Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

Hide! Hide! Witch! The good folk come to burn thee! Their keen enjoyment hid beneath The gothic mask of duty. ONATHAN BILLINGS, Dean of Psychosomatic Research at Hox- worth University, heard the knock pn his study door, and looked up from his work at his desk. But before he could call out an invitation to enter, the door opened. That would be Mr. Rogan, Resident Investigator. Anyone else would have waited. Billings watched him without ex- pression as he came through the door —a little man, a negative quantity, who wore heavy silver-rimmed glasses in the hope they would give character to a characterless face. The brief case he carried, too, was heavily decorated with silver, proclaiming its unusual importance. He needed these trap- pings, and more. He was the kind of man one forgot to introduce, and his whole bearing suggested his determi- nation to command the attention he never quite received. There was a portentous frown on his gray face, and without any pre- liminaries of greeting he bustled over and laid a new issue of the college paper on Billings’ desk. Billings looked down at the open page, and a cartoon of himself looked slyly back. That was the trouble of having an old, old face with a thousand wrinkles. Even seventy years had: been unkind in putting so many wrinkles there. Ina cartoon, and he was often the subject of them throughout the country, those wrinkles could be slanted to make him appear fine and noble, or sly and scheming. It would depend upon which faction of the public the cartoonist wanted to please. This time, in the cartoon, he was sly ; and had his finger held up toward ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION his lips in a cautioning, secretive ges- ture. There was a caption in bold print beneath the cartoon. “You were quite wrong, Albert, about the nature of the universe!” Billings looked up from the cartoon with a slight smile and met the accus- ing expressions in Rogan’s washed blue eyes. “This is highly irregular, doctor,” Rogan said firmly, before Billings could comment. “I trust you have not been questioning indisputable facts! [ trust you have not been planting disturbing doubts in the minds of our future citizens! I trust you know Con- gress approved these facts for school textbooks long ago! It would be most subversive, not to mention a waste of time and tax money, to question them now!” | Billings felt a fiare of sudden irrita- tion, an emotion he considered quite unworthy of the circumstances. He should be accustomed to this sort of thing by now. For the past thirty years there had been a Resident In- vestigator, some worse and some not any worse than Rogan; monitoring what the teachers said, the lines of thought they pursued. He remembered a long succession of them who had come through his door; some of them resentful that he was world famous and must be handled with especial care; others seeing in it a golden oppor- tunity for personal publicity if they could catch him in some subversive remark, | Out of the montage of accusations and sly traps written in their collec- tive expressions, one face stood out clearly from all the rest. What was the remark the man had made? Oh, yes, he remembered it now. “IT am completely impartial, Dr. Billings,” the man had said. “I merely see to it that you teachers say nothing Comichooks.co in