Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 65 — page 95: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION ‘nor take his eyes from the great dark thing which reared up at the sky, as though seeking re-entry into the void which it had left—when ? A tiny sand rat slipped out of his way, a brightly marked snake moved off to the shade of some rocks—there was no danger. He had come from the ship and now he was going back to it—why he had come, why he had been made to return, were things of interest, but not of doubt or fear. Soon the sun had reached the highest point ofits journey, and his shadow was a stunted thing that dragged writhing at his feet. He sweated, and it was good. And now he was quite close to the ship, a distance of no more than a hundred times his own height. The ground was flat, rocky, and nothing grew. The heat made a shimmer of the dark thing of wonder ahead—it was three hundred times his height, with the seatings of its great fins set deep in the sand, sombre, looming, and of much power. About it were sheds and gantries and a 94 workings of many sorts, with cables snaking to and fro, and all was dark and secret feeling in the light of the good sun. He stopped with his gaze still on the ship. He did not know why he stopped, and then he took deep lungfuls of air, and knew that it was the smell which had halted him. It was the smell of swiftly carboned humus, of earth burned to powder and sand fused to clinker rubble. It was the smell made on soil by the blast of spaceships. He was once a member of that crew, once part of the team of that thing over there, and now he was coming back. He searched his brain in a mild worry, and found that there were doors which should have been open but were now firmly shut, and there were new places and channels ready to go to work. He listened—he could hear the humming of motors, and the sound seemed to come from the sheds. Some of them were long, others were tall, reaching up to the first large door in the side of the ship. comicloooks.conm