Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, Issue 45 — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION events of this chaotic morning. Tossed aside like an empty banana skin. That’s just what Earth’s Government wanted to do to him. Louise came back, smiling, the doll a piti- ful, naked bundle in her hands. Carpenter noticed the way Louise held the broken doll, as if it were a newborn baby. He took it and looked at it, not really expecting to find anything from a cursory in- spection, his fingers warm on the piastic. His thumb caressed the head, relishing the satis- factory feeling his sensory nerves transmitted to his brain. ‘See Armstrong ?”’ he asked, casually. *“No. He wasn’t in the Nursery. Shall I ask the guard if he’s been around lately ?” **“No. Don’t bother.’’ Quite obviously, Carpenter could never go into the Nursery. Not, that is, unless he had his head swathed in layers of filters and disinfectants. He preferred to let others go in for him. Unless it was ab- solutely necessary. Maybe, the prospect brought only a faint 23 unease; maybe it would be necessary very soon. “Call the coptercar, Louise. Til see Jack, and I[’li take this doll with me.” Doctor Jack Hamlin’s dome lay just under a hundred miles away, a few minutes rocket flight from the Research Centre. Carpenter lay back in the padded chair behind the capable back of his pilot and tried not to think too hard about what had happened to him this morning. The whole thing, everything so far, was too fantastic. It just didn’t add up. The only answer that made any sense at all was the very answer that he would not, on any condition, allow room for in his mind. If he were insane, now, that would explain it ali. He coughed and lay back, his fever-sharpened eyes glit- tering on the vast spread of redness speeding past below. He just was not insane. It was something that he just did not have to think about twice. That meant, therefore, that there was a rational explana- comicloooks.corn