Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 113: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION cold, cantankerous and chol- eric, his men called him. He was a tough baby, a stickler for regulations, but a first- class fighting man, and a man of honour. Mary didn’t like the colonel, but she respected him. She had no respect for the son. JoAnn Deveraux was one of Mary’s girls. One of the Earth girls, from Lexington, Virginia. She walked into Mary’s place one afternoon and asked for a job. Mary had known about her arrival as a paying passenger aboard a space liner. There weren’t sO many women on Mars that a new one could come in without causing comment throughout Iopa. JoAnn was a fragile, petite blonde who came with two trunks and four bags, but came alone. She had no husband and no family on Mars. She offered no explanation and Mary didn’t ask for one. She put the girl to work. JoAnn didn’t mix very well, either with the other girls or with the customers. She had. 112 a sort of withdrawn attitude toward them and toward her job, not quite aloof. But she did her work well and Mary had no real cause for complaint. Not until she began to notice JoAnn in relation to Lieutenant Cole. The girl obviously had known him before. Mary watched and listened, and asked discreet questions here and there. There was Cole’s reaction the first time he saw JoAnn. It was one of disbelief and distress. He stared hard at her, drank one drink and left. JoAnn watched him go from another table, where she had been taking an order. She stood with the pencil poised above the pad, her eyes full of the past. Lieutenant Cole’s school, it seemed, had been Virginia Military Institute. V.M.I. was in JoAnn’s home town. There were other bits and pieces which Mary was able to fit together. Jeffrey Cole and JoAnn Deveraux had had a romance. It had been comiiclooks.conn