Second Census

By JOHN VICTOR PETERSON

Illustrated by SCHOENHERR

Quintuplets alone would be bad enough, without a census taker who could count them in advance!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Infinity October 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

In addition to being a genius in applied atomics, Maitland Browne's a speedster, a practical joker, and a spare-time dabbler in electronics.

As far as speed's concerned, I had a very special reason for wanting to get home early tonight, and swift straight flight would have been perfectly okay with me. The trouble was that Browne decided that this was his night to work on Fitzgerald.

Browne lifted the three passenger jetcopter—his contribution to our commuterpool—from the flight stage at Brookhaven National Laboratories in a strictly prosaic manner. Then the flight-fiend in him came out with a vengeance. Suddenly and simultaneously he set the turbo-jets to full thrust and dived to treetop level; then he started hedgehopping toward Long Island Sound. His heavy dark features were sardonic in the rear-view mirror; his narrowed, speculative eyes flicked to it intermittently to scan Ed Fitzgerald beside me.

Browne's action didn't surprise, startle, or even frighten me at first. I'd seen the mildly irritated look in his eyes when Fitzgerald had come meandering up—late as usual!—to the ship back on the stage. I had rather expected some startling development; provoking Ed Fitzgerald to a measurable nervous reaction was one of Browne's burning ambitions. I also had a certain positive hunch that Fitzgerald's tardiness was deliberate.

In any event my mind was ninety per cent elsewhere. Tessie—my wife—had visifoned me from Doc Gardiner's office in New Canaan just before I'd left my office at the Labs and had told me with high elation that we were destined to become the proud parents of quintuplets! I was, therefore, now going back bewilderedly over our respective family trees, seeking a precedent in the genes.

I was shocked out of my genealogical pursuits when Browne skimmed between the tall stereo towers near Middle Island. I prayerfully 

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