before they will regain their strength, and much longer before they will be able to adjust to the tremendous differences between their old life and life on the surface of the earth. It is entirely possible, Dr. Stutfeldt says, that they may never be able to make this adjustment.

An interesting sidelight of their within-the-earth civilization is that, although they apparently have the same calendar system as ours, in some way their time seems to have gotten out of step. According to their reckoning it is now some three years and two months later than it is.

NEW WAs.h.i.+NGTON SUN

What's New Under the Sun by d.i.c.k Richard