Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION of ages, shrank to a hair’s width. We were on our way home. Max had set the auto-pilot for our base in New Mexico and we were sitting around in the community cabin of our plane, passing the time. Our own torkle coil glowed mer- rily in its grid as we com- municated with each other. After a while Tiger got bored and went to his cabin to get one of the detective stories he devoured with unflagging pas- sion. When he returned, he stopped and spat at the torkle coil and laughed. The rest of us laughed, too. The coil, hit by the spittle, reacted almost like a man. First it grew pink, then red, then purple, then fiery con- centric rings closed in on the offended part, formed a sort of a mouth and spat right back at Tiger. If it hadn’t been for the ductoprene grid that surrounded the coil like a cage, Tiger would have been splattered, but not by spittle. The ductoprene, a metallic- fluor nitrogen polymer of 14 benzoid structure, captures and drains off the output of the coil above a certain non- harmful maximum. Well, Tiger laughed, but a sudden flash of thought crossed his face. He spat again, this time in dead earnest, and he didn’t laugh when the coil tried to spit back. He watched it carefully, and so did the rest of us, for the coil had, as usual, trans- mitted the thought. But even while transmitting, the coil did not forget to spit back at Tiger, and of that we felt nothing. The colour of the coil had changed; it contained a tinge of black around the quick-forming mouth, a tinge of black that about matched Tiger’s seriousness. Max said to me: “‘What does the reaction look like when you tease it?” We were young enough to enjoy this silly game. I myself had often flicked paper clips at the coil and grinned as it tried to get back at me. But Tiger was the only one who conmicloooks.conn