Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 41 — page 118: what you’re looking at

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

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MOTHER tasting so funny. You've been dosing me—same as your monkeys and rabbits!’ “Why not? We’ve got it solved!” *““Mike!”’ “You know the results we’ve been getting already with human embryos, even two months’ ones——”’ “Yes, I know—when a woman dies in an accident, you’ve brought the embryo to term. I was proud of that part of your work ee ‘‘Well, now we’ve mastered the metabolite removal. All we’ve been waiting for was to be sure we had the right solution to the problem of toughening the water sac and controlling the delicate osmotic potentials ds ..““Mike, for heaven’s sake stop talking jargon and tell me what’s going to happen!” *“We’ve found the solution. We can set up an artificial en- vironment that improves on nature. Because it’s foolproof and under constant automatic control. There’s an electro- analyser in the circuit that gets a continuous feed-back from the detectors in the development tank. It’s got 300,000 valves, Amuri. And that many can’t be wrong! The only thing that could go wrong is if the analyser were fed another problem simul- taneously. Its circuits wouldn’t stand it. But nobody’d do that——” “I see. And now what’s going to happen?” “Pll give you a capsule of oxytocin when it’s time—not too long now. The new hor- mone will interact with the others you’ve been having and—well, the whole thing will be over before you hardly know about it. No pains, -no confinement. Itll be as simple as it is in chickens.” “You mean ” She strove » for acomic effect. ““You mean —I’m going to layanegg...?” “Nope! You don’t even have to bother with the shell gland!” Humour left her. ““And you didn’t want to tell me? You didn’t think—you should ask me?” “In a way—but if you’d been nervous, the stuff wouldn’t have upset you, but the thought of it might have.” “T hope it does upset me! I hope it spoils everything!” 117 comicloooks.comn