Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

I expect that my bank manager told you that, much against his advice, | -have sunk the remainder of my capital in one of those small single seater interplanetary jobs that Rolls are turning out so cheaply now. After the long trip to Alpha Centauri I decided to burn my boats, so to speak, and, putting all my eggs in one basket (excuse these awful clichés), blew my return fare, and a lot more besides, on a Mark II **Planetair.”’ It seemed to me that with a brand new system to ex- plore it was a good idea to get in while the going was good, and after less than a week in Centaurum, which I dis- liked intensely, I was on my way here. Homobar, I should explain, is the satellite of the third planet. It is smaller than Earth and the atmosphere is thinner, but has a slightly larger oxygen content that more than com- pensates. At all times one feels a delightful sense of exhilaration and well-being, such as one was led to expect of the Alps from the travel advertisements one used to see at home. I landed on the third planet after more than a week in space and was mightily disappointed with what I found. There is a small Earth settle- ment which is visited infrequently by a trading rocket from Centaurum and it is on this rocket that I am for- warding this letter. Should you care to take the job which I am offering you, it will be starting on its next run in about ten weeks (Earth measure- ment) from now. There is just sufficient left in my account to pay for your fare, should it prove hard for you to raise it, and I enclose a cheque for the neces- sary amount. Should you decide not to come, please accept the enclosed as a gift in token of our years of friendship at school and after. I know it will not be an easy decision for you to make, either way, at such short notice and so I will do my best to give you some idea of what Homo- bar is like, and to fill in the background to the events that led to my position here. Homobar is a somewhat mis- leading name. One might gather that there was a ban on the human race. In fact, the name was bestowed by the Prime Minister, who got his classical languages slightly mixed and comes from the Latin, Homo... Man, and the Greek root Bar .. . Equal. By this he meant to imply that he was the ruler of a country in which the Bill of Rights and the principles laid down in the so-called Atlantic Charter held sway. In effect it means that all men are equal except us (the Prim2 Minister and myself), and we control the destinies of the satellite. A highly satisfactory state of affairs. As my personal private secretary you would be accorded similar rank and privi- leges, and I have no doubt that a cabinet post could be arranged before long. I did not remain on the third planet for long. Although the miners and their families were friendly enough, I gathered that they tended to resent strangers, much as any _ isolated community is apt to on Earth. Though with them I was not of them, and though in their way they did their best to make me feel at home, I could feel that is was merely as a sense of duty and not out of any desire to see me remain. Under these circumstances I decided to cut short my stay. It appeared that nobody had thought the satellite worth a visit. The miners were too busy and had too large a field to work in as it was, and inter- stellar exploration has not yet extended beyond the main bodies of this system. I decided to be the first member of the human race to set foot on a new world. As it happens I was the second, but this | had no means of knowing. The trip was completely uneventful, and less than forty-eight hours after leaving the third planet I was circling this world, looking for a suitable place to land. I saw below me a land of rolling hills, of fast-running streams and still seas that reflected the white of the summer-cumulus clouds _above, “This,” I thought, “is for me.’ The pole caps were fairly large, indicating a somewhat cooler climate comicbooke con