"Of course not." "And it won't be, will it? You promised it wouldn't. Oh, Jus, I simply couldn't stand having an abnormal baby." "No," he said, sticking to the truth as he saw it. "No, it won't be abnormal." They had been through this before, ever since the first month when Doris agreed to the hormone injections and the special diet. He said suddenly: "Did you ever hear of Count Borulwaski? He was a Pole. Handsome, witty, a scholar, and very healthy. He lived to be ninety-eight years old." "Do you mean my baby will be like him? Oh, I'd love that!" "I think he will be very much like Borulwaski," Justin said, again quite honestly. And he hoped to God Doris never took it into her pretty blonde head to look up the man in the encyclopedia. It wasn't likely. That was the nice thing about a girl with so few intellectual pretensions. * * * * * Justin himself--Dr. Justin Weatherby, biochemist, geneticist, endocrinologist, and politician perforce--got his belly full of intellect every day. Since he could abide neither brains nor absolute idiocy, he was often lonely. But President Austin told people: "What I like about Weatherby, he's the only confounded scientist I can understand." To a President of the United States in the hot spot of making unpopular decisions every day and simultaneously seeking reelection, this was important. And it was to have Justin's advice at hand that he had named him consultant to the National Demographic Authority, the agency which--in view of the galloping population crisis--had long since succeeded the Security Council as No. 1 pusher-around of people. Nobody envied Justin this position. Nobody, either, gave Murray Austin a Chinaman's chance of whipping Senator Wheeler. In sixty years not one American President had won a second term; not one had made good his campaign promise to bring order out of chaos. To this unavoidable handicap, President Austin had added one of his own: his deliberate by-passing of the powerful Strip City Bosses who had placed him in office. By habit, Justin glanced at Doris and then at the calendar on his work table with its fatefully-ringed election date of two weeks hence--Tuesday, November 2. A bizarre race, he reflected, between the ballot and the stork. Mind-reading Doris teased: "What if I had a miscarriage?" "My God, don't even think it!" Doris reached for her manicure set and began to do her nails. She'd really never understood why Justin thought her baby would be more important than anyone else's--except to themselves, of course. But if she were puzzled, and if she wished Justin were less secretive about the experiments that took him so often to his Rockland County laboratory camp, she did not actually worry. She said: "You're rather fond of the old goat, aren't you?" "Let us say, rather," said Justin stiffly, "I am fond of my country. Murray Austin is the first President I can remember who is really trying to do something."