Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 56 — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

STRANGE SUICIDE through him like some strangely viscous liquid that threaded its way, with slow deliberation, throughout his entire being. You'll go through the things that led up to this visit, in your mind, the echo repeated again and again. But yow'll go through them very, very quickly. Dr. MIkL AndrUz turned this knob, clicked that switch, adjusted a cettain dial... and waited. 9 She settled the three kiksules at the back of her tongue and downed them, together with the glass of spirit, in one gulp. She was tall, plumpish and more than good-looking for her forty-four odd years. Yet now her eyes were strained and reddened, and her hands twitched and shivered as she replaced the glass in the Kleenall. The news of her husband’s death had come through on the visor from Centralmort some thirty minutes before, and she had in no wise re- covered from the initial shock despite the fact that she had never felt more than a moder- 27 ate amount of affection for the man. What did five years of married life really mean, she wondered. Companionship? Yes, but little more than that. There had never been any question of love; certainly - no question of rearing a family. How could there be’ when one was told who one was going io marry, and when one was instructed, officially, as to whether one might or might not have children? She tried to tell herself that her nervousness was duesimply to the fact of her husband’s death; tried to convince her- self that shaking hand and throbbing head resulted from this sudden break in the smooth-running of her routine and in the loss of her “‘com- panion in life’? Robt Jaksn. She did not convince her- self. There was something else there, at the base of -her twitchings, her tremors, her nervousness; and that some- thing was fear for her own safety. It was not that her husband had ever shown himself to be comiclbooks.conn