Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 67 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION Normally,the customers would pay, but as we aren’t the only firm selling minerals we’ve got to keep our price at a com- petitive level. Can you tell me how we can economise?” “Sure,” I said bitterly. - “You cut the price of raw materials.” “That’s right. But if we cut it too much you go out of business. It would cost more to hire our own prospectors, so inevitably we'd lose in the long run. Consolidated would cut its losses and abandon the Belt. You’d have nowhere to peddle your claims, and the only people to get anything out of it would be a dirty little bunch of criminals. They’d be the bosses because they’d have the money, and you’d dance to their tune and like it. Does the prospect make you happy?” “No one is going to push me around,” I said. “I’m a free agent.” He said a word which, from a younger man, would have earned him a busted nose. The word itself didn’t hurt 24 so much; it was the way in which he said it. “You're as free as my Aunt Fanny,” he said. ““You’ve got to pay for every breath you take, every mouthful of food and drink of water, the clothes you wear, the fuel for this ship, the charges for the thermite gun. Free? Man, you’re so loaded with finan- cial chains that you can hardly move. Push you around? Hell, you don’t need pushing. You move to the tip of a finger. Once Con- solidated is out of the Belt and prices hit the ceiling you'll work for a bowl of slops and like it.” *“You’re talking too much,” I warned. “‘Pipe down.” “Sure I’m talking too much. I’m telling you the truth and you don’t like it. You don’t want to know what’s happen- ing. You don’t want to know that a gang of mobsters are taking over this decant be- cause you and those like you haven’t the guts to stand up against them. You...” He stopped, just in time, and comiclooks.conm