Authentic Science Fiction, December 1951 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

6 THE MOON IS HEAVEN conveyor belt that takes it back to the kitchen, and wander over to the window. A tall, sleek symbol of man’s questing fingers, exploring mind; an expression of his conceit, really. This, he says, is all very well, but it’s too small. Man has the power to reach for the stars, why be content with just one world? Let’s all go to the Moon! Well, not all of us, not at first. Just a few to pave the way, to take the slipperiness off the stepping stone to space. To build the domes, rig the air plants, do a bit of mining. Get the whole thing straightened out for when the big white chiefs come along. And so the money came depiiigs 4 in. A bit from here; a bit from there. Soon there had been enough to buy a bit of mountain, then to put up a few shacks and stock out with some apparatus. The snowball started rolling. People didn’t want to be left out. It came in by sixpences and thousands. One little boy, who dreamed of following you one day, sent in his model rocket and told you to sell it for what it was worth. But everybody knew just how much it was worth—to the boy. There were several things like that. After a year or two, the Government had realised that something was afoot. Thinking it over, they decided it was quite a good idea, really. This going to the Moon. It would have its uses—apart from prestige. So they chipped in with a couple of million—an amount equivalent in value to the fin, maybe, on the boy’s rocket—and gave you a technologist to go with it and with you to the Moon. You reckon he’ll have a flag tucked away somewhere. Atah Kark found his name appearing in even more papers and magazines. His project, too. By about 1958 things looked as though they might come to fruition after all. Now, in 1963 there are only a few weeks to go and then—the thought of it, the still, small voice of it makes you go cold somewhere down inside. You think of the emptiness of that space out there. And, if anything should go wrong, the long, long way to fall—into the Sun. comicbooks.com