Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 47 — page 62: what you’re looking at

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

THE MUTILANTS pered, and as the full-import of his words permeated my numbed senses I realised that I had left the struggle too late. I felt my stomach-muscles collapse with fear, felt the blood pound within my tem- ples. I wanted to retch up my guts in the cold, fresh air. I wanted to lie in the soft grass and see a pastel sky above me. Instead, I saw his eyes burning through the red haze into my retreating mind; probing, feel- ing, directing; expanding, multiplying ... I felt myself ascending. Up, up through the dark roots of cumulus clouds; up through the tendrils of swirling mist and grey-white dampness; up, up, up through lessening strata of semi-darkness and sud- denly, unexpectedly, into an area of intense and blinding light. I felt the blast of heat, heard the roar. Struggling to release myself from the ejec- tor seat, I tore with frantic, searching hands at its frame to which I was strapped. Blood ran in my mouth and I passed out again... I tried to shut off the power before the turbines burst. The control 61 lever was gone but the machine continued to strain upwards, accelerating at a_ terrifying pace, and I waited with every nerve taut for the sudden explosion of the impellors. The machine seemed to roll on its back and begin to tumble into the dark void below. Back into the abyss; the hiatus of experiences re- membered only by the dead. Again she climbed. Ifeltfor | the control column. It was no longer there. “Gone!” I shouted, and through the cotton-wool layers of un- consciousness I heard a voice answer. My eyes fought for vision. My agony-racked body strived for the energy to lift eyelids sealed with blood. Merciless pain; the burning from within—wasn’t that the effect of radioactivity? My eyes flickered open, and in- stead of the blue-white sky they saw the opalescent glow of a hospital ceiling and the face of an old man looking - impassively down. “Doc,” I whispered. “D... did I faint?” The face registered no con- cern and made no reply. “IT. . . I was dreaming. comicloooks.conn