Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 67 — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

POST MORTEM For which I'll be everlast- ingly grateful, Duffy said to himself. Nettlerash! Probably suit-scab, like I'll be having myself if I don’t get out of this rig pretty soon. He relaxed as the commodore moved on and the queue started crawling again. A crane of the neck assured him that there were no more uniforms in the hall. He’d had enough for one day of hearing all Forde’s virtues paraded. He thought it funny how those same virtues of the captain’s were the very quali- ties which the crew hated most. His insistence on punc- tuality and adherence to regu- Jations. His unnatural revul- sion for Earth. His lack of sympathy for anyone in the slightest way ill; according to the commodore he hadn’t been a hundred per cent fit himself—but was his own stoicism any reason for ex- pecting everyone else to be a martyr? Take young Ken- wood—if the crew hadn’t intervened the kid would have died. The ship was two days out from the Wheel, returning to the space station with a load of natural, high-refractive Martian glass, when Kenwood passed out for the first time. He was green as the cargo and sweating cold water when they found him draped over the chart screens. Like the rest of the crew, the kid hadn’t been home for a year. It was his maiden trip and nobody thought very much of the incident. All of them had sickened for home, really sickened, at least once. There wasn’t any argument when Forde ordered a sedative for Kenwood and passed the incident off without further comment. Kenwood was sick again an hour later. And every hour after that. Forde said he was to be put on a diet of pilis and no food. But when he had nothing to vomit the navigator was still sick. The bouts came with increasing frequency, the green pallor persisted and he was huddling in his bunk with his legs drawn up, moaning all the time about a pain in his stomach—low down on the right side. The crew had it tagged as appendicitis right off. As yet there were no hard feelings towards the captain—no more than usual, that is—for he was doing his job, getting the ship back to the Wheel as fast as possible. Twelve hours out, he put through a regula- tion call for medical stand-by. 67 comiclbooks.conm