Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 51 — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

THE ENVIED of the Greys which had so incensed him. They went in and crossed a solemn, imposing foyer. To their right was an open coor, and inside it a discus- sion was going on. The voice of Professor Quentin rose above the general buzz of conversation. “It’s disgusting, the way some of you slip back into that sort of make-believe. Here we are with the uni- verse in our grasp, and you keep harking back like a lot of sentimental women to the past—dreaming yourself back into that slovenly, hopeless world...” The voice faded away behind them. They passed a group of Greys walking rather unsteadily. If Judith had had a human back, she would have felt a prickle of unease down it. Absurd thoughts flitted through her consciousness : thoughts of opium dens, of the sensual stimulants of the fairground booths in some of the more disreputable pro- Xl vincial cities. Surely her Instructor was not proposing that she should drug or drink herself into insensibility? Then she realised that drugs and alcohol would have no effect on her. Except to rust her internal workings, perhaps. A door opened before them. They went into a long corridor, on each side of which were small cubicles. The silence was a strange silence. Utter stillness that was somehow loud and over- powering. Judith sensed that most of the cubicles were occupied. It was as though the people in them were thinking, concentrating... Without a word the In- structor led her into one. She lay on a couch as though in hospital. A pair of anodes were clamped to her head. “To-day you may have twenty minutes,” said the Instructor. “You may not wish more. Later, the deci- sion will be your own.” He left her, and the door closed. comicloooks.com