Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 51: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION and they had had red lettering on them, but they had not been frightening enough to keep out those two boys, Patrick and Harry, who liked so very, very much to escape from their cricket-playing, | football-kicking schoolmates and go off together, feeling very brave and very adven- turous, to find the tiny cranny that the Public Safety workers had somehow missed while boarding up the disused tun- nels, and thus worm their way into that hidden and very wonderful world of secrets and of darkness that, in the twin beams of light from their pocket torches, seemed so full of mysteries and vast ex- citements. Oh, the games they had played in those tunnels! How fine it had been to lie in the darkness, your torch switched out, now, with tinglings of ecstatic fright running all over you the way you imagined water might run through the porous soil of the surface that was far above your head. You lay there all tight and clenched up, like a fist, trying very hard not to let your heart beat so loudly, listening to the other’s approach. And if he passed you in the dark you would snap on your torch so that he would be caught in its 50 bright glare and you would make a noise with your mouth like a blaster discharging, and then the other—who might be an Eastern Federation spy, or a monstrous, five-armed, tunnel-boring Mutant or any number of other things, but who was really just Harry Lake—this other would have to fall down and play at. dying and then that was one up to you. But if the other heard you first and switched on his torch and found you, then, of course, it was you yourself who had to die. If only he were back there, in those tunnels, in the dark- ness, alone, instead of being here on the Administration Level with the Psychosecurity men watching the lifts for him and—as they almost certainly would be, by now— combing the streets for the young man in cadet uniform who’d escaped from the Psychocentre, and who was due for immediate analysis. “Hey, just a minute young fellow.” The voice was loud and clear and came from just behind him. | Perhaps he doesn’t mean you at all. Don’t turn round. Don’t let him think you’re expecting anyone to call out to you. Walk on casually. No, walk quickly! comicloooks.conn