Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition, December 1955 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

RAT RACE By FRANK HERBERT The detective suspected somebody was playing fancy games —leading them around on a rat race. True; perfectly true. But he misinterpreted the meaning of the phrase “rat race.” Illustrated by Riley es the nine years it took Welby Lewis to become chief of criminal investiga- tion for Sheriff John Czernak, he came to look on police work as something like solving jigsaw puzzles. It was a routine of putting pieces together into a recognizable picture. He was not prepared to have his cynical police-peopled world transformed into a situation out of H. G. Wells or Charles Forte. When Lewis said ‘“‘alien’’ he meant non-American, not extraterrestrial. Oh, he knew a BEM was a bug-eyed monster; he read some science fiction. But that was just the point—such situations were fiction, not to be encountered in police routine. And certainly unexpected at a mortuary. The Johnson-Tule Mortuary, to be exact. Lewis checked in at his desk in the sheriff’s office at five minutes to eight of a Tuesday morning. He was a man of low forehead, thin pinched-in Welsh face, black hair. His eyes were like two pieces of roving green jade glinting beneath bushy brows. The office, a room of high ceilings and stained plaster walls was in a first floor corner of the County Building at Banbury. Beneath one tall window of the room was a cast-iron radiator. Beside the window hung a calendar picture of a girl wearing only a string of pearls. There were two desks facing each other across an aisle which led from the hall door to the radiator. The desk on the left belonged to Joe Welch, the night man. Lewis occupied the one on the right, a cigarette-scarred vintage piece which had stood in this room more than thirty years. Lewis stopped at the front of his desk, leafed through the papers in the incoming basket, looked up as Sheriff Czernak entered. The sheriff, a fat man with wide Slavic features and a complexion like bread crust, grunted as he eased himself into the chair under the calender. He pushed a brown felt hat to the back of his head, exposing a bald dome. Lewis said, “Hi, John. How’s the wife?” He dropped the Papers back into the basket. ““Her sciatica’s better this week,” said the sheriff. “I came in to tell you to skip that burglary report in the basket. A city prowler picked up two punks with the stuff early this morning. We’re sending ’em over to juvenile court.” “They'll never learn,” said Lewis. 68 cComichooksscom