"We can't claim immunity from it, either, you know," said Vaine. "We're all too old to join the orgies, but we try to compensate for our helplessness, our uselessness, in other ways. You, Parker," he smiled at the chubby psychologist, "are a faddist who follows every single mad-eyed craze that crops up. You have no idea how strange you look right now without any hair at all on your face; no eyebrows, no eyelashes, a bald dome. You're a remarkable sight." Parker colored. This turned him oddly red from his smooth chin to his bald pate, so that he rather resembled a beet carved into the form of a face. "It's not a fad. It's a hygienic movement that I highly approve of." Vaine's laugh left little echoes repeating themselves in the corners of that acoustically perfect room. "What term would you use to explain away the time that you brought to your office some quack's mystic device which would supposedly soothe the patient by a mysterious mixture of vibrations and music made by the movement of the operator's hands in an eddy field? Remember how the frightful noises you hauled up sent three patients into hysteria, and so accentuated another's delusion of persecution that he focused his attentions on you as the cause of his troubles? Then he chased you all around the office with a metal chair, earnestly imploring you to stand still long enough to get your head bashed in. "And how about the time you claimed it was the duty of every citizen to learn the intricacy of a certain machine--and blew out the side of the wall with the 'harmless' little projector you rigged up? Eh?" He chuckled and a smile flickered for an instant on the face of the sour Stanton. "You aren't too normal yourself," retorted Parker. "Spending all your time dashing around with other people's wives." "Granted," said Vaine. "I'm an old fool and I know it." He smiled somberly. "Queer. We psychologists know exactly what makes us tick mentally, but we can't do anything more about our twisted emotions and impulses than we can do for those poor people who come to us for assistance we can't give them. Stanton collects old books. Never psychology, religion, or anything serious. What our ancestors called blood and thunder. Bang-bang adventure stuff. He calls it a hobby. It isn't. It's wish fulfilment." He went on: "Look at that laughable little idiot on the televisor screen. He's the least imposing person I know of--and the happiest man on earth. He may be the greatest man who ever lived, for all I know. Listen to him." "--man was useless. I knew that man must again find a motive for progress if he was to exist. The number of births had diminished almost to nothing. Both sexes felt that it was useless to bring children into such a world. So they did not, and the population has dropped frighteningly.