Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

MARY HELL'S by Richard Wilson It was just asmall drinking place on Mars, but all the world’s troubles could be found there. Large and small. * THEY CALLED her Mary Hell and said she came from there. She didn’t, though. She had come from Cincinnati six years before, aboard the space liner Superba. She'd been a barmaid in the second class section, and had a two- year contract, but jumped ship when a sergeant in the World Government troopers asked her to marry him and live with him between manceu- vres in his off-the-post bung- alow. She’d moved. in and was even seriously considering becoming his wife some day, when one of the manceuvres turned out to be the real thing—although it was only a short-lived insurrection— and the sergeant was shrivelled 110 up by a Q gun in the desert. The C.O. stretched a point and sent her his effects as next of kin, and with that precedent, she collected his insurance, which was enough for her to buy a thriving tavern near the spaceport at Iopa. It was a long trek from Earth to Mars and the crews —strictly on the wagon en route—had powerful thirsts when they got liberty at Iopa. Within a year Mary had paid off the mortgage and the place was hers, free and clear. She called it that, The Free and Clear, but it continued to be known as Mary’s Place—or Mary Hell’s. Apparently she had really fallen for the sarge, and his death did something to her, inside. She’d always been hard. It started with the orphan asylum she’d been sent to when she was five, and just when she had begun to comicloooks.conn