Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 72 — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

REPLY DEFERRED several circuits jammed. If they were not cleared before the next command almost anything could happen. Ed Sommers watched the shining convertible enter the drive between the two cedars and disappear from view. His immediate surprise slowly changed to mild speculation. Chester Schultz, he mused, was not the rabbit he seemed. True, he played a frightful game of golf and a worse hand of bridge, but he evi- dently knew something about the wholesale grocery business. That enormous, scintillating, green and amber vehicle, resplendent in chrome plate wherever it was possible to stick it, was certainly striking, but it was hardly Chester’s type. Much more likely Loise had had a hand in the choice. That being so, tongues would very soon be wagging. He was almost certain he could hear his own wife on the phone now. He bent down to retrieve the dropped shears, thinking of the inordinate importance women gave to the doings of other women, the darlings. He was idly inspecting a. tuft of grass adhering to the point of one of the blades without any particular urge to remove it, when he heard the ululation of Schultz’s new horn. Ed Sommers raised his bespectacled head and peered rather short-sightedly in the direction of the noise. He had heard some fancy hooters, he reflected, but never one like that. The repetition in- creased his interest. Loise again, he surmised—she loved gadgets, particularly noisy ones. He smiled quietly to himself in good-natured un- derstanding. He knew Loise— ought to have done by now, having been at school with her. Why, he had courted her for a time, but that was many years ago. Twenty years was it? Funny thing she should come to live right across the street from him. Fine house she had, with a big lot reaching right down to the beach. Pity they didn’t have any kids—the place was ideal for them. It was the sudden and continuous braying of that nine-toned hooter which snapped the gentle and friendly 135 commiclooolkks.com 4