Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION over? Oh, probably within a couple of hours or so. It varied, of course. Anyway, if it took longer Psychocentre would certainly notify them both. Ready, Vane? They’d made the journey up to the Administration Level in one of the lifts that were restricted to psychosecurity personnel, police and others on official business. The whole journey, from leaving the chalet to arriving at the grey, gaunt block of the Psycho- centre, could hardly have taken more than fifteen or twenty minutes at the most. But then, thought Patrick Vane, in the darkness. But then you can think an awful lot in twenty minutes. You can think and you can wonder, and you can remember. Especially you can remember. And when youre scared and _ walking along with people who’re more or less guarding you, or going up in a lift with nobody saying anything and you thinking that you're in the sort of trouble you won't be able to get out of, why, somehow it’s easier to remem- ber than when you've got all the time in the world. Or was that because I sensed, in some way, that my only chance of getting away lay in remembering? Patrick Vane didn’t know. 22 But he recalled, very clearly, that journey. Especially the part when they’d been in the lift and he’d sat on a metal bench with the three men in their black uniforms sitting opposite him, watchful, pale- faced, waiting, perhaps, for him to show anger or fear or some such thing. And the lift had hummed its way upwards and upwards, hummed and hummed... Different, he thought, listen- ing to the noise the lift made as it rose up the long shaft, his - - eyes open but not seeing the three men who watched him _so carefully. Why was he different ? And, more important than that, how was he different? Could it be possible that he, too, like Harry Lake, was sufficiently off the regular path to be con- sidered potentially dangerous? Harry Lake. Taller than he was, and broader, too. Lick anyone in the class if he wanted to. That time Miller — tried to make everyone join him in a gang to take on the . next class and Harry wouldn’t join because he liked some of the chaps in the next class and didn’t want to fight them. Miller said he was yellow. Shouted it out loud so that everyone could hear, and then Harry waded into him — Ccomiclooks.cotn: