Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 66 — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

ASTEROIDS own Office right next door and undercut you like hell.” “You need a licence to operate,” he said, and looked hard at me. ““You buy regis- tered claims and sell them for what you can get. I trust that you understand that?” “You don’t have to teach me business ethics,’ I snapped. “IT am an honest man and intend remaining that way. Well? Yes or no?” “Yes,” he said. “‘For your price in cash and for a quick sale. Here are the assets.” The assets comprised a half dozen assorted claims, not one of them worth the paper they were printed on. The only other thing was a framed certificate of a claim made way back, and I stopped the old man as he was taking it down from the wall. **Leave it, it’s mine.” ““Not this one,’ he said. “This is a genuine claim. I made it myself. A good, big Asteroid, loaded with high- grade radioactives. It’s worth a lot more than you’re offering for the rest of the business.” **Leave it,” I repeated, and riffiled a sheaf of credit notes. ““Leave it, or it’s no deal.” He left it. Maybe his little girl had something to do with it, or maybe it was the sound 71 of money, I wouldn’t know. But I happened to bump into him shortly after, and it turned out that his “‘little girl’ was about twenty-five and would have weighed around ten stone on Earth. She was in proportion and carried herself well, and I learned afterwards that she’d worked at a local burlesque as a stripper. Still, compared to the old man, I suppose she could be classed as a “‘little girl.’’ Young girl, anyway. The business mine, I made some drastic alterations. I altered the sign; it was one of those small, discreet things, invisible from a couple of hundred yards away. I paid out half of what I had left and got a sign painter to do me one guaranteed visible for at least a mile. Then I installed a continuous tape- player, fitted to external speak- ers, and plastered the walls with facsimilies of genuine claims. I also found a printer who would run me off some forms which looked as near to the real thing as he could get away with, and still stay inside the law. I bought a big map of the Asteroid belt, a boxful of coloured pins, a geiger counter, which [ fixed so that it registered ten times higher than it should comicbooks.com