Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition, December 1955 — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

THE WAITABITS By ERIC FRANK RUSSELL There are a lot of reasons why a race might be unconquerable. Sometimes it isn’t that you haven’t the courage to do it, but something quite different. . . . Hiustrated by Riley HE strode toward the Assignment Office with quiet confidence born of long service, much experience and high rank. Once upon a time a per- _ emptory call to this department had made him slightly edgy exactly as it — unnerved the fresh-faced juniors today. But that had been long, long ago. ) He was gray-haired now, with wrinkles around the corners of his eyes, — silver oak-leaves on his epaulettes. He had heard enough, seen enough and learned enough to have lost the capacity for surprise. Markham was going to hand him a tough one. That was Markham’s job: to rake through a mess of laconic, garbled, distorted or eccentric reports, pick out the obvious problems and dump them squarely in the laps of who- ever happened to be hanging around and was considered suitable to solve them. One thing could be said in favor of this technique: its victims often 30 cComicbooks: com,