Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 41 — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

THE CENSORS them unable, for physical reasons, to travel through space without contracting the interplanetary ‘bends,’ as they call them; all of them racked by fears and com- plexes, petty jealousies and personal ambition; their lives together wrecked by mal- adjustment. If it had not been for our intervention, would any of them have survived to this day?” The Predictors had turned their attention towards Earth after the second Fission War. The High Predictor himself, stirred by the challenge of coping with a society of unco-ordinated beings such as they had not met in their whole experience, had directed the work of guiding and ‘the gradual elimination of dis- ruptive elements. There had been no more wars. Existence vectors were studied, and the converging probability paths analysed. A _ potential dic- tator was removed by the watchers, the self-appointed cosmic stabilisers. Certain ideas were implanted in the minds of those milling human beings—meting out the same treatment that the Predictors had given to so many galaxies, so many widely differing races. The Predictors hoped to lift this small group out of its squabbling confusion to a plane on which it might cope with broader issues. For the Predictors there would be no reward. Only the satisfaction of work well done. No awareness of their existence must ever seep into the minds of the lesser races whose course they fashioned. Gently and unobtrusively they shaped and limited the future of the cosmos. : “If an individualistic race such as this ever realised that there was such a control,” thought the High Predictor, “it would at once revolt. They are stubborn, these people. We must be careful. I can only hope that my successor will not be too formal in his approach. It is easier to make a mistake with these apparent primitives than with the worlds possessing a corporate mind.” ‘Little harmcould bedone,” thought the Acolyte, anxious to be finished with these particularities and to sink into the all-embracing contem- 103 comiclbooks.corn