Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 60: what you’re looking at

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

SAVIOUR From then onwards there were just two thoughts in people’s minds: ‘Build bigger and better bombs than the enemy can build,’ and, ‘Dig deep enough and make the hole strong enough just in case the enemy builds a bigger bomb first.’ It took a long time to dig out the Deep Cities, but it took a long time, too, for anyone to risk using their atom and hydrogen bombs. Most of the Deep Cities were already built, and had people living in them, when the first atom bombs were dropped, though they’ve been enlarged a hell of a lot since then, of course.’ He squinted across at Patrick. “I suppose you think [’m making a long-winded thing of all this,’’ he said, smiling. “But I’m just giving you the background so that you can see why things developed in the way they did. You see, once the radiation and the germ sprays and all the rest made the surface too hot to let people carry on living on it, the whole war and the whole fight-till-you-kill-him- or-till-he-kills- you attitude came down here to the Deep Cities, and that sort of atti- tude is crazy when you can’t see your enemy.” Patrick frowned. “It’s crazy whether you can see your enemy or whether you can’t,” he said. ** Ah, yes,’ Whittam agreed. ‘But I’m not talking idealism; I’m talking practical common sense—the sort of common sense that should have told people a long time ago that a war fought underground could last infinitely longer than one fought on the surface. Our Mole Heavies go out to try and find the enemy’s Mole Heavies or, better still, an enemy outpost somewhere. Right ?” *“Uh-huh.”’ ‘“And the enemy have ex- actly the same idea. But how many decisive victories are ever scored by either side? How many have ever been scored? Very few. One Mole meets another Moleandthere’s a battle and one of the Moles is usually destroyed and its crew killed, but even that doesn’t happen all that often.” “But how does all this tie in 99 with “It ties in like this: because underground warfare can go on and on indefinitely, because of its actual nature, we down here in the Deep Cities have had to adapt to total war. At first it was just that—we had to adapt. Later it grew into something a little different; comiclbooks.conn