Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 66 — page 88: what you’re looking at

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

NUISANCE VALUE reliable, and relaxed. In time, the answer to the problem would turn up. Meanwhile, there was no great hurry. It was ridiculous to think that the scientists of the other side, handicapped as_ they were by (and here each in- serted the current catchwords), would beat their own splendid technologists ... Some people, however, in- sist on finding out for them- selves. On the strength of a rather ingenious, and so far quite private, application of nuclear energy to rocket pro- pulsion which was hideously expensive and also about six times as reliable as chemical drives, a team without pre- conceived ideas had sunk their teeth in the problem and found it very tough chewing. After the three failures which had preceded this fresh shot, it had been doubtful for a while if another would be made. However, the logic was clear. The expensive part of the equipment—the spaceship itself, including nine million pounds’ worth of telemetering gear and the only proven atomic rocket motor on Earth small enough to lift itself more than fifty feet off the ground—was still in one piece. It had functioned without a flaw. Therefore, the angle to 87 be attacked was the human one. The pilots must be at fault. They threw their early, and obvious, decisions out of the window. Because the ship was entirely automatic, they had assumed that an ordinary pilot with some experience of stratosphere flying in pressure suits would do, provided he was free of agoraphobia, be- cause of the size of space, and claustrophobia, because of the size of the pilot’s cabin— approximately that of a roomy coffin and of unpleasantly similar shape. There were many kinds of available pilot; there was only one ship, and they had it. Pilots, therefore, were, comparatively speaking, expendable. Of course, it would be nice to get one back with his mind in one piece, since otherwise there wasn’t much point in having the SRB 2 Thus reasoning, they sent for Dolman and Foley, who had come up with an answer so ridiculous that no one except the two psychologists themselves, and one other man, knew what it was. That was why Foley was sitting now with his hands aching from the nervous bending and twisting he had given them. It had better be the right comiclooks.conn