Chapter VIII

Three hours after its inauguration, Lynne Marcein realized that the experiment was a failure. The cattle showed no signs of being menacing or resentful. They did not stampede or go into weird parade formations, or gore one another for sport. They were evidently spent of body from their exertions earlier in the day.

But, save for a few individuals, they simply refused to pay attention. Having glanced at the screen that was supposed to fix their interest they would lower their heads and resume grazing, or would simply turn away.

Five times, Lynne had Revere and Rana move the tri-di projector, in an effort to so arrange its viewing curvature so that general attention would be compulsory. Five times the possessed beasts figuratively shrugged, humped their shaggy shoulders, and mooed, _So What?_ Then they went about their bovine business.

“_Farbish_ clever, these Mars-steers,” said Revere with a weak attempt at humor, when Lynne finally called a halt.

“I’ve worn my _ferkab_ brain to the bone,” put in tiny Rana inelegantly, “trying to bring those stupid creatures under my spell. The _farb_ of it is, I can feel those zombies snickering at me. I should like to twist them out of their silly cow-brains with my bare hands.”

“I know,” said Lynne with a wan smile, suddenly close to the outer limits of physical, nervous and mental endurance. “I feel like....” She paused, her face turning deathly pale, and then said in a wondering tone, “I feel like I’m going to have the baby right here.”

They got her back to adjoining Woomera Station in a hurry, where she was soon stretched out on a dispensary plastomat, sobbing with pain, with fatigue and with the sickening sense of double failure. Not only had she failed to destroy zombie possession of the Patagonia Station cattle, but she had put aside her primary duty to handle the big problem--had neglected to take care of the precious unborn life she had fought so hard to keep for all but a tiny fraction of nine months.

She knew she was acting like a baby herself--whimpering, crying out when the pain grew severe, making an idiot of herself.

“Where’s Dr. Smetana?” she said to Martin Juarez, who was standing over her bed with rolled-up sleeves and a deep concern in his eyes.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” he told her soothingly, bending to inject something into her left arm. “Just relax now--”

“I want my husband,” she heard herself scream. “Where’s Rolf? He should be here at this time.”

Then, mercifully, she blacked out, riding a storm-tossed ocean such as Mars had not known for half a million years. Coming out of it, an indeterminable time later, she realized she must have been delirious. She had actually dreamed Rolf was there at her side--though she knew he was still on Earth trapped in an octopus monster of Mother-Planet red tape. She had dreamed of actually having her baby....

_Baby!_ Her hands flew to her abdomen. It was flat! All at once tears of utter desolation and defeat rolled down her cheek. She had lost the child--and through her own heedlessness and neglect, after working so hard, so faithfully, for so long.

“You’ve got nothing to cry about,” said a familiar voice.

She opened her eyes, and there was Dr. Smetana, sitting by her plastomat. She murmured, “Thank God! You got here, Doctor.”

“I got here,” he replied quietly, “but too _swackish_ late. By the time I arrived, your son was already born and howling.”

“_My son!_ Where is he?” Lynne cried eagerly, trying to sit up.

Dr. Smetana gently but firmly pushed her flat. “You’ll be up soon enough,” he told her. “When you’ve walked the floor a few nights with this he-banshee of yours you’ll regret every minute you didn’t lie down in your life. A good baby--eight pounds, thirteen ounces.”

“_Crehut!_” said Lynne inelegantly, pushing back the light hair from her forehead. “But how--I mean, who delivered it if you didn’t?”

“Dr. Martin Juarez, in person,” was the reply.

Lynne was puzzled. “I didn’t know he was a doctor,” she said.

“One of the finest,” said Dr. Smetana with a wry smile. “It’s his proud claim he never lost a calf, a foal, a kid or an egg. And now he’s batting a _zwirchy_ one thousand with a human birth.”

