Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 56 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION opened the folder he was carrying, extracting numerous sheafs of paper. “I’ve put all the statements through the Correlator and the results are much as I expected.” “Let’s have .’em, , then,”’ said General Lee. The Correla- tor, an electronic device, was employed in all police depart- ments for the purpose of deducing logical probabilities from any amount of given data. “Well, the psychoprobe on the secretary showed that she told the truth about not entering the room between 1300 and 1600 hours. It also showed that she did not leave the office during that period and admitted no one to the consulting room. Deduction, if result of psychoprobe correct: Jaksn took his own life since there was only one way into the room. Additional corroboration: two visitors only were recorded by the automatic scanners and seen by the janitors, both of whom left within minutes of their arrival, having been turned away by Jaksn’s secretary. Deduction, ifresults of psycho- probe incorrect: someone 14 must have installed a psycho- blok and false memory pattern in the secretary to make her immune to our probe. The percentage probability of this latter is 19.2; percentage prob- ability of the former is...” ‘‘Never mind the details, [ll read the lot later. I want. it brief,’’ cut in the general. Kristofr sighed and looked up. “Briefly, sir, we’re in a hole as big as a Lunar crater. The Detector staff say there’s nothing wrong with the Detec- tor itself and that their re- corded impressions of Dr. Jaksn’s neurone waves are still intact—indicating that he’s still alive. The coroner tells us that Dr. Jaksn injected himself with enough GT.66 to kill twenty men and has been very, very dead since approximately 13.30 hours this afternoon”’ The general snorted and stood up. He walked the length of his office and stared out of the window. In the ensuing silence Kristofr thought over the problem. Why should Jaksn have taken his own life? The excuse given in the note seemed fecble in the extreme. connicloooks.conm