Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 48 — page 84: what you’re looking at

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

RECOIL _ ing, just punch out your emergency code. That'll get my attention right away.” He flashed off. Nielson spent two hours with the manual, trying to find out what the emergency code of the Perseus might be, and how to activate it. He looked dubiously at switches and dials on the walls of the spaceship whose function he was uncertain of. Nielson managed to eat again a little. But every fif- teen minutes, a light flashed from the camera turret, a sheet of paper landed in the little box, and Mboore’s features stared at him again. Guided by some masochistic impulse, Nielson forced him- self to look at each as it was ‘ejected from the develop- ment tank. There was no perceptible change in the body. It must have been frozen stiff as a board. Another meteor’s ping against the hull sent the seal- ing activity into high gear 83 again. It also jolted Nielson from his latest reverie. Study- ing the advance log for. the Perseus, he realised that his ordeal was almost ended. Another day would see him landed on Mars. Trying to account for the passage of time, he decided that he must have slept periodically since the murder. It was just after the next report period that Nielson conceived another idea. He would lose Moore’s body on the descent to Mars, but that planet wasn’t very big and the crash might not destroy it totally. Why couldn’t he shake it loose from the Per- seus now, giving it greater momentum for the crash, or sending it into an orbit that would miss Mars altogether? Nielson listened for hours to the manual’s advice on course corrections. He ignored the warning that the ship’s own steering mechanism was superior to human reckoning, and the advice that humans shouldn’t try to steer the comiclooks.conm