Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 50 — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION “At dawn.” Then he was gone and the torches went with him. Dim- ness returned to the room of books. TWENTY men made up the expedition. Twenty young warriors, all armed with bows and swords, and skilled in the chase. With them went ten of the valuable horses and a store of food and water. Kalin led the column, grinning as the old Reader bounced on the back of his mount, and from time to time snapped instructions to the men run- ning beside them. They crossed the low hills, ready for trouble but meeting none, for their force was too strong for the mutated, man- ape things to attack. They camped under strong guard and rode only at daylight, and they made good speed as they pressed ever northward. As they rode Kalin sur- veyed the country’ with shrewd eyes, watchful for attack and at the same time 82 weighing the advantages of the terrain. They passed a few ruins, overgrown and crumbling beneath the twin onslaughts of vegetation and weather. Once they skirted a wide expanse of seared earth, hard and _lava-like, glistening with an evil black- ness and ringed with stunted trees, and once they saw a herd of wild cattle running from their approach. At the end of the tenth day they came to a range of low hills, crossed them, and stared down at a scene of utter deso- lation. Once it had been a city, but the bombs had torn the life from the metropolis, filled the streets with dead, and sprayed the buildings with heat and radiation. Now the vegetation had _ returned, great twisting vines and bloated leaves, creeping in from the fringe and thrusting at the tottering walls. Further in was only an ex- panse of jumbled ruin, with here and there a similar area to the one they had passed. conmicloooks.com