Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 67 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

THE MAN IN BETWEEN I was having trouble with my eyes. Harry wasn’t surprised. He seemed to be quite con- tented talking to himself. ~ “You don’t because you can’t,” he said. ““Space is in your blood and you can’t get it out. I'll bet that you worked on Mars until they beat the desert and made life easy. Then you came out here to the Belt. When the ships reach out towards Jupiter you'll be on them, too. You know what you are, Jim? You’re a pioneer.” He sucked at his pipe and kept on talking. I seemed to be sinking in a cloud because his voice seemed awfully far away. “You don’t like things as they are here, but you won’t do anything about it. You let yourself be robbed and swindled, and all you can think of is getting drunk. You blame Consolidated, but you never stop to blame yourself. You’re weak, Jim. You haven’t the guts to stand up for what you represent. You’re a coward.” | 11 I swung at him then, but my arm had no strength and all I did was to roll over so that I stared into his face. He grinned at me and blew smoke into my eyes. That was the last thing I remembered. I awoke and my stomach told me that I was in space. Beneath me I felt the hard surface of a bunk; across chest and thighs webbing held me down, but I wasn’t a prisoner. I released the snaps and swung my legs over the edge of the bunk, slapping my magnaboots against the metal of the floor before trying to stand upright. I sat down again as my head almost burst and was still nursing it when Harry came aft from the controls. “Awake, Jim?” He slipped a coffee bulb in my hand. “Drink this and you'll get rid of the butterflies.” He waited until I’d drained the container through its tube. “Better ?”’ -“T’m alive.” I looked comiclbooks.com