Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 48 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

TABARNI DOCUMENT The killer and the rebel faced each other for a moment, a moment outside time. The marshal recognised the condemned man as a har- binger of an era in which there would be no place for brilliant exterminators. Marshal Takato spoke to one of the guards: “ What papers have you there?” “The political testament of the prisoner, sir,” replied the guard. “As is_ usual, I attempted to destroy it, but some of the paper did not catch fire immediately.” Takato stretched out his fine-boned hand and took the charred wafers of paper. Petals of ash fell to the floor. Pencil marks upon them gleamed silver for an instant. The marshal motioned the three men to proceed. Then he walked to a nearby office. He sat in a prim chair and spread .the fragments of the testament on a chased table. He fingered the scraps of paper, reading a sentence here and there. They said nothing new. would be Takato and his Fighters defeated. Evil would vanish from _ the planets. All thinking beings would be free. The old, old, stifled yearnings of the heretics. The marshal chided himself for wasting his time. He could find such slogans on any wall where heretics risked death with hasty pencil scratches. He was about to sweep the tatters of this mute vision into a canister when his eye was caught by a piece of paper no larger than an apple slice with a brown rind. It bore three sentences : “ Takato will make his son powerful. But every man must hand on life, not death. Therefore Takato’s son will destroy his fathers works of death.” — A guard knocked at the office door. “The prisoner has been destroyed, sir,” he reported. Takato nodded, rose from his chair and left the room. With him he took a fragment comiclooks.corn