Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 51 — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION into the middle of the Greys.” Judith went pale. “Don’t talk like that!” “But what other way is there of getting at them?” “If you did that,” she said, ‘““you’d become just like the rest of them.” **T wouldn’t.” ‘“ How can you be sure? If they offered you privileges and ...and... well, what- ever it is they've got that makes them so_high-and- mighty .. .” “There must be some way of resisting that sort of thing. If you really set your mind to it.” She shook her head. She was just as idealistic as he was, but she was practical with it: she had seen her father killed in an accident, seen him taken away, and been to the Conversion Ward two days later. He had repu- diated ‘her. Not _con- temptuously or unpleasantly : he had just made it clear that he was somehow different, and that there was no contact between them any more. For a while she had seemed to detect some struggle going on in him. For a while she had continued to see him, but he had gone further and further away from her, his whole spirit and _ personality re- ceding behind that grey robot mask. Then there had been her mother. And one or two friends had gone from her. She had no illusions now. When you became a Grey, you cut yourself off from what you had once been. The paveway slowed, and they stepped off on to the fixed lane. Saturn Square lay spread out before them, with its great blocks of administra- tive offices and the mighty edifice of the World Theatre. The centre of the universe, they called this. They said that if you stood here long enough, everybody in_ the universe would sooner or later walk or ride past you. But that was one of those say- ings, and nothing more. Even if it were true, would you be able to tell the difference be- - comiclooks.cormn