Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

OUTSIDE—LOOKING IN There was a nice little blonde standing outside of the Underground Arcade, and as I sauntered past, secure in my invisibility, I murmured, po- litely: ““How d’ye do.” “Greetings,” she replied. *“Where’s your party ?”’ That stopped me—with a jerk. I stood yammering for a second or so, and finally managed to come out with: ‘““Good Heavens! Can you see me?’’ Which, I suppose, is as daft a question as I’ve ever asked anyone. She burst out laughing. “Of course I can. This is your first time through, isn’t it? Don’t wander too far from your party, will you?” “Party ?” said I, like a dim- witted parrot. She waved back into the Arcade, and I saw half a dozen people watching us, hanging about self-con- sciously, like Englishmen who haven’t been introduced. *“Party,”’ she said. ““That’s a party. You must have one, somewhere. What period are you from?” That was it. The good old science . fiction formula. So this is where time travellers get, is it. No wonder nobody’s ever seen them. I felt loads better, thinking that I wasn’t stuck here for good, and I ¢e 93 laughed light-heartedly, re- plying light-headedly: ‘“‘No. No party. Lone scout, me. I’m from next year, and ought to be in the seventeenth cen- tury but through a technical hitch this is as far as I’ve got.”’ “Oh dear,”’ she said. ‘‘Then you're channelled.” ““That,”’ said I, “‘is a nice way of putting it, although it’s hardly a lady-like thing to suggest—unless you mean something else.” Instead of answering, she beckoned the rest of the gang, and as they came trooping up she introduced me. Like this: ““Meet the newest chan- neller.”’ The ‘“‘channel’’ is the no- man’s-land running parallel to the “‘outside’’—or “‘inside,”’ depending on your position— and is there for the express purpose, as far as I can see, of making time-travel possible. It works this way. When a would-be traveller enters the “Projection Field,’ said field alters his ‘““wavelength’’ enough to make him permeable to the ‘““channel’’ wall—or the chan- nel wall permeable to him, one - of the two. Then he is shoved down the channel to whatever period he wants to look at, stays there till he’s had his comicloooks.conm