Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 71 — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION distance a beautiful silver moonship was taxi-ing across to the pits, with enough noise spouting from her auxil- lary jets to distract the most animated conversationalists. We watched in silence as she disappeared, and later re- appeared in Pit No. 10, lifting her nose in leisurely disdain to the faintly outlined satel- lite in the clear African sky. A dozen or so men and three women passengers moved to- wards her, carrying take-off gear, and disappeared down the boarding ramp. “What happened to the other two? Tom and Harry ?’’ asked George, still brooding over the murder. ““Eh!”? Graves blinked, and brought his mind back. “‘Oh, the pilot went out in a busted rocket a year or two after- wards. The monatomic used to do that, you know, just when you thought you’d reached escape-v. And the navigator lasted lucky a lot longer. Long enough, I’m sure he’d consider, to have - made it worth while.”’ “H’m...Ifyou’re right... I don’t like blackmailers,”’ 156 said George at last, very doubtfully. = “But murder... To be shut ~ up with such a man would be — punishment enough. And what a death,” I remonstrated, remembering Paul. “‘Perhaps even that whole plant... It must have been on even his mad conscience to the end — of his days.” “We-ell!” : Henry Graves absently. With | an unnamable noise of nerve- shattering terror, the main jets of the moon rocket fired. — Pit No. 10 was filled with the — fires of Hell, as second by second she raised herself, yard by increasing yard, away from the hands that made her. The astronaut’s eye, lit by a thousand longing memories, hungered and thirsted after the lengthening column of | fire, drank in her incredible ~ speed, fed vicariously on the glory of fire as the hydrogen filler gouged out in breath- taking incandescence. “N-no .. . 1 wouldn’t say that. It never cost him a moment’s loss of sleep. In fact . . . I'd practically for- gottenit...” Commicbooks.conn commenced —