"I didn't mean that, sir. They're moving folks out in fact. That's why I'm here. Grandpa had this farm, but they took it. They took 'em all and threw 'em together with automation. For better production, they claimed. Nobody's allowed back but the damned button-pushers." He spoke bitterly. "They said the rest of us would get in the way of the machines." "In the towns where do they live?" "Well, the empty factories mostly. Like here, they're all closed down, you know, except the ones on the Space Program." He did not speak again until they had crossed the sagging, rust-coated George Washington Bridge. Looming out of a great signboard high on the Palisades a space-helmeted Uncle Sam pointed an imperative finger at their approach: "For the American Dream, Buy Space Bonds!" There was eager conviction in the lad's voice: "Gosh, when will we make it, sir?" Even Boss Hackett, viewing Camp Jukes in its isolated fold of the Rockland County Ramapos, marveled at the political strings Justin must have pulled to create it. Its spacious gardens studded with miniature rustic cabins stood like a last remnant of heaven in a world gone to hell. But as they watched from a rise of ground the group's calisthenics on the playing field below, Hackett burst out: "Dammit, man! You bring me clear up here to see a couple dozen children?" "You'd better look again," Justin said quietly. "They are not children." * * * * * Hackett glared--and gasped. "But I can well remember when they were," Justin went on. "When I took them from various welfare bureaus, their average age was eighteen months. The girls' average height was thirty-one inches, the boys a trifle more. Well, that's still their height, but they are now twenty years old. Their bodies are of perfect proportion, and their health and I.Q. are far above the national average. "Are you trying to tell me--" Hackett began in horror. "No, let me finish. Really, there isn't much new. The old Romans practiced a crude form of artificial dwarfing, but for their own sadistic amusement. And we've always had natural midgets and some very famous ones. Philetas, the tutor of Ptolemy; Richard Gibson, the painter; Count Borulwaski of Poland. They were all tiny, extremely intelligent, and lived good long lives. "What the early endocrinologists found was that a deficiency of growth hormone in the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland caused the condition. They corrected it by injecting the right pituitary extracts so the midgets grew normally. "Charlie, what I've done is merely reverse the process by a proper manipulation of glandular balance. It's nothing they couldn't have done a century ago. And there's your result: a new and better breed of human in which nothing is omitted but size." Hackett sat heavily down on a rock and stared at the group. "Good Lord, man, why did you do it?" * * * * * Justin replied with another question.