Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, Issue 45 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

SOME OTHER TIME close down the Station, I’m entitled to a full explanation ?” “We said nothing about closing it down.”’ Mackenzie’s voice was soft. Soft and deadly. “It is my confirmed opinion,” Carpenter said, crisply, “that the work here is vital to Earth. I happen to know the work going on into interstellar drives-——”’ “Well, I'd advise you to forget it!”’ Mackenzie took his cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it, then put it back. “Forget all about interstellar drives, Doctor Carpenter! It’s not healthy.” Carpenter swivelled in his chair, only half conscious of what that chair had just done, and stared for a space out of the polarised window in the dome. Mars was level and flat, and red. Right away on the horizon the long wall of a massif shoved upwards and there were even a few bedraggled clouds wisping over the cliffs. But all else was ochre sand and dust. He sighed. Government 19 security had been helpful up- to a point when he had begun his experiments. He recalled the way they had provided the sixteen volunteers with no questions asked. Eight young men and eight young women. Fine, straight and the best of Earth’s billions. They had allowed their genes to be bombarded by his patchwork of equipment, the X-ray machines and the in- credibly expensive cosmotron which provided him with V particles. They had willingly been made into breeders of guinea-pigs and he had been more proud of them, perhaps, than of his own accomplish- ment. It had been simple, after that, to ensure that they would have four boys and four girls. Chopping off the X chromosome had been the least of his worries. And he had done it. That had been the fire that ate into his mind as the fever ate into his lungs. He had done it! He had artificially induced a successful, viable mutation with every chance of prolonga- conmicloooks.comn