Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 72 — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

REWARD FOR VALOUR story about a back hills mine. Don’t ask me why, but by damn if there isn’t a story here, Ili make one.” He stuck out a square chin in a bellicose pose of a fighter who hadn’t yet learned the feel of an .opponent’s fist. His whole face was a shallow mask of unfeeling arrogance. There was no sensitivity around his eyes or mouth. To him, beauty would be an exercise in semantics, deliber- ately false, measured incolumn inches. Old Sam was responding with truculence and stupidity. “I don’t know anything to tell about,” he was mumbling contrarily. “We just mine Dural ore and that’s all there is to it.” “But my damn,” the reporter shouted, as if trying to get through the wall of stupidity by volume of voice. *‘Aren’t there even any colour- ful characters? What the hell do men come to work here for? Something must drive them here. A sane man wouldn’t come out of choice. Hell, give me a man—any man—and I'll make a story 103 out of him. I gotta have some- thing!” *“What about MacNab?” I heard myself asking. I could have kicked myself, because I had intended to stay out of it. The reporter whirled around. “Who are you?” he asked belligerently. ““Who asked you to stick your nose in?” aa = ; i ‘““He’s a government in- spector,” Sam replied. Then, defensively: “‘And a decent one.”’ “Oh.” The reporter grunted the word contemptuously. His lip curled and he stared insolently at me. I was more polite. I kept my lip straight when I looked back at him. “Who’s MacNab?” he asked, after his look had put me in my place. ““MacNab is the man who conquered Cailisto single handed, and opened up the trade in diamonds,” I an- swered hotly. Then I rushed on: “‘MacNab is the man— the only man in history—who nursed a ship on manual control through the rings of Saturn—back in the days comicloooks.conrn