“You mean--he’s a veterinary?” Lynne asked incredulously. The idea that her child, the second human baby born on Mars, should have been delivered by an animal doctor was appalling. Then, suddenly, it was funny. Lynne laughed until tears again ran down her cheeks. Recovering, she gasped, “I want to see my baby.”

Dr. Smetana had it wheeled alongside the plastomat in a jerry-built incubator. “Afraid we can’t take him out yet,” he said. “Got to make sure he’s ready for the Martian atmosphere.”

“I understand,” said Lynne, turning her head to look at the bright red, tiny creature, asleep under its coverlet with its eyes squeezed tightly shut. _Did that come out of me?_ she thought, in the immemorial self-question of all new mothers. She probed gently for its thought, caught a blanket of sleep, and knew she was going to love it and care for it as no mother on any planet had cared for her child.

“As a matter of fact, you gave Dr. Juarez a pretty bad time,” said Dr. Smetana. “That boy of yours didn’t want to leave at all.”

“Then my neglect and carelessness these last few days didn’t hurt?” asked Lynne, with relief. “I thought that bumpy ride with Joanna--was it yesterday?”

“The day before,” said the doctor. “We’ve kept you under to give you some rest. As for that bumpy ride, it’s a good thing you had it, or you might have been carrying that infant another month.”

“You mean, I did my exercises too well?” Lynne asked.

“I mean, you didn’t need to do them at all,” was the reply, “although I’m beginning to believe they’re a good idea for any mother-to-be. You and the boy have proved exactly what I _farbish_ well hoped you’d prove, Lynne. Thanks to the increased density of atmosphere caused by E-power, Mars is safe for human birth.”

He paused, then added, “Two swallows don’t make a summer, of course, but I don’t believe either your TP or Rana’s had much to do with it.”

“All that work wasted!” mourned Lynne as one of the Station girls, in a striped nurse’s clout and bolero, wheeled the infant away.

“_Wasted!_” Dr. Smetana was indignant. “You and Rana have taken the biggest step forward since the first passenger ship landed on Mars. You’ve brought the planet out of a biological iron lung. When Dr. Juarez vidared me what was happening, I actually cheered.”

“Where _is_ Martin?” Lynne inquired. “I’d like to thank him.”

“You can--later,” said Dr. Smetana. “Right now, he’s out on Patagonia Station, watching your husband hypnotize those goofy cows.”

“Rolf!” she asked tremulously. “Rolf here? I thought I was only dreaming....”

“He wouldn’t stir from your side until the infant was safely born,” said the doctor. “He took the birth like a man--never so much as a whimper out of _him_. Then he got busy--_look!_” He nodded toward the big vidar screen on the opposite wall.

It was keyed to a Patagonia Station tower. Lynne stared at the picture, first with incomprehension, and then with admiration for the man she had married, the father of her child. Almost out of the screen were four small gleaming dots humans in their aluminum climate-proof coveralls. They were clustered around a black cube that was the tri-di director. They were standing ankle-deep in snow!

Facing them, as if polarized by some invisible magnet, was a great herd of Martian cattle. The animals were clustered close together, and were all looking directly at the projector. Rolf had done it, she thought with relief. He had converted her failure into triumph. The cleverness with which the possessed cattle avoided looking at the projector proved, to her satisfaction, that they were not strong enough to withstand the hypnosis directed at them.

“Who thought of using a snowstorm?” asked Lynne. “Was it--?”

“It was Rolf,” said Dr. Smetana. “It seems he had been keeping in telepathic touch with your problem all the way from New Samarkand. When he got here, he simply gave the orders.”

“That’s the trouble with Earthtraining,” said Lynne. “I read somewhere that cattle always turn their backs on a snowstorm. But it didn’t really register. I never saw cows, or steers outside of a zoo--until I got to Mars.”

“We have all the disadvantages of Earth, here on Mars, Lynne,” Dr. Smetana said, smiling. “Including, from now on, children. You get some rest now, and let me get a little. If you’re restless think about your first PTA meeting. That should drop you off in a hurry.”