Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 120: what you’re looking at

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

MARY At twelve ten Joe Brewster went to the men’s room. When he came back Jeffrey Cole was no longer at his table. Cole had worked his way over to a corner, through the singing and the kissing, and he was holding Lania in his arms, in a_ passionate embrace. Joe’s vision was blurred, but it seemed to him that she wasn’t struggling. There was no clear report of what happened next. Sud- denly the lieutenant was apart from the girl, in a weird, falling crouch. Some said she had driven her knee into his groin. Joe had battered his way toward the corner and Mary was charging out from behind the bar. JoAnn fainted. JANUARY Ist, 2023, dawned. There was a padlock on Mary Hell’s place and a trooper with a Q gun stood guard at the door. Corporal Joe Brewster was in the stockade, awaiting a court martial, on a charge of striking a superior officer. 119 HELL’S Lieutenant Jeffrey Cole was in his quarters, examining a black eye in a mirror and nursing a hangover. Mary was in Colonel Cole’s Office, indignant. Colonel Carter Cole was ageless and erect, with the kind of lean virility that self- discipline and morality im- pose. His hair, close-cropped, was not quite grey. His face, hardened and clean-shaven, was almost young. His de- tachment was that of an ascetic. But his grey, direct eyes were fair, and his manner was unimpeachably courteous. He was no one’s friend and no one’s enemy. “Colonel,” Mary said, “I know you’ve been just itching for a reason to close down The Free and Clear, but I’m here to tell you you don’t have it, and that you won’t have it as long as I’m running the place. You had the medical boys around looking for illegal liquor; they didn’t find any. They hauled off my girls to the dispensary—with- out a warrant, I might add— comiclbooks.corn