Authentic Science Fiction, December 1951 — page 102: what you’re looking at

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

100 THE MOON IS HEAVEN which tired and aching muscles recouped a little—but only a little—of their energy. A few days later there had been another celebration. This time, it was because Clavier and Leeson had managed the impossible. They’d got a pipe running from the reservoir to the compressor. An hour or two after that and liquid hydrogen was filling up the tank in the ship. It was mainly a question of waiting then. Waiting for the remainder of the six hundred tonnes to form. Mt was then that the question of Schnabel’s body had cropped up. The day after you'd killed him, you had taken his body away from the dome and hid it in the shade of some rocks. You didn’t want to have to look at it every time you came out of the dome. The question now was whether, it was to be taken back to Earth. “Of course, the enquiry people would very much like to have.a look at it,’’ Atah said. ‘‘ Well, let *em come up and see it!’’ Leeson had sug- gested. ‘‘It’s here any time they want to. I think it’s a sheer waste of fuel and space to take a dead body. Especially the body of a man like Schnabel was.’’ Clavier puts in a word. ‘‘ He had no relatives, you know. No one will want to claim his body. Leeson is probably right.” ‘« Of course he’s right,’’. Reina had chipped in. ‘‘ Who'd want a body like that? Besides, think of the state it'll be in by the time we get back. It’s all right now in the cold. But it won’t be cold in the ship. I say let’s leave it and use the extra fuel for navigating.”’ “Yes, that’s a big point,’’ Atah had conceded. ‘“* The ship will have to take off at an angle; we can’t straighten her up, I’m afraid. The extra fuel would enable us to have a much larger safety margin for changing direction once we're off.”’ Look,” you’d put in. ‘‘ It’s not as though we’re plany ning to burn the body or hack it to pieces. In that shade, comicbooks.com