Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 72 — page 100: what you’re looking at

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

REWARD FOR VALOUR wind up as spur shuttle service from the mines and trading posts to the trunk lines. The same route is followed by the space pilots, and often simultaneously. With wry amusement, and some pity, one can fasten the classic recommendation upon most of these old boys. They are good men—when sober. In times past, I often wondered what these old boys thought about—the boys who had explored the vastness of space by the seat of their britches—and now piloted ore shuttles. I wondered what MacNab thought about, what hells and tortures he went through as he saw himself dropping from ace pilot down a notch, another notch, and still another. I wondered if he had a sense of failure, of somehow missing the goal of high and noble purpose—a grief to match my own. There was no question but that his had been a life of valour, unrecognised perhaps, but nonetheless very real. In a less spectacular sense, had mine? 99 Grandfather, the rewards for honour and integrity, for striv- ing always toward nobility of the spirit, not ever counting the cost if right be involved—those rewards have not come to me. I could have liked MacNab when I met him back there in the trading post. But there was something about him aloof from like or dislike. Others might have classed him as nothing more than an old shuttle bum, but I felt the glamorous aura still about him of the old space pilot— the real space pilot and not the glorified truck drivers of today. Nowadays, a pilot presses a button at the beginning of the journey and another button at the end. Automatics handle all the rest. But in MacNab’s day, pilots searched the black reaches of space as endlessly and anxiously as the ancient mariners searched the sea. Space crept into their eyes, and back of their eyes, and never left their eyes again. And when one looked into those eyes, one somehow looked into the depths of space. comicloooks.conn