Authentic Science Fiction, December 1951 — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

92 THE MOON IS HEAVEN replies, ‘‘ Reina came in and made elaborate signs for silence, then she wrote down that you’d said something about having tea and a rest yet had stayed outside and cautioned her not to say anything. She told us she reckoned you’d seen Schnabel and were going after him. We rather thought you’d be bringing him back—if you came back.”’ “I did Bring him back,” you say. ‘‘ He’s. outside. I didn’t think you’d want him in here. He’s not a pretty sight.” “ Alive?’”’ says Leeson. “ Dead,’’ you reply. Leeson looks delighted. Clavier appears disappointed. ‘‘ There was a fight up in the rocks. He tried to fling me over a precipice. I smashed his helmet on a rock.” You tell it simply, because this is no time for drama. You’ve had enough of that for quite a while. And the others probably have, too. Apart from a little gasp that Reina lets out, they remain. silent for several minutes. You reckon you know what they are thinking. In their mind’s eye they are seeing the pictures that were taken of experimental animals suddenly exposed to the highest vacuum attainable on Earth. A vacuum that’s only a ‘small fraction of the one up here. Those pictures were not nice to look at. They weren’t meant to be. They‘ were intended as a warning to space travellers as to what happens to an organism under those circumstances. You can see from everybody’s faces that they are remembering those pictures, Well, they’re lucky. You don’t have to remember them. You've seen the real thing. : ‘TI see,’’ says Atah. ‘‘ It seems as though the wheels of justice have been anticipated. Maybe we’ve stopped them turning the wrong way, though.”’ So he had been thinking about that capital punishment aspect of things. You reckon there are not many aspects that miss Atah. comicbooks.com