Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 71 — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

YOU DO TAKE IT WITH YOU trips to the Moon in my distant youth, which I found _ dull and nauseating, I pre- ferred to see the new Lunar cities and the Martian At- -mospheric Development on the local TV reels. You either like space, or you don’t. Graves had liked it alright, and I wondered how he cared for his enforced retire- ment since his heart refused to take the acceleration. For one thing, he was a pioneer—one of the first five hundred off the Earth—and that put him ten medals and five thousand a year ahead of the rest of the astronautical world, and, being his banker, I knew he held a tidy wad of Martian holdings that had trebled their value since the Free Atmosphere Project had been successfully launched. All of which was nice gravy, but I suppose it wouldn’t sweeten the earthing pill to a man who had been space- crazy ever since the first V2 rocket had landed in England back in the twentieth. Omit- ting confidential financial in- formation, I said as much to George as we tucked into some excellent roast lamb. “IT guess all the pioneers had more crazy star-courage than sense,” was George’s opinion. “‘Me for terra firma every time. I don’t even like being 500 feet up in a copter. But they had guts alright. Those rickety bits of machin- ery of the 1960’s needed men like Graves, thin, and tough as biltong. They made up their minds and stuck to their decisions, never mind who got hurt. I remember my mother’s face when the news came through about my old man, and I was hardly in knee britches.” “Your father?” I said in surprise. . “Yes. He died in space. Didn’t you know?” I shook my head. “I never knew he was a spaceman. Come to think of it, Dve never heard you mention him before.” — “Very likely not. It bit deep, and it was a long time ago. But he was, a pioneer who got the ten medals but not the five.thousand a year. Not many of them did live to collect the cash. There’s Graves and a few dozen others, but most of them are 135 Comicbooks.conn