Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 48 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

LAST JOURNEY trial-city fog on Earth—and any transport has to be en- closed and airtight and have at least horizon-range two- - way radio. It costs plenty when all that stuff has to be brought up from Earth. But, if you like to walk, your suit walkie-talkie is enough to keep you on the beam. “ That way as well as any,” he mumbled. Non-committal kind of cove. “Been here long?” By this time we were out of the third lock and our radios were on. “Too long. Or not long enough.” He _ still wasn’t giving much away. “Why? Getting homesick for the green and blue of Earth?” “Maybe. Or wandersick for outer space.” Not only non-committal but darned annoying; I felt I had to make him talk like a human being instead of a cryptic ghost. It isn’t gener- ally considered good manners to ask too many questions on Mars—a lot of us feel safer 97 as anonymous nonentities—. but I couldn’t see us going on like this for the whole hour itd take to reach the space- port. : “I guess we all feel like that, a bit,” I chattered. “Not much chance of it, yet. The backroom boys are bumping their noses on a lot of dead- ends, and I reckon you and I won’t see the end of the search for a cheaper fuel that'll take us further on. If it wasn’t for the radioactives here, we'd never have got finance to take us this far. You in the mining end of it, or transport?” I heard him give a dry laugh before replying : “Cagy as ever, like the Portuguese merchants and Columbus. The backroom boys could give us something tomorrow if they put their minds to it— but no one’ll finance research until Mars is mined out, same as no one’d really get down to making spaceflight a going concern until Earth’s_ re- sources were on their beam ends.” comiclooks.corn