Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION building only; was the north wall of the Level and the vertical vermilion band that indicated the lift shafts for which he was heading. This was going to be the test, he told himself. If the security men regarded his escape as a real emergency they would have notified the police and asked them to watch all the shafts, but there was the chance, of course, that they would not go to such extreme measures, since he had done nothing criminal, and had not even undergone the analysis that might have given them reason to consider him dangerous. Dangerous! The word sounded ridiculous. How could he, Patrick Wellington Vane, of brooding, moody and unstable character, ever be considered dangerous to anyone apart, perhaps, from himself? Yet hadn’t his father said that they’d considered Harry Lake dangerous? And it had been that same Harry Lake, hadn’t it, to whom, as with no other person with the exception of Margaret, he’d always felt so completely in tune? A thought made him start. Supposing Margaret had al- ready fund herself in need cf 48 “help or advice’? Supposing she’d needed them sufficiently to do exactly what he himself was doing—to make the jour- ney to 1495, Fourth Level, and visit that strange old man called Whittam, who’d watched them and spoken to them in the canteen on that special afternoon so many, many afternoons ago? The pavements were crowded, now, and he was forced to walk more slowly. Most of the people were coming towards him, from the direction of the shafts, and he knew that this was the influx of Administration workers returning from lunch hours spent on their home Levels. He threaded his way through them with caution, yet with determination, also, his eyes on the doors of the shafts themselves, whenever they were visible through the crowds, seeking for some signs of the watch that security men might so easily be keep- ing for him. Or was he being too pessimistic? They might have decided to send a man back to his home to check there before doing anything else. Or they might even... His thoughts broke off as he caught sight of the black uniforms through a sudden gap in the crowd. Three of comiclooks.comnn