Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

A PRESENT FROM MARS pulp diet, but seems acquired vampire trait recently. Of units examined, half found to be mutational. Mutation lies in genital equipment. Mutates breed over twenty times as rapidly as basics. Apparent switch of basic’s dietry from wood-pulp to human blood may itself be mutational. Two indi- viduals were found to exem- plify further possible mutation, in that their size had increased by eighty per cent. 2. EXTENT. Infestation present throughout. United States. Greatest concentration in California. About thirty per cent. dwelling houses, apart- ments, etc., in San Francisco evacuated pending disinfesta- tion. Partial disruption of city services. Evacuations in other cities, including Chicago and New York, average twenty per cent. Reported infestations in Canada, Southampton (Eng- land) and Hawaii. Casualties in U.S. average fifteen hundred daily—mainly nervous heart failure following extensive attacks. 3. ORIGIN. Originunknown, but as invaders not identical with the cimicide or any hemi- pterous earth-organism, extra terrestrial origin considered probable. As long established (a) that Venus is uninhabited poison-planet; (6b) that no Moon-life exists; Mars re- mains only possibility. It was a boy. He slept in his cradle now, and she sat in the living room with Johnnie, listening for the baby in case he cried. She still wore the plastic coverall and rubber boots; Johnnie had bicycle clips, like everyone else wore these days, and elastic let in to close his cuffs. The smell of pine disinfectant helped to kill the pungent and oily presences in their apartment. At first people had smote and crushed for themselves. Then most had stopped, still disgusted and terrified, but made despairing by the sheer strength of the invasion. Be- sides, there were the Disin- festation Units—white painted vans whose prying suction tubes crept like tentacles into all twists and orifices of build- ings, so that each vehicle would roar away with two thousand cubic feet of solid bug for the destructor. But it was clear soon that the vans had failed. Cimex Martialis had claw feet capable of withstanding a gale force higher than the current plant could muster. Then the vans quit sucking and blew. Tons comiclooks.conn