Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 66 — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION and I rode the crest of the wave. I was respected, fairly wealthy, with access to top- secret information and the world at my finger tips. I should have been happy. I wasn’t. Maybe if I had married and had children of my own I would have rid myself of the incubus which haunted me. Maybe I was too introverted, too taken with living in the past even while working to-, wards the future. I knew enough of psychology to know that I was suffering from a guilt complex, that I was tearing myself apart with all the. thoughts of what might have been. The little things I could have done, had intended to do, but had left too late. And there was no surcease for me in all the world. Time passed as time does. My hair grew white, my shoulders stooped, my eyes grew weak and my hands lacked their sureness. Atomics spread throughout the world and spaceships soared to the Moon. New discoveries were 34 made, and the final secrets of nature began to yield to our probing. Then two things happened almost simultaneously and altered all my life. Vendaris, after thirty years of experimentation, discovered a serum which, at first glance, promised immortality. It was a complex molecule chain which, when injected into the bloodstream, arrested the ageing of the tissues. The serum _ carried its own safeguard, in that it brought sterility. Men could live for ever, but it would be a barren existence. It was good that way. Young couples could mate and have their children and then, when in their prime, take the serum. The snags were minor. A fresh injection was needed every seven years or ageing would re-commence. And the serum had to be new; storing it caused degeneration of the complex chain. The second thing was that I discovered time travel. I was eighty-seven then, sixty-one years after the death comicloooks.com