"It isn't serious at all," she said, raising her head and looking at him for the first time. "They said that the operation will take only a few minutes. They said cancer wouldn't ever be dangerous if they always found it as quickly as this time. We--I'm really very lucky, they said." "But you should have told me that this was your check day. I was worried about the Patagonian case, and I just--" Then Greg stared straight at his wife, trying to pierce the strangeness that covered her eyes. He realized in a flood of terror the full implications of this day. "Dora--do they let you have the child if you're pregnant when they find cancer? I don't remember...." * * * * * She sat erect and pushed the hair away from her eyes, suddenly the stronger of the two. "Of course, I can have the child," she said. "And please don't worry about today. I was silly, and fainted when they brought in the report, and when I came to I tried to pretend that I'd suffered amnesia. It was foolish because they could have identified me from their records, but they told me that lots of women get the same idea, so maybe I'm not so terrible after all." Dennis wailed from the nursery and Phyllis' thin cry joined his. "They're lonely," Dora said. "I'll go and see--" "Wait. You didn't make a decision?" "Of course I did." She smiled palely. "I reserved passage." "But you can't go away! What would I do without you and the kids?" "Don't shout so. You'll frighten them. And stop thinking about yourself. You know I'd be willing to undergo sterilization. But we can't inflict it on the kids when they're still too young to decide for themselves." "I'll find some way out. There must be someone who'd be willing to be bought--" "Don't talk that way," she tried to laugh. "After all, you've always said you'd like to have the children see another planet." Greg sat down again and covered his face with his hands. "Don't say that, Dora. Sure, I'd like to take my family to Venus if they ever opened it up for colonization. But that's a fine planet. Mars is hell, and the law says I can't go with you or the kids." "That's exactly right. The law says that we're breeding a cancer-free race of humans on Earth by sending to Mars all the people who prove to be susceptible." Greg shook his head. "That plan wasn't set up just to breed out cancer prones. It was partly to keep Earth from starvation when overpopulation became an impossible problem. It isn't really a moral issue. Look, you can probably cancel your passage, and we can arrange sterilization. The kids will approve when they grow up." Now it was Dora who held Greg close. "I don't want to leave you," she said desperately, "but there's nothing else to do. You know the Carstairs, and the Andresens. The same thing happened to both of those girls. They talked it over with their husbands and decided on sterilization, and the Andresens broke up the next year and Mrs. Carstairs is in a mental home...."