Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 41 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

THE PHOENIX NEST phoenix-nest equivalent of the natural umbilical cord. Ani- mal experiments had showed that the severing of this cord was very likely to start the breathing process. This would have made it necessary to raise the heads of the growing organisms out of their baths, or to attach air hoses to their mouths. The first course would have nulli- fied much of the massaging and circulatory effect of the baths. The second would have been risky, due to the frequent spontaneous movements which the organisms made which might have dislodged ~the hoses and allowed water to enter the lungs of the young statesmen. Furthermore, the beginning of the breathing process was, in every animal form, a sign of self-assertion, a sign that the organism was ready to under- take an independent existence. It was inseparable from birth, or awakening. If the new Churchills had been allowed to breathe, they would almost certainly have awakened. Having awakened, they would undoubtedly have found their existence within the nests 19 unbearably claustrophobic. They might even have injured themselves in trying to break out of the nests. Strothmeyer, of course, had a further reason for wanting to put off the awakening to the last possible moment. He was not a brave man. He did not want the chips to fall where they might. He liked orderly and unexciting pro- gress. The affair of Carlos Delgado had convinced Strothmeyer that orderly and unexciting progress was the last thing that was likely to result from the waking of the two Churchills. In spite of his outward capitulation to the iron will of Professor Knaut, Strothmeyer still harboured a view of im- mortality which was largely non-materialistic. He was sure, beyond any doubt, that the person who had animated the duplicate body of Louis the Gimp had no more been Louis himself, or some exten- sion of Louis, than it had been John Wilkes Booth or Ludwig von Beethoven. | Looking in through the glass walls of the phoenix nests, he could hardly doubt that sci- comichbooks,. conn