Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 56 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

r AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION “This is going to be all right,” he said. Masterman breathed a sigh of relief. Hardy said: ““How long will it take?” “Twenty minutes, maybe.” “Good. We’ll leave you to it. Good work, Maxwell.” He glanced up at Master- man, and found that he was grinning his thanks. He switched the grin off quickly. Patronising swine, Master- man. He was a good captain as captains went, but all that talk of team spirit and the code of the spaceways and all the rest of it... Maxwell worked steadily, without hesitation. And as he did so, he became aware of other knowledge which he possessed. The repairs to the scrubber weren’t everything. He knew far more about the com- munication equipment itself than he had ever done before. A flicker of a joke went through his mind. It was uncanny—a sort of ghostly echo of a joke that Wilson had once thought of playing but had resisted. it! You could fix the controls on that thing. You could switch connections so that when two men were using it at once, as they usually did, in order to make use of the power channel at the same and save power, they could be connected to the wrong receiver—their minds. could be joined to the minds of the wrong wives. Maxwell laughed. Let Johnson speak to Mrs. Barrett, and Barrett have a little insight into Mrs, Johnson’s mind. That would be quite a riot. They might find that each preferred the other’s partner. There would be a fight in the nar- row corridors of the ship. A lot of nasty feeling could be caused. Everyone could be mixed up. And Johnson would pick up a lot of information about Barrett that only Mrs. Barrett knew. Useful for one of those slanging matches that sometimes broke out aboard when the men were fed up with the journey and anxious to quarrel for the sake of quarrelling. It would be terrific. But he found himself get- ting up, putting the tools away, comicloooks.conm