Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 51 — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

IT’S DARK OUT THERE “Space travel is physically impossible,’ he declared. “That much I have succeeded in establishing. The planets and stars are forever beyond our reach. Space travel is really time travel. That is to say ig 33 Forman stared down at a special licence he held in his hands. He looked up at the small man from the twenty- second century. “You mean —we cannot get back to nine- hundred and seventy three? Not ever? Not anyhow?” **Precisely.”’ Forman tore the licence across and threw the pieces from him. He slumped into his chair. Margaret—— “Don’t take it hard,”’ Peters murmured, and gave his atten- tion to Jon Pol. “Give it to me slowly, I want to understand.”’ “T have not gone very far with my investigation, and so, inevitably, there will be gaps. I visualise Our umiverse as a field of force, the space-time continuum, with matter as a weak point in that field. 79 Where a star system exists, there the force-field is warped. This warping of the continuum extends for something like five thousand miles beyond the surface of Earth—once past that point, your ship enters normal space-time. And there, travel through space becomes travel through time.” ‘Time travel into the past, for the future is not formed, being merely a statement of probability. Naturally, the event of your appearing in Earth’s jurassic period will upset the probability of the world you left—and so any return is impossible.” “But the spaceships we saw,’ Peters protested. ‘““Where did they come from ?”’ “From a future, not neces- sarily yours. Don’t you see, at each point of civilisation where man achieves a rocket capable of leaving Earth, there he sends an interference into the past. Another proba- bility is thus set up. You might say that a series of probable Earths extend to an > infinite future.” comiclooks.cormn