Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, Issue 45 — page 105: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION thing to say so. Particularly when your husband has just got back from a trip through space. You don’t know with men. You don’t know what space does to them. They get to thinking up there. Thinking all the time. It doesn’t do them any good. Not when they can’t let their thoughts go once in a while, and let them bubble over into action. She grinned back at him. Pleased that he didn’t care what she said. Pleased to see that it was like the old days again. “You know—I thought you were a softie!”’ He kept on grinning. “I’m going to have help,” he said. “Mike will be coming in this with me.” “You'll make out all right with an Adaptant around. How clever of you to fix it. You can’t lose, darling! It’s better than having a gang of twenty humans!” But inside herself she wasn’t thinking that at all. She was thinking that if only she knew her husband better she’d tell him what she really thought. That she didn’t like Mike. That she didn’t trust 104 him. That she only put up with him at the end of trips because she wanted her hus- band to be happy. Because he seemed to like having Mike around, Then she thought, maybe, when he’s settled down for a little while, maybe I’ll be able to tell him then. And it won’t matter so much then, because he’ll be here with me, and [’ll fill his life for him. He’ll be so much a part of me and the farm that he won’t need Mike any more. And when that happens [ll know. And I’ll tell him. He'll get rid of Mike then—there’ll be a dozen places just crying out for an Adaptant. And then there’ll be just the two of us again. Or maybe three. Or four. Thank God my husband isn’t sterile! So she smiled at him. She said: “You'll do fine with Mike. You see.” ’ And inside he was laughing. Inside he was saying: “You knew all the time, didn’t you, Lessinger ? There was no doubt at all, was there? You knew all the time that he was Molly’s lover. That you must kill him. Clever, clever, Lessinger! Clever, clever boy!” concloooks.con