Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

ERRAND OF MERCY fallen away into the river, and the new brink was peri- lously near another leg, whose foot was already beginning to sink. He noticed the bank was still crumbling. For a moment he forgot the watching beasts, for it was crumbling in such an odd way. It didn’t break away in lumps and clods, as one would expect such moist earth to do. Instead, all the newly exposed surface was falling away in an _ evenly distributed rain of fine par- ticles, as though it were a dry sandbank. He wondered at the queer lack of cohesion in the stuff, and remarked on it to Raikes. Raikes said: “It’s been that way all the time. I’ve been trying to check it, banging it flat with a shovel. No use. The bank’s undermined in some way, I should think.” He slid a cartridge into the rifle. ‘“‘Now!” he said, and looked almost happy. He sighted carefully. The seven black snouts were perfect targets. Nicely spaced, they kept their positions to a hair. Unlike Raikes, Lewes wasn’t at all happy about it. The scarred carcase, lying like an enormous black slug on the spit between grey sky and grey river, was a silent re- proach. He didn’t think its fellows were watching them with any intent of revenge— merely with the unthinking curiosity which even the low- est creatures feel about intruders. Lewes hated to kill. On the other hand, he suspected his squeamishness might be no more than an infantile sentimentality, a projection of his own sensitivity into near-insensitive creatures—as a child endows a doll with imagined life. But—when dolls are burned, they don’t leap and twist in agony... Because of this inner con- flict, because he was scared to be thought soft or weak, he made no attempt to stop Raikes. Crash! went the gun. A 79 connicloooks.com