Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 71 — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

EXPLOITER’S END. That time I had argued with Starza about standards, nine years ago. And I had resigned. And Starza sent me to Psych. Good old Carmody. There never would be a white marble villa on Venus. It was a harmless dream, a substitute for what I had lost. But it didn’t matter! Those superimposed patterns had been removed, that thoughtcaster had crippled my thinking, but, by Heaven, I was still an Amalgamated man! They couldn’t take that away. ~ But Starza had been wrong about Carmody. Nothing definite. But when you dedicate your life into extrapolating curves, frozen chunks of time and motion, into the thunder of jets lifting Amalgamated ships from Ter- minorb, your mind becomes a very efficient analogue com- putor, if you know how to use it. I used it now. I fed little things, facts, variables, into that computor, and it told me three times. Probability: sixty per cent. at least. 67 I got up, dressed stiffly. I was trembling. I could still serve, after all. I took the lift up to Admin- istration, and walked down that long grey corridor on leaden feet towards the il- luminated rectangle of Starza’s Office. I opened the door. ‘Hello, darling,” Fern said. She was unhurriedly burn- ing Starza’s report. Starza sat mutely in his chair, head tilted back at an impossible angle, staring at nothing. “It had to be you.” I had never felt so tired. “You would have destroyed the plant, wouldn’t you? Only I showed you another way. Make the Terms revert. And you had that hypo all ready when I reeled into Psych.” I moved towards her carefully. **You’re so damned altruistic, A Guild mindless-controlled,” I said. Fern’s smile was compas- - sionate. She methodically conniclooolks.con)