Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, Issue 45 — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

SOME OTHER TIME whirled up, a solitary jewel in a waste of shifting red sand and gusting ochre dust storms. There would bea blow tonight. Going through into his own office, he put the doll he had reclaimed from the coptercar onto his desk, pulled out his chair, thumped it, and sat down. He examined the doll with interest. A simple plastic job, similar to a million others spewed out from the Earth factories, it had none of the elegancies of super-perfect ex- pensive dolls. The legs were detached from the body, hang- ing down on the ends of thin bands of plastic which, evi- dently, had once joined inside the pelvis to hold the legs in position. An idea struck Car- penter. He took out his knife and worried the end of one piece of plastic thread out. Then the other. He joined the two pieces as they would have been joined inside the body. He sat and looked at the frayed and twisted threads at the junction for a long time. So Katrin had been right. 39 Her doll had walked. The frayed ends of the threads holding the legs proved that. As each leg went backwards and forwards, in a manner certainly not intended in such a cheap, mass-produced ar- ticle, they had worn the plastic through. There were even grooves on the legs where the pelvis holes had rubbed. A thin, dusty line of sweat lay across Carpenter’s forehead. As long as the phenomena which he could not explain had been occurring to him, there had always been lurking in the background the obvious solution that he was insane. But if these mysterious pheno- mena occurred to others—— But why little Katrin? A knock on the door and Louise came in, calm and smiling at him. He tensed himself, waiting for her to melt and dissolve and change into something obscene. ‘‘Aren’t you pleased to see me ?”’ she asked, pertly. “You look as pleased as a Senator with income tax problems.” comicloooks.corn