Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 65 — page 74: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION beginning to grasp that, unless sudden changes of direction or velocity are attempted, there is no definite reason why a pace of 10,000 m.p.h. should not be accomplished. The bar, on this Earth, is air resistance, and the first principle to understand is that our atmosphere and our own gravity are things belong- ing to this particular world. As human beings we have been conditioned, as it were, or built up by circumstances which only apply to ourselves. Our muscles suit our particu- lar gravity value. Our lungs operate in a mixture of gases which chance to surround this world. Every little detail of the air, even the content of neon and argon, has had its own effect in making our bodies into human form. Think for a moment what you might say of the sea if you had always lived inland and never been told about the ocean, “How could there be life in it, for living creatures cannot breathe without air.”’ Yet we know that fish use oxygen from the sea. We know, for instance, that some plants breathe the very gas that would kill a man, and then we begin to see how utterly life depends for its state upon its actual surround- ings. Consider what this means. In my opinion—and these words should preface nearly all our hard-won statements of fact—it is very likely indeed that many other planets are inhabited. Not because astro- nomers claim to see changes on the face of the images which even the finest telescope can bring, not because of “flying saucers’? which surely would have landed if manned by beings clever enough to construct them, but because it is almost unthinkable that, out of all the “countless worlds’”’ in the universe, ours should be the only one upon which life in some form is to be found. By means of the spectro- scope and other instruments designed to improve our senses or powers of observation it seems that the Moon has no atmosphere in which men could live. We do not know for certain that there is no life below the surface. Some queer troglodyte existence comicloooks.com