 What effects do the Green Flame rocks have?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1944. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly enforced. There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning on her faded green umbrella. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what they are. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto. A theater to the grizzled colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the muck, zilcon wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. On the stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian sat on an upraised dais. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an Earthman operator. I will only say that on this stage are nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions. For every question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand planetoles . The operator of the Earth visi twisted his dials and nodded. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian cafes strove to stump the experts. Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men rushed out and scattered the crowd. She took my arm and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read THE JET. "It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active rock once found on Mercury. The Alpha rays of this rock are similar to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles projected at high speed. But the character of the Gamma rays has never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of Beta or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons. "When any form of life is exposed to these Gamma rays from the Green Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of intolerance.
 It makes people lethargic and easily manipulated.
 It makes people lethargic and easily manipulated.  They spread radioactivity to people and make them ill.  They influence people to take power over other people.  They are electromagnetic and shock people.