“Those _ferkab_ stuffed-shirts at the Earth-end!” Rana exclaimed, inhaling and blowing twin plumes of blue smoke through her nostrils. “How are you--holding out? You look simply _zwirchy. Farbish zwirchy_.” “I feel like a three-headed monster,” said Lynne. “Everybody stares at me. I envy you, Rana--getting through it on outpost assignment beyond New Walla Walla.” “And I envy you,” said Rana, her eyes sparkling. “Here I have the first baby on Mars, and you get virtually all the attention. It got pretty lonely out there during the final weeks.” “I can imagine,” said Lynne, with open admiration. What the tiny Italo-Indian girl had done seemed to her akin to the greatest epics of human heroism. Once Mars had ceased to be a raw frontier the induced-twin method had been dropped in favor of natural reproduction on the Red Planet. But since Martian environmental conditions prevented normal births, it was necessary--once a woman was known to be carrying a child--to ship her to Earth for pregnancy care and the actual birth of her baby. It was an expensive process, not only in the strain it put on domestic relations, but because it used up cargo space sadly needed for supplies. Already Mars had built up a thriving export trade in lichenwassers, lean Martian boarmeat, archeological products and rare minerals. A brilliant telepath--which her husband was not in spite of his not inconsiderable virtues as an executive and organizer--Rana had been assigned to the lonely Thule station beyond New Walla Walla in the far Southern Polar district. Her task was to install and supervise a new trans-polar tele-communications unit that had cut and greatly simplified complex relays around the Red Planet’s top. Not even Tony had known his wife was pregnant. “I decided, since I was a Martian, that my baby was going to be Martian too,” was what the tiny slip of a woman had told an almost raging Rolf and Tony. Incredible had seemed her courage when her condition had been finally discovered--much too late for the usual transport to Earth. When the male protests continued, Rana said quietly, “No woman on Mars has ever carried a child more than four months. I’m already in my seventh. Now will you stop worrying?” At this stage, Lynne had intervened, firm in her conviction that Rana had accomplished a miracle. “How?” she asked. Rana’s reply had been as original as it had been unexpected. “A trained telepath must be able to attain total concentration at will. To achieve such concentration we need complete mental control. That in itself is inseparably tied up with complete control of our bodies. And a baby is closer than breathing to its own mother.” “But I still don’t see how--”