Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 72 — page 142: what you’re looking at

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

REPLY DEFERRED fire chief as he put down the phone in the safety of Schultz’s study. “‘‘Hook and ladder starts devastating fire’.”” He shrugged helplessly. “Never live that down.”’ He turned to his distressed and unwilling hosts. “Don’t worry, folks. They've got three more wag- gons on the way now.” He scratched the back of his neck. “‘Just can’t figure that out. Blowing up like that. New engine, too. Very latest. Must have been a backfire > 39 or sumpin’. “But...” began Sommers, “it was the . . .” Then he closed his mouth. He was convinced that the sphere had dealt with the axe in the same manner as the hammer Schultz had thrown at it, but the chaos in the yard had evidently so distracted the attention of the others to enquire where that axe had gone. He had no clear idea himself. Furthermore, what he was thinking was fantastic. Hammers and axes did not just puff off into gaseous metal at thousands of degrees Centrigrade unless there was a very noticeable source of heat to boil them. The sphere had been perfectly cold as far as he could recall. Further distracting conjec- ture became impossible. The arrival of the three new ap- pliances emphatically denied constructive thought. Two minutes later, however, the incandescent skeleton of the fire engine in the centre of the scorched and blackened yard was transformed into billow- ing white mounds of foam. “There now,’ announced the fire chief, whose name they discovered was Maguffy, “‘no time at all and everything right as rain. Any time you have a fire just you call us. We'll fix it.” With that he ambled into the yard and looked keenly around to the accompaniment of a further hitch of his belt. ‘“‘Now, where were we? Oh yeah. Hey.” The last observation was of genuine surprise. **Where is it?” ; They all looked. After three minutes they were satisfied the thing had gone. “Burnt to a cinder, I shouldn’t wonder,” said one of the crew of Maguffy’s engine, wiping the sweat off his sooty face. ‘Now we’ll never know.” 141 comiclooks.corn