Astounding British Edition, Vol. 9, No. 7 — page 54: what you’re looking at

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

5 ” ie ee ik ENS ‘ yi vs ; eu bye Rear) PP ae des é be Bhat ee ae” ee Pr 564+ 64 G \) Paid ip ik he el) PLAN APA ene lege : 7 ae Pe C be vee ' ey : re my S ly VS le heck. he saw that the pinnacle was SOS. _ and the sky had turned a horrid orange- _ yellow color. Panting, his strength spent, he staggered up on the shore. But the shore wasn’t right. With a burst of anger he saw the fearful, distorted shore _ line upon which he stood, the sand under his feet writhing and alive as little wisps of it rose about his ankles, twisting them, as if to throw him down to his knees. Stars were blinking up at him from the ground, and great boulders of black granite scudded through the sky, whizzing past his ears like huge, unearthly cannon balls. The world was changing, turning -and twisting into impossible shapes and contortions, and he smelled the dank, sharp odor of chlorine in the pungent air. With a scream of rage he threw himself onto the writhing sand, pounding his fist against it in helpless fury, screaming out again and again. He couldn’t stand it any longer, this was the end, he couldn’t fight any more—They’d have to bring him back now, they’d have to stop— A horrible thought split into his mind, bringing him to his knees abruptly. His eyes were wide, hollow-rimmed as he . Stared unseeing at the impossibly distorted landscape. Fear struck into him, deep, hollow fear that screamed out in his mind, a desolate, empty fear. Carefully he reviewed his ordeal, everything he had thought, and seen, and felt. For so long, he had been running, fighting—enough to satisfy any test, as much as he was humanly capable of fighting. To test his reactions, conscious and unconscious, his resourcefulness in the face of danger, his ingenuity, his resiliency, his fight, his drive, his spirit—they couldn’t ask for more. Yet they still hadn’t brought him back. Surely, if any human being had ever proved himself capable of surviving the fearful alienness of the stars and the worlds around the stars, he had proved - himself. But they hadn't brought him back— The thought came again, strongly, growing into horrible certainty. He shud- dered, a huge sob breaking from his lips. He knew, he was sure. He had been wait- ing, hoping, fighting until he had satisfied them and they would stop. But now he ASTOUNDING aie AeooR saw the picture, from a different angle, with terrible clarity. They weren't going to stop. They were never going to stop subjecting him to these horrors. No matter how much he took, no matter how long he kept going, they would never stop. He had been fighting for a lost cause, fighting to satisfy the insatiable. And he could keep fighting, and running, and fighting, until he toppled over dead. Anger broke through the despair, blind- ing anger, anger that tore at his heart and twisted his mouth into a snarl of rage. He had been bilked, fooled, sold down the river. He was just another experiment, a test case, to see how much a live danger- trained spaceman could stand, to be run to death on a treadmill like a helpless, mindless guinea pig— For the greater good of humanity, they had said. He spat on the sand. He didn’t care about humanity any more. To enable men to go to the stars! Bother the stars! He was a man, he’d fought a grueling battle, he’d faced death in the most hor- rible forms his own mind could conceive. He wasn’t going to die, not in the face of the worst that Connover and Schiml and their psych-training crews could throw at him! He leaned back on the sand, red anger tearing through his veins. It was his own mind he was fighting, these things had | come from his own mind, directed by Schiml’s probing needles, stimulated by tiny electrical charges, horribly real, but coming from his own mind nevertheless. They could kill him, oh yes, he never lost sight of that fact. But he could kill them, too. He saw the huge rock coming at quite a distance. It was black, and jagged, like a monstrous chunk of coal, speeding straight for his head, careening through the air like some idiotic missile from hell. With bitter anger Robert Cox stood up, facing the approaching boulder, fixing his mind in a single, tight channel, and screamed “Stop!” with all the strength he ~ had left. And the boulder faltered in mid-flight, and slowed, and vanished in a puff of blue light. Cox turned to face the shifting, jungle- - CORMICLOOOL<S.(eO)