Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 119: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION bracing sweetness. Tonight her vivacity was gone, her expression leaden, under the crushing evidence of Cole’s indifference. She had made an effort to reconcile him, gone to his table on a good enough pretext. His drunken contempt for her told her everything she knew and everything she would never believe. She drank, then, to warm her numbness, and hung sus- pended in the cigarette smoke and revelry like a smiling marionette, with two bright rouge spots and unblinking eyes fixed on nothing. Joe Brewster got there at ten thirty. He’d taken extra time to scrub up. His uni- form was immaculate over his muscular body, but his finger- nails were unusually dirty. The job had been a rough one and, he suspected, un- necessary. He sent a burning look across the room to the lieutenant, but his friends pushed him into a chair and set double drinks in front 118 of him, so he could make up for the lost time. Soon he was up and danc- ing with Lania, and it began to look as if it would be a fine party. It got a bit wild, too, as was to be expected when men away from home celebrate an Earth holiday so wrapped up with auld lang syne as New Year’s. Some glasses were smashed, and a table was overturned amid the horn-blowing and the jazz from the band at midnight. Joe kissed Lania. His buddies kissed Lania and Joe kissed his buddies’ girls. Mary didn’t have a man of her own, and of course eve: y- body went over to give her a big hug and a kiss. Only JoAnn Deveraux and Lieutenant Cole were re- moved from it all, and from each other, by as much space as the room would allow. Cole still sat alone at his table, watching it all with a half sneer. The half of him that wasn’t sneering was stupid drunk, so the guys said. comicloooks.conrn