Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 47 — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION appearing in the grip of a strong hand round his throat. Marshal stood up. He chuckled. His dark form seemed to reach up and touch the ceiling. Then he had gone, back to his own bed, and the still dormitory was quiet and sleeping and ghostly. Orfie didn’t sleep for a long time. The desk was hard and warm and sweating under his palms. The heads of the boys were bent above their papers. There came rustles and sub- dued coughs, the scratching of pens. He watched a small, black ant running in frantic little gambits from inkwell to desk edge. Back and forth. Almost over, then a scurrying licketty run back to the inkwell. He felt a slow growth of kinship with the ant. He was bound to it by ties of common frustration and misery. He was marooned alone on the top of a huge desk that speared out into the stars. There they shone. Bright and big and shining, like new toys on a Christmas tree. Not for him. They shone down and 74 around him and he shut his eyes and shook with sobs. He would be bound to the desk— the Earth—and the stars could shine for ever and know nothing of him. He made marks on the paper. He read the questions. Simple. Too simple. He was filled with a misery that choked his eyes with the bile of unshed tears. “Question six. You are in an orbit from Mars to Venus at 6 g. Your rockets fail. Bearing in mind the attraction of the sun and the relative positions of the planets, how would you...” Simple. Child’s play. Out there in the great wastes be- tween the solitary stars, where the hyperspatial drive flung great masses of equipment at inconceivable velocities, was the proving ground for ques- tions such as this. He put his answers down and choked over the agony they caused him. The Head’s patient, wise face floated before him. “Do your best, Brown. For me. For yourself. And for the stars.” For the stars... ComicloOoks. GOL