Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

WITHOUT LOVE them too early. A blood test likewise proved inconclusive, except that it eliminated Fermin. Personally, I would have preferred to see Tiger elimi- nated. However, I still laugh when I think of poor Fermin’s face when he found himself scratched from the race. As - for Max, Tiger and myself, we were as proud as Punch, ' each secretly patting himself on the back. We united in guarding Menilissa and wait- ing on her hand and foot. And now Max was asking her to risk herself and the child. Menilissa was tall, strongly built, with ash blonde hair and slightly Slavic features. She ruled us boys with a firm, motherly, tender hand, and she could read our thoughts even without the torkle coil. She knew at this moment that Max had already intui- tively calculated the risks and had found the experiment to be safely permissible. Still, he had left the decision up to her because he loved her. She looked at each of us in turn 17 as we sat there. And we sat there, taut or relaxed as our conscious mind dictated, but inwardly as tense as a full- bellied sail. She nodded. “Tl risk it.” Tiger had fitted the lens into the grid at waist height. Consisting of concentric circles of magnetic fields, now closed, it seemed to be a black pinpoint at a nexus of grid lines. Menilissa stood before it, her broad face calm and composed. The rest of us sat there, opening our minds to the coil, sending wave on wave of each particular in- tuitive force, and above all sending an unending stream of love for Menilissa. We were trying to impregnate the mind of the as yet unborn, unconscious child with the combined integers of our Team. Tiger looked at Max and Max nodded. The lens opened. The baby—we called it Mattis—looked no different from any other baby. But it began to speak as soon as it commicloooks.conn