Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 56 — page 131: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION symbiotic plant, but the con- sequence in human misery may be awful to contemplate.” Chlorella Physis wagged his finger as he made his point. The action had caused him to look at John’s white face and the haggerd expression which had stolen over it. “But I’ve done it.”’ John mouthed the words. “I have produced two and they are growing in my own home at this very moment. I have two " friends who have been help- ing me and they have suddenly started to act queer——”_. ““You’ve done it? You’ve produced symbiotic plants? You have friends in the same house with them? Alone with them and without your skill and knowledge to pro- tect them? We must go im- mediately. You can tell me what you put into these things on the way.” Chlorella Physis struggled out of his chair, and it was his urgency which took them out of the hotel within minutes, into a car for the journey back to the contents of the Crystal Palace. a) Of course no one ever guessed why John went mad. It was the scene in the glass house when they walked in. Physis insisted that he would go first. The tall plants, with their leaves waving almost rhythmically and their enormous bell-lily shaped flowers, nearly ten feet long. Tlten the large red petals like steel clamps fasvened on the bodies of two men. They had been feeding from the flowers and, like insects, had crawled into the blos- soms to get to the honey sacs. They had done it be- fore, but this time they had changed places and it was this time that they fulfilled the plant symbiosis—they had carried pollen on their clothes. Then the primed motor cells had acted and the petals had locked them in a deadly, erotic embrace. 130 comiclooks.conn