Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 124: what you’re looking at

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

MARY HELL’S to marry her, did he? It was fantastic. You didn’t pay the rest of your life for a mistake you'd made once, when you were a kid. It was her mistake more than his; let her pay. She was crazy to have come to Mars, to have got a job in that gin mill. And she was crazier if she thought he’d meet her now, for a “talk.” He had to be rid of both of these women—one who represented everything he should want, and did not, and the other who represented everything he wanted, and should not want. JoAnn had forced it. He was beginning to see the solution, and it was simple. JoAnn must die because she threatened him eternally. And Lania had to be sacrificed because to not have her while She lived would be unen- durable. When she was dead he could remember her as mute and exquisite, and treas- ure the memory. He could 123 no longer bear to think of her as living and vulgar, and possessed by vulgarity. He burned JoAnn’s note. He watched the flames de- vour her plea and her threat. He planned carefully. JoAnn and Lania had fought many times lately. Everyone knew that. Lania was fiery and unpredictable—a Martian who did not like an Earth girl to call her sub-human. Lieutenant Cole stood up and zipped his uniform. He looked in the mirror and straightened his cap. He put out his cigarette and buckled on his pistol belt. THEY FOUND JoAnn Dever- aux’s body crumpled up on the cold ground in an alley behind the Hotel Mars. The pistol blast had been from up close. Her coat was charred, and so were the dress beneath it and the flesh beneath that. The civil authorities—that meant the Martians—had jurisdiction, and their investi- connicloooks.comn