Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 71 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

THE LITTLE CORPORAL “Painful, I mean?” girl asked anxiously. “Not in the least. For ten hours you'll feel exactly as you do now.” ‘And then?” “We needn’t go into that. But it won’t hurt.” “Tell her,’’ said Esther. “She can’t take pain. She must know.” “Your body gradually col- lapses inside. You can still move about a bit, but after another hour it’s as well to sit down. You might fall and hurt yourself. You couldn’t get up. You look the same, even at the end, and the last thing to go is your sight. It’s like sleeping. You don’t know much at the end. It’s about the easiest death anyone could have.” “How do you know about it?’ Marjory asked tensely. “People have died from black moss with their radio turned on. They described everything, right to the end. We know everything about it until they can’t speak any more. But they’re unconscious by then.”’ “Can we write letters that the someone might find?’ Esther asked. “No one will ever find anything. Soon after we die the ship will gradually collapse, too. No one will come near it, for of course it’s contaminated. We’re stopping so that we'll drift in space. In a week there will be no danger to anyone—everything will be dead dust, quite harmless.” | Esther shivered. “‘Can’t you make it sound a little rosier?”’ she demanded. “If you think it will help.” “Nothing will help, I sup- pose ?”’ NO; Marjory looked up. “Can we talk on the radio?” “Not even that, I’m afraid. Ceres hasn’t a big enough station yet to hear our calls, and Mars, Venus and Earth are all too far. We could overload the radio and get a distress call out, but there’s no point in that. Any rescue ship might hit the black moss, too.” “So there’s nothing to do but sit around and die?” It was Esther, the calmer, more self-sufficient of the two. comiclsoolkS.com