Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

SAVIOUR your room and stay there. And take your satchel up as well, and get on with your homework.”’ She was quiver- ing and-her voice, as she scolded him, had risen higher and higher. She pointed a shaking finger. “And don’t ever go near those old tunnels again. Perhaps you don’t care if they cave in and crush you to death, but J do, though I sometimes wonder why!” Then it happened. It was very sudden. Very sudden indeed. First he heard his mother’s shrill voice talk- ing of the possible cave-in of the old tunnels. Then, while his nine-year-old mind was sneeringly discarding all thought of such a thing ever happening, without warning, like waking abruptly from a vivid dream into an equally vivid reality, it happened. He was in the tunnel. Seventy yards or so from the pallid ovoid of light that marked the exit towards which he had been heading, he lay. Pain was everywhere, it seemed, for the sudden fall of rock and mortar—loosened presumably by the vibrations of his own footsteps—had completely trapped him, and in the first instant of hysterical panic he felt that his entire 25 body was being squeezed and crushed and choked. Then the blinding wash of agony retreated and became localised. And as that hap- pened he realised two things. Firstly, that he was not entirely covered since he could still see the light ahead of him and could also move his arms. Secondly, that he was not Patrick Vane at all, lying there in the freight tunnel, the lower part of his body and both his legs held securely by the sudden fall of rock. No, he was not Patrick Vane but was, instead, Harry Lake. He was thinking with Harry Lake’s mind and there was a picture in his mind of Harry Lake’s mother warning him to be very careful if he should go playing in any of the disused freight transport tunnels. It was swift to come and equally swift to leave. It was like hearing a single musical note that suddenly cuts off, leaving no reverberations be- hind and no echoes, so that you wonder whether you had ever really heard it at all. His mind was working furiously. He knew his mother was still speaking to him be- cause he could see her lips moving and her finger shaking at him. But he didn’t hear what she was saying, or, if comiclooks.conrn