Authentic Science Fiction, December 1951 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER ELEVEN The Days Go- By Time goes quickly, you find, when you’re working hard. Ten days, Earth days, have passed by since you. killed Schnabel. And a lot has happened since then. The work has been hard and long, so hard and so long that your muscles are permanently aching now and-you would rather stoop than stand upright. But it’s been a pleasant time. Everyone has worked in harmony with the others. Maybe Schnabel’s example stays fresh in the mind, maybe the common desire to get back to Earth has something to do with it. Whatever it is, there are no scenes of temperament, no outbursts of temper or irritability. The work goes well. It’s fun when the whole crowd are singing into the radio. Maybe it’s not very musical, but it’s fun. In a way you're surprised. Conditions haven’t been all that rosy. Setbacks have come often, Hours of work have been wasted because of some unforeseen, unforeseeable event that’s tied up with lunar conditions. Yet even Clavier has kept his excitability on the production plane. Of course, a big factor is that the end is in sight. For some time now, you've all known that short of an act of God, you're going to make the dead-line. The certainty of that came when Clavier found his reservoir. A day of rejoicing, that. The busy little chemist had studied his book well. He and Leeson had pored over it and argued over it, coming always to Atah Kark for arbitration. Then they had gone out and dug. It hadn’t taken them many hours to get a working ‘grip of the mining apparatus. A few experimental borings, 96 comicbooks.com