Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 71 — page 79: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION dims into gloom. The spirals are lost. A blue pillar glitters - before him and merges into the darkness. His thoughts thrash, weaken, relax limply and sink like men drowning in a calm night sea. Awakening. People, naked, jostling their way out of a great door and fleeing across green earth while the sphere which they ‘have left sighs quietly and lifts itself beyond the moun- tains, beyond the clouds, beyond the sky, beyond... And, for Smithson, a year of wandering from village to village where the other spheres had been. Settling down, and _ Marriage, and—— Clifford. Smithson looked for long minutes at the rusty binder blade. Not every fragment had been lost. Odd bits lay in various places. Even the sites of cities were detectable. The aliens had depleted the population; had endowed it with apparently hereditary telepathy. And future genera- tions. . ? “Is this what was planned for us?’ he wondered. “Or are we striding on a new road—one never glimpsed by the aliens? Perhaps we can combine the best of both— perhaps thought and fiesh could workin harmony. Where will we end now that we’ve been given a purpose?” *“Come on, father.” Gently, six-year-old Clifford made the blade twist out of his father’s grasp and used it as a bait. “Try and catch it,” he chal- lenged. “That’s not fair!” thought Smithson, chuckling. The scar itself had vanished from his ankle. He grinned, rubbing the unblemished flesh. The blade floated on, a yard above the long grass. Smithson waded after it to- wards the village, three miles away, where Clifford and the others were waiting for him. CoOmicbooks.com >