The Altar at Midnight

The Kornbluth began writing at 15. His first solo story, The Rocket of 1955, was published in Richard Wilson's fanzine Escape (Vol 1 No 2, August 1939); his first collaboration, Stepsons of Mars, written with Richard Wilson and published under the name Ivar Towers, appeared in the April 1940 Astonishing. His other short fiction includes The Little Black Bag, The Marching Morons, The Altar at Midnight, MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie, Gomez and The Advent on Channel 12. He had quite a rum-blossom on him for a kid, I thought at first. But when he moved closer to the light by the cash register to ask the bartender for a match or something, I saw it wasn't that. Not just the nose. Broken veins on his cheeks, too, and the funny eyes. He must have seen me look, because he slid back away from the light.