Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 48 — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

TABARNI DOCUMENT the amplitude up to a maxi- mum every so often. That way, we may be able to strike what the marshal is sending against us before any weapons hit the planet.” . t Almost a day passed. The drifting clouds of radio- activity and neutralised gases thinned out in the region of’ the ‘observatory, but true vision was still impossible. The advantage of movement lay with the marshal. The Venusians still had the advan- tage of time. They could still afford to wait. The first images and tran- scripts began to pour from the recorders. They told of the havoc wrought in the White Zone, on the other side of the planet. Several power- ful weapons had landed. Twenty Venusian city-states had disappeared. Forty more had been scorched, semi- liquified or demented by radiation blast. Mé*illions of people in the closely-packed area were dying slowly, their cellular structure disintegrat- ing by the hour. 49 Tabarni picked up his hand calculator. The reflected pin- heads of shuttling light passed like coloured ripples over his face as he worked. The calcu- lation was soon done. “If the details in the re- corder are right,’ he said slowly, “then only three weapons could have struck the planet. Only three got through. But each battleship carries at least ten such weapons. Which would seem to show, at first sight, that only one ship was used for this attack, and that even then not all its weapons got through the neutraliser bar- rage.” ‘That means something?” asked Luronne, looking up. “Possibly. The damage which could be done by three weapons is about the same as the damage actually done in the White Zone. That’s all the little calculator can tell us. But do you think it likely that the marshal would attack the White Zone with three weapons, or even with a single ship carrying ten weapons?” comiclooks.comn