another day.

"Al," she breathed, dry-eyed and feverishly. "Al."

The woman explained that the ribbons were not for Al, but for her father who had died somewhere out near Pluto.

She rolled over on her face, but couldn't cry. There were no tears left in her.

A doctor came and gave her an injection and the following day she went back to work.

She got word indirectly that Al was back. A girl told her that she had heard it from one of the boys from the Center. "They carried him out of the ship," she said.

Sue refused to believe it. She set her jaw firmly and determined to wait. Late in the afternoon a man with a groundcar came and told her she was wanted at Recovery Seven Oh Six.

She still couldn't believe it, but went with him calmly.

They told her at Recovery that Al would someday walk again and that they would give him a new left arm, if not of flesh, then mechanical. His lungs had been crushed by pressure, but such was the fire of life in him that he would live and maybe fight again.

She went forty-eight hours without sleep in order to be with him all of the time she wasn't working. On the third day his lone good arm came round her and drew her down on the bed, and she slept on his shoulder.

From time to time she overheard nurses and doctors talking. The talk was usually about a subject that would always stir a woman.

"If no babies are born," one said, "for fifty years—"

"That's the length of time it's calculated to work," a doctor explained. "It's devilship. We've prepared surprises for them, but they've given us the worst. It doesn't kill the sperm, it paralyzes it or puts it in a sort of suspended state. Think of it! A boy two years old now will be infertile until he's about fifty-two. Then, if he's healthy, the sperm will revive. Our studies indicate he will be perfectly able to become a father. But by that time hardly a woman on Earth will be able to produce the ovum. Some rare cases, but mankind will vanish anyway."

"The women are fertile now?"

"Yes. And will be until 

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