Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

Errand of Mercy by William F. Temple Unlike the men of Earth, they did not come to kill The silvered dumb-bell hung high above the cloudy-white curve of Venus. Both were motionless—relatively. The planet was spinning on its axis at thrice the highest rate guessed at by pre-space astro- nomers. The atomic space- ship, in a fast -equatorial orbit, matched its revolutions, and so remained poised above the same spot. A slot opened in the long, slim connecting rod of the dumb-bell. On the thrust of invisible springs, a minnow ship drifted out sidelong. It was conventionally cigar- shaped. When it was half a 69 mile from the parent ship, flame suddenly jetted from its finned tail. As that tail was pointed in -the direction of the orbital motion, the minnow lost speed, began to drop towards the distant clouds. , It dwindled, was lost to ordinary view. But up in the radar cabin in the forward ball of the atomic ship, they were keep- ing track of it on more than one screen. The largest screen of all framed a radar reflec- tion—piercing the obliterating clouds—of hundreds of square miles of the planetary surface beneath. For a long time they had surveyed the planet. “Water, water everywhere,” had be- come a chant between the operators. It was a watery liquid, anyway, and after they'd recorded 100,000,000 connicloooks.comn