Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, Issue 45 — page 101: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION didn’t get back for ten or twenty years. Sometimes lon- ger than that. Lessinger thought that they were fools ever to marry. But you couldn’t tell them anything, and even if you tried telling them, quite a lot of them still did. And twenty years is a long time on Earth. Particularly in a woman’s life. And when the _-man came back looking like he’d aged only a fortnight— because he’d swum through Time as well as Space—the women didn’t think all that much of it. Lessinger couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t make up his mind whether Molly’s_ re- action, this slight cooling-off he felt in their relationship, was due to the normal ten- sions between a space pilot and his wife or not. Or whether it was all on account of Mike. Whether the creature had adapted himself to such good advantage that... Lessinger thought about that. He thought about it a long time. And whilst he thought his hands gripped the edges of his chair, and Mike looked on, 100 smiling all the while, and every now and then extruding a hand to turn a knob or re-set a switch. They were so adaptable! “That was my last trip,” Lessinger said. He puffed out the smoke from the cigarette, and watched it spiral up to the ceiling of the room. He looked around him, taking in the soft furnishings, the comfort, the chrome steel fittings that glit- tered in the sun. He looked at the man behind the desk. Soft and flabby like his surroundings. He looked like he was built for comfort, too. “I’m cashing in,” he said. “T got a trifle tired of throwing myself around the universe. [ve got a little money saved. I think Ill settle down and farm—after all, somebody’s got to grow the stuff we eat!”’ ““We’ll be sorry to lose you!” The man’s voice was soft, too, Lessinger thought. His words’ rolled out like plush carpeting. You almost sank into them. “‘We’ll be sorry to see you go. But if that’s what you really want to 17 nee ea The sentence ended in mid- comiclbooks.com