Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 50 — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

IT TAKES TWO wreck that he had been a moment before. “Not real trouble. Just that those damned fools back on Earth have finally tangled with the Sokkaths and they’re fighting themselves fit to bust all over the Galaxy.” Old Ben pursed his lips, and the other men muttered uneasily, then they all fell silent and their eyes seemed to Jarril to recede, to grow bright with some inner con- templation and their faces grew rapt and intense. He imagined that some force stirred his hair. The room was suddenly utterly still and silent. Then the singing hum in his mind grew and spun and broke itself into little hard shards of thought that shat- tered against the very core of his being. Lieutenant-guardsman Jar- ril, of the Terran Space Navy, toppled unconscious to the floor. HE came round to the cool bite of some liquid on his tongue and spluttered and spat. Someone was holding his head up and the floor was 39 hard and_ uncomfortable under his body. “Take it easy, son. Relax. It always comes rough at first.” “What — always comes — rough — at first?” “The commind. Forget it for the moment. We've got a lot to ask you and you'll have to recover a bit before then.” Foster was speaking, a Foster that was unlike either of the two other Fosters that Jarril had known. This new Foster was not the man who had rescued him in the desert, laconic, unpredictable and altogether outside the scope of Jarill’s experience. Nor -was he the man who had sat hunched up on a chair and keened over the death throes of a Galaxy. This Foster was clear-eyed, buoyed by an inner experi- ence that gave the onlooker the desperate desire to par- take of that experience, to share whatever source of god- head had given a mortal man that sure conviction and steady fire of purpose. Jarril shook his head and groaned. He felt awful. comiclooks.comn