Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 121: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION object with which to test the properties of space with in- infinite negative curvature. Since you are so confirmed a sceptic, your watch ?” The student considered for a while. Then, impatiently, he pulled off his watch, and, muttering something uncom- plimentary about the supposed properties of curved space, he tossed it towards the plate. Three feet from the floor, it vanished. He looked at the Professor, who was standing with the smile of the successful con- jurer on his face. “Mass hypnosis,”’ he said. “Oh, come now, Mr. Lay- ton. Surely you don’t think I have come here to demon- strate a new version of the Indian rope trick ?” He shouldn’t have men- tioned it. The student’s action was swift and startling. He took a short run, as though along a springboard at a swimming pool, launched him- self into the air in a neat jack-knife, and dived head- first into nothingness. Those who saw him go observed that he did so from the tips of his fingers to the soles of his feet. It was the cleanest dive that had ever been witnessed in the lecture theatre. Straight into 120 infinity, without a splash, and | fully clothed, too. Sitting in the laboratory office, Albert sipped his cup of tea and listened with approval to the noise coming from the theatre. A noisy lecture was usually a good one. That meant that his work on the Professor’s apparatus was being justified. Not that he knew what it was all for: the Professor had been much too secretive about it. But perhaps he would get a private word of congratulation after the lecture was over, just to show that the Professor ap- preciated that the work of the Department depended on the workshop and laboratory staff. And if there should be a hitch, which was most unlikely, then Albert would appear at the door like a Slave of the Lamp, to get things under control again. He smiled, and took another sip of tea. It was, perhaps, just as well that he was not in the hall to watch what was going on there, or he would have been rudely surprised. The Professor and two students had tied a number of scarves together to form a comiclboooks.Cc@nn. de bbe -s , ee ated ete te Be i. i. wa