Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 67 — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

Men built the ships, but getting them into space was— A WOMAN’S WORK by E. C. TUBB OHN WAS MORE WORRIED that evening than she had ever seen him before. Not even that time three years ago when they had first met had Margaret known him so dis- traught, so torn by inward conflict. He threw down his book and glowered at the wall, his dark, curly hair rumpled from the frequent passage of his hand, his pale blue eyes strained and elusive in the taut pallor of his face. “I can’t do it,’’ he said. “‘I just know that I’m going to fail.” ““That’s nonsense,” said Margaret. ““You won’t fail.” Shesaidit firmly, determinedly, as if the very act of saying it would make it a fact. “You can’t fail, not now, not after all these years.” “IT don’t know,” he said dubiously. “Ijustdon’tknow.” “I do.”’ Margaret smiled at him, and rising from her chair crossed the room to- 47 wards him. She moved with a lithe grace impossible to find in any woman who had yet to reach maturity, and as she stood beside him she stroked his hair with a gesture at once that of a mistress and a mother. “‘You’re worried,” she soothed. “‘You’ve been studying too hard. You'll pass the exam and you know it.” She laughed with forced humour. “‘You can’t let me down now, John, not after all this time.” “Would it be letting you down?’ He turned and his arms went around her, his face pressed against the warmth of her body. “If I do pass, Margaret, you know what it will mean?” “T know.” “IT shall be sent to space school. I shall have to leave right away for the base on the Moon there to train as a pilot. I shall have to leave you.” comicloooks.com