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a joke.
"What are you doing here?" he said. "This isn't where the people leave.
This is where they come in!"
"We're going to be in the same picture together," she said shyly.
"Good!" said Dr. Hitz heartily. "And, say, isn't that some picture?"
"I sure am honored to be in it with you," she said.
"Let me tell you," he said, "I'm honored to be in it with you. Without
women like you, this wonderful world we've got wouldn't be possible."
He saluted her and moved toward the door that led to the delivery
rooms. "Guess what was just born," he said.
"I can't," she said.

"Triplets!" he said.
"Triplets!" she said. She was exclaiming over the legal implications of
triplets.
The law said that no newborn child could survive unless the parents of
the child could find someone who would volunteer to die. Triplets, if
they were all to live, called for three volunteers.
"Do the parents have three volunteers?" said Leora Duncan.
"Last I heard," said Dr. Hitz, "they had one, and were trying to scrape
another two up."
"I don't think they made it," she said. "Nobody made three
appointments with us. Nothing but singles going through today, unless
somebody called in after I left. What's the name?"
"Wehling," said the waiting father, sitting up, red-eyed and frowzy.
"Edward K. Wehling, Jr., is the name of the happy father-to-be."
He raised his right hand, looked at a spot on the wall, gave a hoarsely
wretched chuckle. "Present," he said.
"Oh, Mr. Wehling," said Dr. Hitz, "I didn't see you."
"The invisible man," said Wehling.
"They just phoned me that your triplets have been born," said Dr. Hitz.
"They're all fine, and so is the mother. I'm on my way in to see them
now."
"Hooray," said Wehling emptily.
"You don't sound very happy," said Dr. Hitz.
"What man in my shoes wouldn't be happy?" said Wehling. He
gestured with his hands to symbolize care-free simplicity. "All I have to
do is pick out which one of the triplets is going to live, then deliver my

maternal grandfather to the Happy Hooligan, and come back here with
a receipt."
* * * * *
Dr. Hitz became rather severe with Wehling, towered over him. "You
don't believe in population control, Mr. Wehling?" he said.
"I think it's perfectly keen," said Wehling tautly.
"Would you like to go back to the good old days, when the population
of the Earth was twenty billion--about to become forty billion, then
eighty billion, then one hundred and sixty billion? Do you know what a
drupelet is, Mr. Wehling?" said Hitz.
"Nope," said Wehling sulkily.
"A drupelet, Mr. Wehling, is one of the little knobs, one of the little
pulpy grains of a blackberry," said Dr. Hitz. "Without population
control, human beings would now be packed on this surface of this old
planet like drupelets on a blackberry! Think of it!"
Wehling continued to stare at the same spot on the wall.
"In the year 2000," said Dr. Hitz, "before scientists stepped in and laid
down the law, there wasn't even enough drinking water to go around,
and nothing to eat but sea-weed--and still people insisted on their right
to reproduce like jackrabbits. And their right, if possible, to live
forever."
"I want those kids," said Wehling quietly. "I want all three of them."
"Of course you do," said Dr. Hitz. "That's only human."
"I don't want my grandfather to die, either," said Wehling.
"Nobody's really happy about taking a close relative to the Catbox,"
said Dr. Hitz gently, sympathetically.

"I wish people wouldn't call it that," said Leora Duncan.
"What?" said Dr. Hitz.
"I wish people wouldn't call it 'the Catbox,' and things like that," she
said. "It gives people the wrong impression."
"You're absolutely right," said Dr. Hitz. "Forgive me." He corrected
himself, gave the municipal gas chambers their official title, a title no
one ever used in conversation. "I should have said, 'Ethical Suicide
Studios,'" he said.
"That sounds so much better," said Leora Duncan.
"This child of yours--whichever one you decide to keep, Mr. Wehling,"
said Dr. Hitz. "He or she is going to live on a happy, roomy, clean, rich
planet, thanks to population control. In a garden like that mural there."
He shook his head. "Two centuries ago, when I was a young man, it
was a hell that nobody thought could last another twenty years. Now
centuries of peace and plenty stretch before us as far as the imagination
cares to travel."
He smiled luminously.
The smile faded as he saw that Wehling had just drawn a revolver.
Wehling shot Dr. Hitz dead. "There's room for one--a great big one," he
said.
And then he shot Leora Duncan. "It's only death," he said to her as she
fell.