Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 51 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION Warren did not reply to this. He went past the Grey with only the curtest of fare- wells, and was soon outside in the fresh air. The outside world seemed to come up and hit him. Only now, away from that building, did he realise that Judith was actually dead. Dead. It was- a word you didn’t use often nowadays : you said so-and-so has been transferred, or taken over. But when you felt bitterly about the Greys, re- garding them as enemies, the older word came back into use. Judith was dead. But he would talk to her again tomorrow. The hours seemed endless. He lay awake for most of the night, listening to the subdued noises of the _ purring, smoothly-running city. It was almost as though he .could hear the gears engaging, the switches clicking. Every- thing was so well-organised. Life was neat, human beings were comfortably provided 18 for. And at the top, running the whole thing for their own ends, were these inscrutable Greys, who ceased to be human once they had gone through the process of trans- ference. Their own ends . . . what- ever those might be. It was a question that Judith must answer. Lying awake, Warren tried to re- duce his plans to some sort of order. He must not fumble or hesitate or make a false step right at the beginning. The following afternoon he made his way to the hospital. It looked uninviting. It did not welcome healthy human beings, particularly when they came with challenges on their lips. He was silently ushered along a corridor, into a lift again, and then through a doorway into a quiet ward. There was, oddly, none of the antiseptic smell he had ex- pected—the smell one usually associated with hospital wards. Here there was only a faint dry breath of some- comiclbooks.conn