Astounding Science Fiction, February 1952 (British Edition) — page 62: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

60 Party that Earthbase held with Moonbase for morale purposes. The men had jokingly complained Janet was bad for morale. “Too good-looking,” they'd said. He should have known that, too, Ray thought, sighing. He supposed he should have known a lot of things. But how could he, when he’d never seen his son face to face? All he reaily had of the boy was this handwriting, sent in a telautograph because that was the most personal form of message ~ available to the public. A very nice form of message to send to one’s father, too—if the father were rich. Cheap enough, though, when you considered how far it had to travel. The price had been penciled on a corner by a message-center clerk: three hundred fifty- four dollars and sixty-five cents. Plus tax, of course. The delivery boy, all excited, had refused a tip. Which was lucky, because it was still three days before pay day. No! Four! Twoie would be here in an hour—a check, in four days. It was a relief to have to get up and do something about that. _ He unzipped: a pocket of his patched red spacesuit and stuffed the message into it. He stood under his helmet, which hung on a cord from the ceiling. lowered it to his shoulders, uncoupled the hook, and made fast such thumbscrews as he could reach. He thrust his hand into a gauntlet held by a special frame, and made the wrist-joint more or_less air-tight by catching the free end of a roll of friction tape on his wrist, Winding his arm around the tape-spindle a few times, cutting it against a knife-edge fixed there for the purpose, and smoothing the end against his chest. Then he lurched bearlike through a couple of vapor-barriers, and was out in the cold, half-pressured corridor. His toes hurt. He turned on the heat in his suit, but got no relief. His toes felt as if curled in tight fists under the balls of his feet, driv- ing long toenails into his soles at every step. But here again, as he well knew, Ray Fincek was kidding himself. Since a space- suit’s heating unit had failed him, fifteen years before, he’d had no toes. Probably the boy didn’t remember hear- ing of that. Probably the boy didn’t recall that he’d lost his arm to a meteoric dust- mote that pierced his suit, here on the Moon. Probably the boy hadn’t pictured how he’d look, all crippled with the bends from sudden decompression in a landing accident. ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION Certainly the boy didn’t know that forty- one-year-old Ray Fincek looked like a man of sixty and felt eighty. Too many things, the boy didn’t know—But the main thing was, he didn’t know the boy! Hie knew only Martians. There was one in the corridor, working maskless and suit- less in a thin and frigid semiatmosphere that would have spun a man fainting to the floor. It moved backward down the long narrow tunnel, watching its progress in a mirror held in the right hand, and catching any missed spots with a rag held in the left. It walked on its two front feet, and in | the two rear ones held buckets of soapy and clear water. Its left tail manipulated the wet mop and its right tail rinsed and dried. Ray remembered to smile and wave an answer to the friendly undulations of the Martian’s snout, but wasn’t convincing. Quickly the Martian downed tools and stood at attention, every feather electric with a quivering desire to be of service. Ray halted, pulled himself together, and reached up to pat the Martian’s snout. Then he gave the signal to resume work. This time no willing Martian could help him. The paymaster could. And he would, if asked. Asking was the hard part. On down the corridor Ray shuffled wearily. He entered the Administration Wing’s air lock, closed the door behind him, and sat heavily on the hard bench along the right wall. A red light flashed over the inner door, and pumps pulsed in his ears. The air grew hot. He turned off his suit-heat. When the light changed to green, the inner door unlocked itself, and he got up and went through it. A new little blonde file girl, whose desk was just beyond, came up and began help-- ing him remove his helmet. As he knew, she was stationed there to help all comers. But Ray Fincek had climbed unaided out of his first spacesuit before she’d been born —and had climbed unaided out of his last one just before he’d lost that right arm. It was all he could do to accept her routine assistance without rudeness. The blonde was lifting his helmet off when another woman bustled up, frankly fat, frankly forty, and frankly admiring. “That'll do, Jane,” she said. “PI help Mr. Fincek myself.” “Mr. Fincek?” said Jane. “Oh, excuse me, sir. I should have recognized you from the pictures.” She paused, looked hesitantly COLNE DOOLES (E@)