Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 66 — page 73: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION have done, and I was all set to clean up. At first business was slow. People kept bothering me with claims which they wanted to sell, and became annoyed when I gave them the cold shoulder. I wasn’t interested in buying claims; I wanted to sell Asteroids, the more the better, and I wanted to start selling them fast. I made my first touch to a youngster who should have had more sense. He came into the office and stared with awe at the photostat-plastered walls. I busied myself with scribbling notes on a pad, then when I figured that he’d seen enough to make him eager, looked up with a polite, half-bored ex- pression. There was a good reason for that expression. Selling, no matter what, depends a lot on psychology. In the market place, or its modern equivalent, the Exhibitions, I always wore a cheerful smile, as if I was so pleased at handling the product that I couldn’t contain myself. I also used a lot of patter designed solely to make the pitch forget what I was saying and to fill out time for purposes of the demonstration. But here, in a sleek office, redolent of easy 72 money and success, I could afford to be bored and off- hand. Correction, I couldn’t afford not to be. Try and shove a thing like an Asteroid down a customer’s throat and he will gag immediately. The trick in selling something like that is to make them want you to sell. Once you can do that the rest comes easy. “Yes? I pitched my voice just right and used my best English. ““Can I help you?” “IT...” He swallowed and sat down in the customer’s chair. “I’m looking for a good Asteroid, one with plenty of mineral and radioactives; you know the sort of thing I mean.” I did, indeed. He only wanted what half the Universe was looking for; the other half was looking for those who had already found it, but I nodded as though his request was perfectly reasonable. “Such an Asteroid will come expensive,” I warned. *“A claim of such nature is obviously more valuable than an uncharted rock.’’ We deal- ers in Asteroids called them ‘rocks’? and the charted ones *‘claims.”’ I was careful not to get the terms mixed up. I was also careful to switch on the recorder beneath my desk so conmcloooks.com