Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

than Earth’s. I circled. once more at the equator, looking for a likely spot. I wanted to land but saw no harm in choosing the spot that was likely to prove the most comfortable. It was quite by chance that I saw the other rocket. | must have passed almost directly over it, for I was well beyond it when a flash of light caught the corner of my eye. I looked back, and there it was; the wreck of a ‘‘Planetair,’’ the sunlight reflected from its twisted metal. I made a wide sweep and came in to land a few hundred yards away from it on a stretch of conveniently handy open grassland. I made a rapid analysis of the air, and finding it more than satisfactory, dispensed with a space suit and stepped out onto the soil of Homobar. I approached the wreck of the other rocket with a queezy feeling in my stomach. It was pretty badly smashed up and I expected to see the grizzly remains of its former owner spread around inside it, but much to my relief, there was no sign of a body. Someone had been lucky. As I stepped from the shattered port there came a hail and I looked round to see the man who had stepped from the wreck approaching from a belt of trees. I went to meet him. “Doctor SIX Livingstone, I presume,” I said. ““As a matter of fact the name’s Smythe- Cooper-Smythe,” he said. He obviously had no sense of humour, or so | thought at the time. He was a well set up looking chap, an ex-rugger centre forward from the look of him, with a left ear slightly cauliflowered from the scrummages. He held out his hand. “‘“And you?” he asked. ““Waterman-Jones,” | told him, “‘Douglas, William, Waterman- Jones.’ ““Not one of the Wiltshire Waterman-Joneses, by any chance?” he asked. ‘‘As a matter of fact | am, or rather, used to be.” *“*Thought so,” he said. “I was at school with your brother.”” | looked at his tie. Sure enough it was an Old Broadborough. The only trouble was that it seemed a little incongruous On its own. It was the only article of clothing he was wearing. “You must come and have dinner with me,” he said. | must confess that I was a little taken aback, but saw no point in refusing. Besides, I was a little tired of the concentrated rations after forty-eight hours in space, and the mere thought of a cooked meal made my mouth water. He took my arm in the most casual and affable manner imaginable and led me off in the comicbooks.com