Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 54 — page 58: what you’re looking at

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

MAN IN A MAZE flowed uphill. Perhaps Sweet’s house had been built upon some such kind of odd spot. Where time might slip a cog sometimes and you would hear your own voice repeating itself. Where temperature fluc- tuated irrespective of the weather. Maybe he should write an article about it... When he re-entered the lab it was no longer cold there. When he compared the two thermometers they agreed that the temperature was sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps it signalled a return to normality. He took out Bleiker’s certificate, read it again, and then put it away, feeling cheered. He even whistled as he took up the threads of an unfinished ex- periment concerning precipi- tates. When he tried to light the Bunsen burner, the gas which hissed out wouldn’t light, but the burning match flared up like a torch. Pure oxygen was coming through the gas pipe. Or seemed to be... He groaned. There was to be no end to it, after all. 57 Forty-eight miserable hours later he gave up fighting it. The will had deserted him. His nerve was broken. While just a fragment of it remained, he reached for the jar labelled potassium cyanide and tipped a sizeable amount of the white salt into a beaker of water, stirred it, dissolved it. He took a last look around the lab with which he was no longer able to cope. He could not live either in it or outside it now. The future offered the choice of helpless and friend- less poverty—or of a break- down near to insanity. Or perhaps both. Further serious research work was impos- sible, anyhow, and life was nothing without it. Bieiker’s certificate was use- less. It would not enabie him to prepare one report for Sweet that could follow a coherent line of thought. And what competent psy- chiatrist would certify that he was in his right mind? He was done, defeated. He gulped down the beaker of liquid. The reaction was almost immediate. Salt water is an excellent emetic. conmcloooks.comn