Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, Issue 45 — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION there had been a wave of strikes. There’d been labour troubles plus! Some humans had even got around to more drastic action. Like killing some of the creatures. But it was as hard as hell to kill them. Let them have one moment’s forewarning of what was going to happen and they could grow out of harm’s way. Yeah! Grow! The only way you could kill them suc- cessfully was to push them into fast moving machinery. Either that, or starve them to death. Well, the first method had been tried. Some of the people on Earth didn’t like being thrown out of their jobs just because some creatures from another planet could grow limbs at will. They got rough. They took the law into their own hands. They killed. Then the State got rough too. Capital punishment had been abolished ages before. You had to turn up the phrase in an encyclopedia just to see what it meant. But the State couldn’t afford to lose crea- tures that had been shipped half the way across Space. Not when they were as useful as 98 the Adaptants it couldn’t. So capital punishment was re- introduced. For killing Adap- tants. Go ahead. Kill as many humans as you like! At the worst you'll get a jail sentence, or maybe banishment to Mars. But kill an Adaptant— just one—and see where it gets you. Of course the labour unions didn’t take any of this lying down. They fought back as best they knew. But the answer of big business was always the same. It was always put out that the people would benefit in the end. Plenty for all was the cry. An Earth flowing with milk and honey. Uh-huh! That and the bread- line. If only the Adaptants could figure they’d be sitting where I am now, Lessinger thought. But they hadn’t got around to that yet. Just give them time. A year or two. Give them a little time to fit themselves into the picture, and then watch them go. They'll take over everything! They were well on the way to that now. They were dependable, the bosses said. They could do comiclooks.cormn