Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 67 — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

THE EARTH NEVER SETS place—but it had hit Chambers worst of all. The Moon Base; the newest and proudest outpost of the British Empire, they called it in the newspapers back home. Every nation on Earth had been working at top pressure for over twenty years, but it was us, the muddlers, the good old stupid British, who got there first. We planted the flag there in the white dust and stood to attention in our space suits whilst the Old Man intoned the cere- mony and added a quotation from Kipling for. luck. We had reckoned without Earth politics. There was hell to pay in the U.N. when the news of our landing broke. All the other nations who ‘had been working unsuccess- fully on similar projects yelled sour grapes loud enough to be heard up here at Base. If it had been one of them who had made it, they would have cocked a snook at the rest and told them to go chase themselves. But British diplomacy does not work that way. In the face of accusations of dastardly imperialism, ag- gressive intentions and all the rest of it, our delegate got off his frock-tailed coat, smoothed his elegant moustache and 109 made what amounted to an apology for our unseemly conduct in showing such superiority of brains and guts. He went on to say that the Commonwealth government were prepared to discuss the matter of the Moon Base with a representative committee of member nations. This quelled the storm tem- porarily and the U.N. committee on Extra-Terres- trial Colonisation was formed, under the chairmanship of the French delegate. The first motion passed by the com- mittee was one forbidding the launching of spaceships by any nation until the committee had reached full agreement on the matters before it for consideration. The playing fields of Eton triumphed again, | and our government con- curred without a murmur of protest. That was three years ago. All very fine and ethical, except for one thing; we were stuck on the Moon. There was plenty of food, we were quite comfortable and we had our work to do, but it’s a helluva thing to stand in the dust looking at your home planet shining away invitingly and know that you haven’t a dog’s chance of getting back there until some moribund comicloooks.com