An hour later the phone rang. He answered it and then turned to me with a smile. "That was a report from Smith about the ovaries of those convalescent ferrets I inoculated with the first cases of flu. They seem OK. Maybe it affects only a few females after all." "Well, we can't go peeking into the tummies of all the ladies in Vancouver just to find out," I said. "No, but we could try to get permission to biopsy ovaries on women who have abdominal operations in the city hospitals. Many of them have had the flu. It should tell us something." He turned back to the telephone and in a matter of minutes Bruce Thompson had agreed to cooperate and to pass the word on to the surgical departments of the other hospitals in town. Pat showed up to make us afternoon tea but she was clearly disturbed ... even more so when she heard the news. "I thought you'd have been pleased to hear about the females," I said dubiously. "Suppose it does apply to women. What good are active ovaries to a prospective mother if all the men are sterile?" she said, scornfully. "Well, you could always marry a Russian, when they take over the world." "Fool," she sneered. "That probably will be years from now, and I'll be too old. For another thing, I don't want to be part of anybody's harem, even for a baby." "Where do you get that harem stuff?" I grunted. "The Russkis aren't Moslems." "This isn't your good day, John," Hallam interrupted. "It is obvious that there will be a tremendous demand for fertile males, and I can even visualise the female voters of this country and the United States demanding a quota for Russian immigrants to this continent. Just how the disgruntled American males would react I don't know. It could lead to a very nasty situation, and maybe to that retaliatory war the Reds are trying to avoid. Of course, it could also mean civil war ... a war between the sexes ... with our males trying to revenge themselves on the Russians and our more realistic females trying to prevent it so they could use the Slavs to rebuild the nation ... on Communist terms of course." "Boy, this is really science fiction gone wild," I said. "Seems as if I picked the wrong place to live, unless I can avoid the flu." Pat didn't even look at me after that crack. The day dragged on. Radio reports came every few minutes and the interruptions of the TV programs to announce the spread of the epidemics were almost as frequent as the commercials. * * * * *