Authentic Science Fiction, December 1951 — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

THE MOON IS HEAVEN 31 food out and tucking into it beside you, only she’s upside down relative to you. You have a short, silly argument with her about who is up and who is down. ‘You seem to be looking at each other for longer than is necessary. After another play of cards, another sleep, another feed, you reckon time is getting near. Atah confirms it. “ You'd better eat all you want and do anything else that’s necessary, and then strap yourselves down. This is the most unpleasant part, but you’ve just got to put up with it.” Unpleasant’s the word, you think. Not so much the sensa- tion as the boredom. Fourteen hours of deceleration! First so gentle that you hardly feel it, slowly increasing until it starts to pin you down—only this time your mattresses will have to be up on the ceiling, because the rocket will come down tail first. . You hope everything’s all right with the motors. If they fail, then the rocket can’t help smacking the Moon at a speed of two miles a second. But they won’t fail. Atah’s sure of it. And there’s the extra braking fuel that was saved by not having to correct the course. Everything’s going to be all right. You tell yourself that again. One by one everybody settles their affairs and shifts their mattresses up to the ceiling. They strap themselves down. So do you. Atah is the last to do it. Leeson has a special remote control mirror and set of firing buttons so that he can operate the motors and see the dials from his mattress. ‘“T’m firing now,’’ he says. You watch his finger come down on a button. There’s a faint roar, a very gentle tug at you. And you know you are landing on the Moon. comicbooks.com