They got her back to adjoining Woomera Station in a hurry, where she was soon stretched out on a dispensary plastomat, sobbing with pain, with fatigue and with the sickening sense of double failure. Not only had she failed to destroy zombie possession of the Patagonia Station cattle, but she had put aside her primary duty to handle the big problem--had neglected to take care of the precious unborn life she had fought so hard to keep for all but a tiny fraction of nine months. She knew she was acting like a baby herself--whimpering, crying out when the pain grew severe, making an idiot of herself. “Where’s Dr. Smetana?” she said to Martin Juarez, who was standing over her bed with rolled-up sleeves and a deep concern in his eyes. “Don’t worry about a thing,” he told her soothingly, bending to inject something into her left arm. “Just relax now--” “I want my husband,” she heard herself scream. “Where’s Rolf? He should be here at this time.” Then, mercifully, she blacked out, riding a storm-tossed ocean such as Mars had not known for half a million years. Coming out of it, an indeterminable time later, she realized she must have been delirious. She had actually dreamed Rolf was there at her side--though she knew he was still on Earth trapped in an octopus monster of Mother-Planet red tape. She had dreamed of actually having her baby.... _Baby!_ Her hands flew to her abdomen. It was flat! All at once tears of utter desolation and defeat rolled down her cheek. She had lost the child--and through her own heedlessness and neglect, after working so hard, so faithfully, for so long. “You’ve got nothing to cry about,” said a familiar voice. She opened her eyes, and there was Dr. Smetana, sitting by her plastomat. She murmured, “Thank God! You got here, Doctor.” “I got here,” he replied quietly, “but too _swackish_ late. By the time I arrived, your son was already born and howling.” “_My son!_ Where is he?” Lynne cried eagerly, trying to sit up. Dr. Smetana gently but firmly pushed her flat. “You’ll be up soon enough,” he told her. “When you’ve walked the floor a few nights with this he-banshee of yours you’ll regret every minute you didn’t lie down in your life. A good baby--eight pounds, thirteen ounces.” “_Crehut!_” said Lynne inelegantly, pushing back the light hair from her forehead. “But how--I mean, who delivered it if you didn’t?” “Dr. Martin Juarez, in person,” was the reply. Lynne was puzzled. “I didn’t know he was a doctor,” she said. “One of the finest,” said Dr. Smetana with a wry smile. “It’s his proud claim he never lost a calf, a foal, a kid or an egg. And now he’s batting a _zwirchy_ one thousand with a human birth.”