Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 130: what you’re looking at

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

MARY “Why, you swine!” she said. “You filthy——” Lieutenant Cole sprang to his feet. His face twisted in hate and fury. He shot her once, full in the face. “You bitch!”? he cried. ‘No bar- room woman talks to me like that.”” His mouth quivered, then tears came to his eyes. “You had that coming a long time, Mary Hell.” Colonel Cole stood up as if under a great weight. ‘“‘Put your pistol down, Lieuten- ant,” he ordered. “Put it down or kill me, too.” The younger man looked out of the window, into the darkness. He listened. There was no sound. “It’s all right, Dad,” he said. “It’s all right now. Nobody heard, and _ she’s out of the way. We don’t have to worry about anything now. You'll protect me, won’t you? You always have, ever since I was a kid. You can’t stop now, can you?” _ Colonel Cole’s sigh was a breath that went back over the years. “Yes, I can stop. HELL’S Put down your pistol, Lieu- tenant. I’m not your father now. I’m your superior officer, and it is my duty to place you under arrest.” Young Cole began to tremble. It started in his hands, then spread through- out his body. The pistol slipped from his fingers and thumped on the floor. “Dad,” he sobbed. “SDadd¥ NOBODY HAD known Mary Hell had any folks, least of all among the clergy. But in a week, on the same day that Lieutenant Jeffrey Cole hanged himself in his cell, the Reverend Mr. Robert Hel- strom arrived from Earth. . He had come to take his sister’s body back for burial in the graveyard of the Ben- dale Baptist Church. Colonel Cole walked slowly across the spaceport with the black-robed minister, behind the open car carrying Mary’s coffin to the Earth-bound ship. “Your grief would be great- 129 comiclooks.corn