Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 72 — page 95: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION portant. You taught us to search for them, and never stop searching. Had you any realisa- tion, grandfather, how old- fashioned you were? How rare they are? How lonely a man can be who cannot settle for less? Perhaps you did, for it is a tremendous thing to have found them—and of all places, in an old shuttle bum. “What’s so exceptional about MacNab?’ I asked. “‘As a trusted employee of the Slag Hills Transit System, I ain’t in the habit of gossiping about my fellow workers,” he reproached me. “Anyhow, I’m closing up the ticket. office until further notice.” He pulled a mesh wire grate over the window and fastened it from within. He came out of the back door of the cubby hole and around to a counter where coveralls and respira- tors were piled on a table. “T heard you ask the ticket agent about MacNab,” he said, without so much as a twitch of a smile. I did a short double take. I couldn’t tell whether the old bird was Mars happy, or 94: kidding me. I played it straight. ““T hear he’s pretty depend- able,” I said. “You ain’t been around much, have you son?’’ he asked. “‘But then, I reckon you wasn’t even born when MacNab was the top space pilot in the whole solar system.”” “Funny,” I commented, seriously. “‘If he was so great, you'd think I’d have read about him somewhere— studied about him in school or something.”’ ‘““He didn’t get the breaks,” the old trader commented. ‘““Why, I remember the time he spent two years flying a two- man ship out to Saturn and back. The navigator guy with him went space crazy—one of them sly kinds of crazy—and MacNab didn’t realise it until they was smack dab in the middle of Saturn’s rings. For twelve days, without any relief and a crazy man on his hands, MacNab nursed that ship through the debris until he could slow down enough to turn and get out of it. Hand operated. There wasn’t no ceomicbooks.conn -