myriad spawning Asiatics should be reduced tremendously, since their unchecked proliferation has caused such great hardship to humanity. The same might be said of the Europeans who refuse to obey the demands of sanity; and, coming closer to home, I pray you reduce the numbers of Jews, Catholics, Communists, anti-Herschelites, and other freethinking rabble, in order to make the new reborn world purer and cleaner and ...

With a sickly cough Walton put the letter down. Most of them were just this sort: intelligent, rational, bigoted letters. There had been the educated Alabamian, disturbed that Popeek did not plan to eliminate all forms of second-class citizens; there had been the Michigan minister, anxious that no left-wing relativistic atheists escape the gas chamber.

And, of course, there were the other kind—the barely literate letters from bereaved parents or relatives, accusing Popeek of nameless crimes against humanity.

Well, it was only to be expected, Walton thought. He scribbled his initials on both the letters and dropped them into the chute that led to files, where they would be put on microfilm and scrupulously stored away. FitzMaugham insisted that every letter received be read and so filed.

Some day soon, Walton thought, population equalization would be unnecessary. Oh, sure, euthanasia would stick; it was a sane and, in the long run, merciful process. But this business of uprooting a few thousand Belgians and shipping them to the open spaces in Patagonia would cease.

Lang and his experimenters were struggling to transform Venus into a livable world. If it worked, the terraforming engineers could go on to convert Mars, the bigger moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and perhaps even distant Pluto, if some form of heating could be developed.

There would be another transition then. Earth's multitudes would be shipped wholesale to the new worlds. Perhaps there would be riots; none but a few adventurers would go willingly. But some would go, and that would be a partial solution.

And then, the stars. The faster-than-light project was top secret, so top secret that in Popeek only FitzMaugham knew what was being done on it. But if it came through....

Walton shrugged and turned back to his work. Reports had to be read, filed, expedited.

The thought of Fred and what Fred knew bothered him. If only there were some way to relive this morning, to 

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