Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 66 — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION “Yes.” The officer stared at Sam. “Sometimes we never find them at all. No one ever finds them.” He rose. “I shall send one of our people around to the wife. Poor soul, she will need all the comfort she can get in the bleak days to come. It is not easy to accept the loss of someone who has been the major part of your life.” Sam nodded, a little sur- prised at the other’s im- mediate thought of the wife, and felt a glow of shame as he remembered his own emotions when he had taken her money. He sighed, shaking hands as if the contact were something strange to him, and stepped from the cool office into the light of the bright sun. He was finished. He had done all he could, all he intended to do, and he had done nothing. The isolation of a few habit- patterns. The narrowing down of the moment and place at which the man had vanished. The elimination of any reason- able cause for the disappear- 60 ance. Negative results. The knowing what Jud had nzot done, and now? The great question of why and how. Particularly how. How did a man vanish? Without money, clothes, friends. Without any of the things civilisation regards as necessities. Vanishing as if he had stepped into a swamp, a quicksand, a hole. It is not easy for a man to vanish when a horde of clerks note his every move, his address, his employment. When the police watch every stranger and eyes stare, wedded to questioning brains. Who is he? Where does he come from? What does he do? No. It is not easy to step from life without leaving a trace. And why? Why leaveeverything gained from a lifetime of machine- like work? Sam stood on the street and breathed deeply at the warm air. What would make him leave his home and wife, his possessions and child? A great religious ex- perience? A vision? A sudden comiclooks.cormn