He was definitely putting on a chill. We were friends now, but obviously he was still peeved whenever he was reminded that I had doubted that his theory could work. And he was using its success to rub my nose in the realization that I had been wrong. A man with a string of degrees after his name is just as human as anyone else. I had needled him pretty hard that first time. "I'm satisfied," I acknowledged. "I was wrong. The formulas work beautifully. Come over and see my file of documents on it if you want a boost for your ego. Now let's see the formula for stopping it." He sounded cheerful again. "I didn't complicate that organization with negatives. I wanted it to _grow_. It falls apart naturally when it stops growing for more than two months. It's like the great stock boom before an economic crash. Everyone in it is prosperous as long as the prices just keep going up and new buyers come into the market, but they all knew what would happen if it stopped growing. You remember, we built in as one of the incentives that the members know they are going to lose if membership stops growing. Why, if I tried to stop it now, they'd cut my throat." I remembered the drive and frenzy of the crowd in the one early meeting I had seen. They probably would. "No," he continued. "We'll just let it play out to the end of its tether and die of old age." "When will that be?" "It can't grow past the female population of the town. There are only so many women in Watashaw, and some of them don't like sewing." The graph on the desk before me began to look sinister. Surely Caswell must have made some provision for-- "You underestimate their ingenuity," I said into the phone. "Since they wanted to expand, they didn't stick to sewing. They went from general charity to social welfare schemes to something that's pretty close to an incorporated government. The name is now the Watashaw Mutual Trade and Civic Development Corporation, and they're filing an application to change it to Civic Property Pool and Social Dividend, membership contractual, open to all. That social dividend sounds like a Technocrat climbed on the band wagon, eh?" While I spoke, I carefully added another red star to the curve above the thousand member level, checking with the newspaper that still lay open on my desk. The curve was definitely some sort of log curve now, growing more rapidly with each increase. "Leaving out practical limitations for a moment, where does the formula say it will stop?" I asked. "When you run out of people to join it. But after all, there are only so many people in Watashaw. It's a pretty small town." * * * * * "They've opened a branch office in New York," I said carefully into the phone, a few weeks later. With my pencil, very carefully, I extended the membership curve from where it was then. After the next doubling, the curve went almost straight up and off the page.