Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 65 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

Mistake on Mars — by E. C. TUBB DON’T KNOW WHY MEN | ever bothered to come to Mars in the first place. I shall never understand why, after taking a look at it, they decided to colonise it. It isn’t as though it had anything to commend it. A great ball of gritty sand splotched with dirty brown lichens and with a permanent frost at each pole. Little air, less water, no heat and no natural comfort of any kind. That’s Mars. Take the Sahara and put it down in the Antarctic and you'd have a fair copy of the place. Take away the air, of course, that’s important. If you left the air you wouldn’t have to manufacture your own and then you’d miss the one great charm of Mars. The smell. I can’t describe it; no one can. I suppose that if you were born on Mars you could possibly get accustomed to it, but that’s about the only way. It’s due to a chemical in the air which affects the olfactory 12 nerves in such a way as to register as an odour. That, at least, is how they explained it to me, though personally, I think that the lack of water and the living in sealed domes and bubble-cities may also help. Whatever the reason, the living quarters stink, the airsuits, too, so that every second you’re on Mars you’re reminded of what a foolish thing it is for you to be there at all. I wished that I could forget it. I also wished that I could get away from it. Neither wish did me much good. I’d arrived on Mars broke and worse than broke. It wasn’t that I just had no money at all. I had negative money. I owed a heavy fine and, unless I paid it, I was due to see the inside of a jail for a long, long time. I couldn’t even run out—the commercial lines wouldn’t carry me with- out a passport and the others conmicloooks.comn)