Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCiENCE FICTION 7 Was it possible that he really wasn’t in a tunnel at all, but under an Analyser, being forced to imagine him- self in this situation as part of analysis, the- security man having caught him and handed him in at the Psychocentre? Or was he even back at the chalet, back at home, in bed and dreaming all these fan- tastic incidents, all these night- mare captures and flights and escapes, and weird arrivals in dark places with no memory of how he had come to them? The hard reality of the tunnel wall in the torchlight, and the throbbing agony in his ankle, both told him that, surely, he could not be dreaming. Very well, then. If he wasn’t dreaming then he was awake and, he recalled with no small fear, still a wanted man. The “‘why” and the “how’’ of his mysterious arrival in the tun- nel could be answered, per- haps, at some later moment, but the important thing that he had to realise was that he was still a long way from 1495, Fourth Level, and that that was where he had to go if he was to stand any chance at all of evading capture. If he stayed in the tunnel he would probably die of hunger and thirst or-—even more prebable - -~ 54 —be driven out into the open because of those two needs, and run straight into the open arms of the security men. Therefore, he had to get out of the tunnel as soon as possible. He got to his feet with difficulty, supporting himself with one hand against the tunnel wall so that his in- jured ankle did not have to take too heavy a strain. Then, with the torchlight to guide him, he started hobbling along. There were only two direc- tions in which he could go, and, since there was no patch of light or breath of wind to tell him which one might lead to the outside world sooner than the other, he started off in the direction in which he found himself facing when he got to his feet. He did not have a watch and, therefore, could not tell how much time was passing during his long and painful journey through the silent tunnel glooms that were the very ones, perhaps, in which he and Harry Lake had played so many years before. When he grew weary he told himself that it would be foolish to rest, and when his ankle pained him to excess he forced himself to continue, 7 : 4 comichooks.com ;