Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 67 — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

THE EARTH NEVER SETS I was working against the clock, so the Old Man was to be brought out by Chambers in the other crawler. He seemed to have calmed down all right now, but he would have been no good for a job like the one I was doing. I had just stowed the last crate and was heading to- wards the main port when I heard a voice through my suit radio. “Put that thing down, you damned fool! What do you think you’re doing?’ It was the Old Man, talking to someone outside the ship. “I’m going to kill you.”’ The voice was cold and flat. “Do you think I’m going to let you go back to Earth and leave me to rot here? That’s the way you'd planned it, you stiff-necked tin soldier. You’ve always hated me; now it’s my turn. I can pilot that ship.” “You’re mad, you would never get away with it,” said the Old Man. Chambers laughed, a short metallic sound. ‘“‘Oh,- but you're wrong. I have once, already...remember Wilson ?”’ I pulled a big wrench out of a magnetic clip on the wall and walked slowly towards the port. Peering cautiously round the corner, I saw two 121 suited figures standing by the crawler, about ten feet below me. The one with his back towards me was holding a small needler. The sort of gun which, used at full power, could penetrate four inches of armoured steel; or pass right through a spacesuit, leay- ing nothing but a small hole. “Not twice,” the Old Man was saying. “It would break all the laws of probability. An inquiry back on Earth would soon uncover the true facts.” I knew the Old Man was just stalling for time, hoping; Chambers was beyond the reach of logical argument. A lot of things were going on in my mind in that long moment. I remembered the way Chambers had looked at me that time he found me in his quarters; the way he had rushed across to his locker; and how he had chattered away after Wilson’s death, his feeling of power loosening his tongue. “Not if I go back to another part of Earth,” Chambers said. “There are plenty of nations back there who would be prepared to pay a fortune for this ship and the information it contains.” comicloooks.com