Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 72 — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION locked in puzzlement to- ward MacNab. He was paw- ing at the levers, jerking them to and fro. They moved readily, too readily. They moved as if they were free to move, unencumbered by any pull upon them. The ship continued to climb. MacNab looked back at me. His face was pale, but there was no fear in it. “The controls snapped,” he said quietly. “I reported how worn they were, dozens of times, to the Company. They ignored my reports. Now they’ve snapped. I can’t con- trol the ship.” ““There’s nothing to do?” I asked. “Nothing,” he answered. “Nothing at all.” “1’m glad,” I said, and was puzzled to hear myself saying it. He looked at me strangely. “lm sorry,” Iosaid. “I didn’t mean that. Or rather, I guess | meant it for myself, without thinking about you.” “Then you can say it for both of us,’ he answered. He turned away and looked through the window in the nose of the ship. He was silent for a while, a few minutes. It was as if he felt the certainty of nothing to do, and did not pretend by futile motions to be doing anything. He knew the mechanism of the ship, what could be done in flight, and what could be done only on the ground. It was a life raft, built to get passengers from a space liner to a landing place in emergency. No more suitable for continuous and commer- cial use than the olden rubber life rafts upon the sea of Earth. Except for greed and graft, it would not have been put into commercial use at all. And this time the men responsible would not be caught in their trap; they could still sit behind their desks and shake their heads and hypocritically say it was too bad, pilot must have been drinking. “Up here,’” MacNab called back to me, “‘you can see the stars. Come up and sit in the co-pilot’s seat. See the stars!” There was a singing ecstasy in his voice. I left my seat and went up front. 110 commicloolks.com