Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 56 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

PLANETARY EXPLORATION 4. THE ESSENTIAL CHEMIST No spaceship crew will be complete without a clever chemist, says WILFRED READER, B.Sc., writing a as from the future up the list of experienced scientists to travel on this first party intend- ing to reach a planet, they did not include a chemist! J had to compel them to include me in. Chemistry, of course, is the only branch of science that really matters! All the other sciences are merely auxiliary services which the chemist finds useful. Your botanist finds plants and puts them in family groups by pulling them to pieces and then Bea IT OR NOT, WHEN THEY DREW Photos: Shell t sticks names on them and thinks tha he has done a useful job of work. The chemist comes along and gets drugs, dyes and who knows what else out of the plants and gives them a value and a purpose. The geologist sticks labels on rocks. The chemist converts them to metals, ceramics, building materials, glass; uses them in fact. Physics and mathematics are only tools for the chemist—very valuable tools mark you. Moreover it is the chemist who maintains the other directly useful sciences. The sur- geon comes to him for his anzsthetics and anti- septics, the physician for his purges, prophylactics and amalgesics. the agri- culturist for his fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, weed killers and even for the gases to ripen his fruit. When I explained all this to the organisers they said: ‘“‘Very well—let your collectors go out and bring back all you need. Let your servants be your servants.” Maybe they had some- thing there. ‘““But,”’ said I, “you want them to come back. Without a chemist they'll be helpless babes, Do you want them to step Comlcbiookssconn