"And you don't love Deneb and your farm?" "I hate both of them!" "But you realize that we must have food. Doesn't it make you feel important to grow more food so we can increase our population?" "No! Why should I care? I want to go to Earth!" Dr. Kalmar shook his head regretfully. He pushed a button on his desk. It was connected to a gravity generator directly under the girl's chair. Four gravities suddenly pushed her down into it and a hypodermic needle jabbed her swiftly with a hypnotic drug. She slumped. He released the button and the artificial gravity abated, but she remained dazed and relaxed. "You're not going to hurt her, are you, Doc?" Mr. Emery begged. "Certainly not. But I suppose you know Social Control's orders." They nodded, the husband gloomily, the wife with a single sharp jerk of her head. "You go right ahead and do it," she said. "I'm sick of working my fingers to the bone while she primps and preens and talks all the time about going to Earth." "Come, Avis," Dr. Kalmar said in a low, commanding voice. She stood up, blank-faced, and followed him out to the Ego Alter room. He closed the door, sat her down in the insulated seat next to the control console, put the wired plastic helmet on her and adjusted it to fit her skull snugly. Running his finger down the treatment sheet of her Social Control file, he set the dials according to its instructions. The psychic areas to be reduced were sex drive, competitiveness and imagination, while the areas of reproductive urge and cooperation were to be intensified. He regulated the individual timers and sent the varying charge through her brain. There was no reaction, no convulsion, no distortion of features. She sat there as if nothing had happened, but her personality had changed as completely as though she had been retrained from birth. Miss Dupont came in without knocking. She knew, of course, that any patient in the Ego Alter room would be incapable of being disturbed. "Rephysical, Dr. Kalmar?" she asked. "I'm afraid so. Will you prepare her, please?" The nurse removed the girl's clothes. There was no resistance. "Such a lovely body," she said. "It's a shame." He shrugged. "Until we have enough people and farms and industries, Miss Dupont, we'll just have to get used to altering people to fit the needs of our society. I'm sure you understand that." "Yes, but it still seems a shame. Bodies like that don't grow on trees." [Illustration] He gently moved the girl into the Rephysical Chamber. "They grow in this machine, though. As soon as we can afford it, which ought to be only a few hundred years from now, we can make any woman look like this, or even better." "And don't forget the men," Miss Dupont said as he started the mitogenetic generator. "We could use some Adonises around here." "We'll have them," he assured her. "Somebody will. None of us'll live that long."