Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 54 — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

it was the most efficient unit yet devised. But you couldn’t get past its— DEATH-WISH HEY CAUGHT HIM WITH the knife at his throat, the bright red blood welling from the razor edge as it sliced through skin and fat, muscle and sinew, cutting down towards the pulsing carotids and throbbing ar- teries below. They shocked him with stasis and took away the knife. They staunched the blood and sealed the wound. They placed him back on the narrow white cot in the nar- row white room and there they left him, still in stasis, blind and dumb, deaf and paralysed, his body helpless and only his mind aware. Left him to his thoughts— and memories. War! : A drifting boredom spaced by sickening fear and sudden violence. The long, tedious, nerve-grating conflict of in- terstellar struggle. The blare of the alarms, the rapid manceuv- ring, the blinding incandes- cence of exploding atoms, the sweat, the panic, the frantic urge to run and run, and keep 111 by ERIC WILDING on running, and sometimes, very rarely, the actual capture of an enemy vessel. The captured Head wasn’t much help. It lolled above the humped bulk of its mainten- ance machine, its eyes glazed, a thin stream of spittle drool- ing from the corners of its mouth, its lips twisted into an idiotic grin. It could hear, of course, and the pumps sup- plied air to its throat so that it could even speak. It could see, too, though that wasn’t neces- sary, and once, perhaps a month ago, perhaps a decade, it had even been human. But not any more. Longstrom felt ill as he stared at it, his eyes drifting in awful fascination over the naked, hairless scalp, the deep scars, the distorted tissue where metal and plastic wedded with flesh. The thing stared back at him, rolled its eyes, giggled, and licked its lips with a repulsive, almost ob- scene gesture. He vomited. comicloooks.conn