Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 44 — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

THE STAR VIRUS But the last fifty thousand years are a mere overture to the catastrophe which threat- ens mankind unless we do something now! We have in our midst teeming billions of chemicals which can _ pene- trate and destroy living tissue just as surely as a hawk pouncing on its prey or a snake striking remorselessly at its victim. These chemicals are controlled by macabre radiations which we are only just beginning to understand. At this stage of man’s scienti- fic progress, we are prepared to unleash radiation energy in overwhelming quantities. A piece of uranium, which might slowly discharge its energy Over millions of years, can now be exploded in less than a millionth of a second. We do not understand a fraction of the forces we are letting loose. Hideous and sickening after effects will appear in one, five, twenty or more years afterwards. Forgotten mala- dies reappear; there may be a frightening increase in some diseases; obscure ailments can become epidemics. We open the modern Pandora’s box with an atomic bomb. We die and the virus lives on. I do not think another living soul has the slightest know- 79 ledge of Peter’s research and his theories. Peter would not publish a word about his work until the final results could be checked, counterchecked, con- trolled and forecast with un- failing accuracy. It is extremely probable that the death of Peter’s fiancée was the starting point of his work and, in the begin- ning, he had not entertained any conception of the virus diseases. I do know that his earliest investigations were concerned with the instability of brain cells, the sort of mental storm that causes staid and successful business men suddenly to go wandering around the countryside, the inexplicable motives of sober and respectable husbands who butcher their wives and fam- ilies, the unsuspected rogue elephant cells lurking in the cranium of homo sapiens. Peter started off by studying the nervous energy of brain cells and the reaction of par- ticular groups to certain ap- plied electrical forces. Some of his earliest experiments dealt with degeneration of the direction finding mechanism in homing pigeons. By expos- ing the birds to varying arti- ficial magnetic fields he had, With inconsistent success, been comicloooks.conn