Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 47 — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

TO SHAKE THE STARS Orfie put his answers down and finished the paper and sat back and took a great, sob- bing lungful of air. He did not look at Marshal. The ant had crawled down the leg of the desk. It had gone. Perhaps it had taken his hopes with it. He didn’t know. He remembered the laughing, casual talk of the boys, sitting with damp towels across their naked shoulders after the game. The smell of the chemicals in the water. “Spaceship pilots? No future in that. I’m gonna be an atomic technician.” “Yeh. Me, I’m off to Mars; gonna find out just what did happen to them old Marties.”’ ‘Sure,’ Marshal had said, cock of the roost, arrogant, scornful. “They'll be spaceship pilots long after you’re all dead and forgotten.” “Aw, gwan! My old man says they’re building robots to pilot rockets now. He says men aren’t quick enough in their reaction times. Some- thing like that.” “You're a blue faced baboon. And your old man don’t know what he’s talking about.” 75 The inevitable scuffle. The boys falling, screeching with laughter into the pool. And he’d sat there. Praying. Please, God! Don’t let there be robots yet! Not until I’ve taken a ship off Earth. Until I’ve felt the sure, firm thrust of power, pushing upwards, taking me out to the stars. Please God! Don’t let there be robots. And now here he sat, still and dead inside. And on the paper the dream of his life stark and chill in the blue-black scrawled lines of wavering handwriting. They were dismissed. They went outside the examinations room and the air was full of shrill questions and laughter and cockiness, and complete and utter misery. “Say, number three was dead easy!” “Gwan! That one was a ringer! A trick question.” “Say, whaddya mean?” “Well, didn’t you spot it?” And so on and so on. Orfie crawled away and hid himself in his leafy hollow in the ditch at the end of the playing fields. He found all his treasures as he had left them. He didn’t feel like playing connicloookks.comnn)