Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

full of exquisite examples of the skill of the instrument makers and the mathematical competence of early geographers. There you can let the inevitable imagination of the science fiction reader re-create for you the atmosphere in the Captain’s cabin of one of those who gave us continents. Yes, they made a lot of fine instru- ments and used them to great purpose. The Devil of the North lodestone compasses the Phcenicians are said to have brought from China got into the hands of those ancestors of ours, the Vikings, and one thing led to another. The conquest of space calls for the same qualities of Viking high courage and Elizabethan industrious applica- tion of knowledge and intellect. With the lodestone and the compass, the geographers of Earth could go anywhere with at least one reasonably reliable ally. If our planet has no atmosphere we shall be able to move freely over its surface by astral navigation night and day. If it has some atmosphere which produces clouds we, too, will need a compass, but we shall not be able to land and use it with much certainty unless we first get a knowledge of the magnetic field of the planet and locate its magnetic poles with reference to the axis of rotation and equator which we may have been able to establish before embarkation. Conceivably, we might find that the planet has no magnetic field at all, or one so feeble that a magnet such as we normally use in a compass would be inadequate. MAGNETIC SURVEY eta : It would be possible, given a cloud- less night, on a planet with an atmos- phere, to fly over it plotting strength and direction of the magnetic field, checking position by observing the stars. The lower we are able to fly, the more accurate our information will be when it comes to plotting magnetic maps of the surface. But remember we have not yet got accurate contour maps ELEVEN comiclbooks.conm