Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 50 — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

IT TAKES TWO Foster looked up, and the gleam in his eye gave him the appearance of an aged and mystic fakir, fasting on his bed of nails. | “T know who the Sokkaths are, son,’ he said quietly. “Claire doesn’t—nor do many of our people here. What I didn’t know was that the fools on Earth—and on Sokkath for that matter—have even- tually perpetrated the final idiocy and begun a war that can end only in both their civilisations’ complete des- truction x “This is a just war, a war _of liberation ” Jarril be- gan, and the wild singing in his head mocked and derided him. He clapped one hand to his forehead and felt the sweat run thick and sleazy in the heat. He clawed desper- ately at his Academy training, trying to evaluate the position and failing miserably through lack of data. Foster cut in, his words dripping despair. “The men will be back from the hunting very soon now. The matter of your destruction of communal pro- perty can be passed over in the light of the new and 37 futilely stupid information you bring us.” Jarril . brought out a thought that had been troub- ling him for some time. “How is it,” he asked, his words sounding as though he were speaking through a mouthful of mush, “that here you are, living in the un- charted space between our sector of the Galaxy and the Sokkaths, completely without mentalarm shielding, and the Sokkaths haven’t yet paid you a visit?” His words grew wrathful as he voiced the sus- picions that had accumulated like foul acids in his mind. “I think that you are in league > with the Sokkaths! I think that you are all traitors to Earth !” “Oh, don’t be silly,” Claire said annoyedly. “I told you we call this planet Earth, even though we know that the real Earth is light years away. Wouldn’t we call it Sokkath, or something like that, if we were renegades? And after what you’ve done to poor Foss I think you’d better go before the men arrive.” ‘Don’t worry,’ Foster said. comiclooks.corn