Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION a young man called Edgar Britten, who was in my class at Yale and was the biologist on Spaceship Martian. He’s dead now. He claimed to be the man who brought the bugs from Mars. He killed himself with responsibility. I guess ° you can’t carry THAT sort of conscience around and live. After that there was a family. A silent woman and a small child. A man—the husband— white haired, stooping. Johnnie Rennes, the Broadway star. Anything is possible... They went away, and now I am alone except for my per- sonal bugs. I estimate that I give them half a pint of my blood every day. The largest are half an inch wide. I used to kill them, but it led to such a compensatory birth curve that I left off. There’s only me; Iam their environment, and Mal- thus’ laws still seem to apply. Good old Malthus! My sole contact with academic reality. I am writing this as a time capsule. I will put it in a stone jar I found and leave it high among the rocks. For I think we're finished .. . Cimex Martialis bestrides the whole world, and the springs of humanity have gone dry. No schools. No manufac- tures. No love. 92 The nomads haunted the roads and poked and peered in old garbage and the looted bug-hung buildings. Most were grey-haired; there were a few babies and young children. Rotted textiles and woollens had given place to skins of rabbit and rat and crude hide. Here and there were signs of attempts to rebuild the old economy— excavations for an_ under- ground farm of hydroponics —a cannery for mangels . But everything had been abandoned. He said: “Tonight we sleep at Blue Springs. I found a cave, only two families in.”’ It was no longer a matter of escaping; by now all had their personal bugs. It was a matter of keeping moving with your burden until you died. She said: “Johnnie, I’ve been thinking about Junior. He’ll grow up a savage. Teach him to read and write.” He sat by the roadside and unhitched his food pack, wiping the sweat from his face. A dozen bugs fell from him and scurried back. “T’ve been thinking, too. The young ones have to carry on—those born after the bugs. They’ve never had any- thing different.”” He pointed comiclooks.conn