"I thought you were in such a hurry to get to Base, James," Phyllis remarked sweetly from the doorway, wiping her reddening hands on a dish towel.

"I am, dear." He slipped the book behind his back; it was possible that, in her present state of mind—induced, of course, by her delicate condition—Phyllis might misunderstand his motive in reading that particular chapter of that particular book to that particular tree. "I just stopped for a chat with Magnolia. She's agreed to be godmother to the baby."

"How very nice of her. Earth Government will be so pleased at such a fine example of rapport with the natives. You might even get a medal. Wouldn't that be nice?... James," she hurried on, before he could speak, "you still haven't found any green-leafed plants on the planet, have you? Have you looked everywhere? Have you looked hard?"

"Haven't I told you time and[Pg 96] time again, Mrs. Haut," the tree said, "that there aren't any—that there can't be any? It's impossible to synthesize chlorophyll from the light rays given off by our sun—only cyanophyll. What do you want with a green-leafed plant, anyway?"

[Pg 96]

Phyllis's voice broke. "I think I'd lose my mind if I was convinced that I'd never see a green leaf again. All this awful blue, blue, blue, all the time, and the leaves never fall, or, if they do, there are new ones right away to take their place. They're always there—always blue."

"We're everblue," Magnolia explained. "Sorry, but that's the way it is."

"Jim, I hate to hurt your feelings, but I just have to take down those curtains. The colors—I can't stand it!"

"Pregnant women sometimes get fanciful notions," James said to the tree. "It's part of the pregnancy syndrome. Try not to pay any attention."

"Kindly don't explain me to a tree!" Phyllis cried. "I have a right to prefer green, don't I?"

"There is, as your proverb says, no accounting for strange tastes," the tree murmured. "However—"

"We're going to have a formal christening," James interrupted, for the sake of the peace. "We thought we should, since ours will be the first baby born on the planet. Everybody on Elysium will come—that is, all the human beings. Only because they can come, you know; we'd love to have the trees if they were capable of locomotor movement. You'll 

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