Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 44 — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

THE STAR VIRUS creative ability. They are like a well-trained army, and for thousands of years. they have merely been carrying out training manceuvres to maintain their efficiency. They want the equipment which we have only succeeded in devel- oping during the last fifty years; they want the broader tobacco leaves that modern fertilisers have produced; they want the fatter cattle resulting from hormone culture; they want the bodies of healthy and athletic children; they want the minds of world pene benefactors. “One day the real attack will come, and it will occur in a way that no one can imagine. We applaud the advances of science. We say, ‘Look at the wonderful things our modern magicians have produced!’ We press a switch and we have light, music, a voice from across the world, an engine producing stupen- dous power—or a man-made eruption. It is all taken for granted; yet, while the world makes merry, the Trojan horse of the virus will attack from within. “‘There is a virus which causes warts on the ears of rabbits, another which wilts tomato plants, others which 81 produce fever in horses, small- pox in poultry and agonising death in human beings. But the leader of the virus army will attack the brain. It is the cleverest of them all, the master mind, and I call it the star virus. “I know. I can prove it mathematically. It is a reason- ing, living thing with a brain as cold, calculating and meth- odical as the crystals of which it is formed. It is rip like a star.” Spilling some coffee, and with slow, steady strokes of his finger, Peter drew the pattern on the table. “You see! The triangle, the fundamental basis of all en- gineering structures, the phalanx of the old Greek armies, the enduring pyra- mids of ancient Egypt and even more ancient Mexico, the underlying motif of man’s drawings of stars since primi- tive times. The three outer- most spearheads of attack, supported on each side by a questing flank to reconnoitre or act as reserves. The twelve elements of the virus; the twelve ‘signs of the Zodiac. You think there is no con- nection? The very name ‘Zodiac’ comes from the Greek word ‘zo6n,’ meaning animal | comicloooks.conn