Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 71 — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

THE LITTLE CORPORAL anyone else want to talk to the father confessor? Because it’s free. How about you?’ He looked at Marjory. “I would like to talk to you,” she said in the same quiet tone. “But not when you're like this.” “T’m not like this. You only think so.” He took her gently by the arm and led her to his cabin. Sometimes it seemed as if everything was on Barker’s side. Anything he wanted was at hand, anything that had to be done he could do. He had been making a deep- space vessel of the little launch that hopped about the asteroid, secretly, alone. No one had thought it was pos- sible, so it had been easy for him. Everyone had known he spent a lot of time working on the launch, but no more than he spent on the atmosphere plant, of which little of the original remained, on a new wing he was building to the blockhouse, on a dozen other things. It had been simple for him to make the launch run imperfectly now and_ then, each time a new fault, and it 29 was the natural thing for him to work on it again. Not one thought there was any danger that with a few spanners and some sheets of tin he could make the launch capable of space flight. Not until he and Winter were gone on it. And sometimes it seemed that Barker had to fight for every inch as if it were a mile. Why should half the stolen provisions turn out to be bad, for example; why should the launch land on Mars in the first storm for years; why should Iden, the Martian general, after promis- ing co-operation in which he had nothing to lose, un- accountably go over to the Alliance? There were some cruel tricks on Barker’s road to power for the second time. He and Winter were often alone, always in danger, and there was plenty to destroy forever Winter’s earlier be- lief that Barker had only to whistle for a wind and it blew. But they built their new empire so swiftly and surely that by the time the Alliance even knew Barker was on Mars—he had been expected, comiclooks.com