Gloria, "if it's fun, hurry up and pass a law against it!"

"Well, hardly that—" the scholar began.

"Tell me," she interrupted. "How long am I going to be on this pill-and-lullaby diet?"

"It may be for a long time. In severe cases, it is for the rest of the patient's life. On the other hand, we have quite a bit of evidence that your urge to excitement may dwindle with maturity. Oh, we do not propose to make a pariah out of you. Marriage and motherhood have settling effects, too."

"My baby—!" cried Mrs. Hanford.

"Your baby," commented Paul Hanford in a very dry voice, "is a college graduate, twenty years old."

"Nobody's asked my opinion," complained Gloria, swinging her leg and hiking the hem of her skirt another half-inch above the slender ankle.

"Nobody will. However, Miss Hanford, I shall place your card in the 'eligible' file and have your characteristics checked. I'm sure that we can find a man who will be acceptable to you—and also to the department of Domestic Tranquility."

"Humph!"

"Sneer if you will, Miss Hanford. But marriage and motherhood have taken the 'hell' out of a lot of hell-raisers in the past."

II

Junior Spaceman Howard Reed entered the commandant's office eagerly and briskly. His salute was snappy as he announced himself.

Commander Breckenridge looked up at the young spaceman without expression, nodded curtly, and then looked down at the pile of papers neatly stacked in the center of his desk. Without saying a word, the commander fingered down through the pile until he came to a thin sheaf of papers stapled together. This file he withdrew, placed atop the stack, and then he proceeded to read every word of every page as if he were refreshing his memory about some minor incident that had become important only because of the upper-level annoyance it had caused.

When he finished, he looked up and said coldly, "I presume you know why you're here, Mr. Reed?"

"I can guess, sir—because of my technical suggestion."

"You are correct."

"And it's been accepted?" cried the junior spaceman eagerly.

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