Devotees of reasonable science fiction (who include many leading scientists) were writing angrily to Palmer, protesting that the Shaver hoax had gone too far, but their letters seemed only to amuse him: “There have been some odd reactions, one of them being a promise by a fan group to ‘expose’ our ‘hoax’ (which was a compliment, by the way, because it was termed the ‘biggest ever attempted in modern science fiction history’). We are waiting for this expose, [_sic_] with interest--because we are curious to know how a hoax which is not a hoax can be exposed as a hoax. We realize that a lot of our readers find it difficult to believe that we ourselves believe one single word of what Mr. Shaver tells us in his stories, but we’ll keep on presenting the evidence as it comes in, and you can judge for yourself.”[II-14] Readers continued to object and many stopped buying the magazine, but Palmer persisted with ambiguous hints that spaceships were really here. A full year before the first flying-saucer report he wrote: “If you don’t think space ships visit the earth regularly, as in this story [‘Cult of the Witch Queen’], then the files of Charles Fort and your editor’s own files are something you should see.... And if you think responsible parties in world governments are ignorant of the fact of space ships visiting earth, you just don’t think the way we do.”[II-16] In succeeding months he became more and more explicit. In September 1946 he told one correspondent, “As for space ships, ... personally we believe these ships do visit the earth. You, or any observer, would be inclined to call it something else if you did see one.”[II-15] In the spring of 1947 he replied to a reader who asked for concrete evidence that Shaver’s stories were true: “... the mystery is not just ‘are there caves with dero and tero in them?’ but it has to do with space ships, other inhabited worlds, and so on.”[II-17] In June 1947, the month the first flying saucers were reported, the issue of _Amazing Stories_ was an addict’s dream[II-18]. The cover featured “The Shaver Mystery, the Most Sensational True Story Ever Told”; the four stories, 90,000 words, were all under the byline of Richard S. Shaver. The entire magazine--editorial comments, discussion columns, and most of the feature articles--was devoted to the supernatural world of Shaver. But the end was near. _Amazing_ published its last Shaver story, “Gods of Venus,” in the summer of 1948; as far as the magazine was concerned, the mystery was dead.