“Sonny,” said a redheaded man of eighty or thereabouts. The identical-twin women were named The Kids. The baby was named Him. The rest of the troop were named Girl, Ma, or Sonny. After introductions Ross noticed that Him had been passed to another Ma who was placidly suckling him. She had milk; it dribbled from the corner of the baby’s mouth. “There isn’t another baby left in the ship, is there?” Ross asked in alarm. They laughed and the Ma suckling the baby said: “There was, but she died. Mostly they do when you put them into the box after they get born. Ma here was lucky. Her Him didn’t die.” “Put them in the box? What box? Why?” Marconi was nudging him fiercely in the ribs. He ignored it. They laughed amiably at his ignorance and explained that the box was the box, and that you put your newborn babies into it because you put your newborn babies into it. A beep tone sounded from the ship. Ma said, “We have to go back now, The Representative of the Haarland Trading Corporation Marconi.” “What for?” Ma said, “At regular intervals signaled by a tone of six hundred cycles and an intermittent downward shifting of the ship lights from standard illumination frequency to a signal frequency of 420 millimicrons, ship’s operating personnel take up positions at the control boards for recalibration of ship-working meters and instruments against the battery of standard masters. We’ll be right back.” They trooped through the hatch, leaving Ross and Marconi staring at each other in the decontamination tank. “Well,” Ross said slowly, “at last I know why the Longliner Departments have their little secrets. ‘The box.’ I say it’s murder.” “Be reasonable,” Marconi told him—but his own face was white under the glaring germicidal lamps. “You can’t let them increase without limit or they’d all die. And before they died there’d be cannibalism. Which do you prefer?” “Letting kids be born and then snuffing them out if a computer decides they’re the wrong sex or over the quota is inhuman.” “I didn’t say I like it, Ross. But it works.” “So do pills!” “Pills are a private matter. A person might privately decide not to take hers. The box is a public matter and the group outnumbers and overrules a mother who decides not to use it. There’s your question of effectiveness answered, but there’s another point. Those people are sane, Ross. Preposterously naive, but sane! Saner than childless women or sour old bachelors we both know who never had to love anything small and helpless, and so come to love nobody but themselves. They’re sane. Partly because the women get a periodic biochemical shakeup called pregnancy that their biochemical balance is designed to mesh with. Partly because the men find tenderness and protectiveness in themselves toward the pregnant women. Mostly, I think, because—it’s something to do.