Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 53: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION thing. Go back to the past. Quickly! This time it didn’t work. Somehow there didn’t seem to be any more memories, any more alleyways along which to flee, any more places to hide. This time he had to look the present in the eyes; the present—and the vast and terrifying question that it posed. How had he got here? He remembered the shouts of the security man, the blind panic, the brief hope that perhaps the shout might have been meant for someone else and not him at all. He remem- bered looking back, too, and seeing the man pointing and calling out to him. And there had been the bewilderment, the wondering which way to turn, the frantic and child-like longing for the safety and the darkness of the tunnel and then the abrupt, searing agony as his foot had twisted. And then nothing. Nothing until the dream of the surface war and the awakening out of it and the almost immediate plunge back into memory that he had taken, unconsciously, as an escape route away from reality. All right now. Get a grip on yourself. The objective Pat- rick Vane reasoned firmly with 32 that other Patrick Vane who was on the point of crying out and weeping and flailing his arms wildly about in the darkness. You're here. In the tunnel. The tunnel where you wanted to be, remember ? Right, then. Now either you’ve lost your memory for the entire period that started when you twisted your ankle and ended with that dream about the surface or else: . Well, or else you blacked- out with the painin your ankle, collapsed, and then were brought here by someone for some special reason. Hey, wait a minute, though! A thought had struck the objective Pat- rick; a rather frightening thought. You don’t suppose that you’re just thinking that you’re in one of the old tunnels because that was where you wanted to be? In the dark you can’t tell. You might be in a blacked-out ward in the Psychocentre or— or practically anywhere! He fumbled quickly in his pockets and found the multi- purpose torch that his father had given him one birthday a few years before. It could be a torch, cigarette-lighter or burning tool, according to which of the three little studs you pressed. comiclbooks.corn