She nodded. "I've been wondering what it will be like to be free for three days." Sunday came. They spent the meditation hours together. The news on the bulletin board was ignored. In the evening he seemed preoccupied. "They have begun calling men back," he explained. Then: "But don't think for a moment that I'll let them call me before we're married. Still, I wish I hadn't studied up so on the new weapons. They're putting the new ships in service, and--But I'm not supposed to talk about it." Early Monday morning she drew her wedding issue of clothes: tan linen blouse and slacks; nylox underthings and pajamas; woven sandals and nylox anklets. As she dallied under the shower she felt guilty, for production had to go on, and every moment she lost had to be made up somewhere. He came for her at mid-morning and they went before the Council and said their vows. Afterwards they flew above plains and ruins until they reached a city that had not been wholly destroyed. She waited while he filed their identification with the Council and the command post, and then went with him to a huge building which seemed almost devoid of life. Their suite was luxurious beyond her imagining, and it increased the sense of guilt and unrest in her being. During the next day and part of the third, as they wandered through galleries and planetariums and stellar-domes, she thought often of the girls at the machines in the factories. His orders came in the afternoon. She returned to the factory alone. If such were possible, she worked harder now. Her birthday had come and gone and she was on a sixteen-hour shift. She didn't mind because she wanted the men to have everything they needed to win and hasten the day when the big job would be done. Food rations became less each day. At first there was grumbling among the trainees, but it died out in the knowledge that sacrifices were necessary and that boys and girls were sharing alike. The uniforms of the trainees began to look worn. The men no longer seemed quite as big and handsome and vital as they once had. And then the orders came for clinical tests. The Supreme Council sought an answer to why children were not being born. * * * * * Through June she had hoped, and again in July, but in August she was convinced that she wasn't going to become a mother. And when the request came for volunteers to work eighteen and twenty hours, she took twenty. There were times when she couldn't sleep and wanted to be doing something. This feverishness was shared by others. They seemed almost hysterically eager to produce more, to provide everything the men needed. The man who registered the volunteers was grim and his eyes were blood-rimmed. As she came out she heard him mutter to another, "There's a breaking point somewhere. We're driving them far beyond their strength." The other came back, "It's that or death--maybe both." She got her test in September. It said simply that she was fertile.