ted around the pasture and
armored cars patrolled the fence by day and kept guard over the
pregnant bovines by night in the barn.

Through the fall, into the long winter and back to budding spring
again, the host of experts and guards watched and cared for the new
calf-bloated herd.

The fact that Sally had gone dry had been kept a carefully guarded
national secret. To keep up the pretense and show to the world that
America still controlled the only proven method of manned space travel,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff voted to expend two hundred gallons of the
precious, small store of milk on hand for another interplanetary
junket, this time to inspect the rings around Saturn.

Piloting a smaller and more sophisticated but equally-well protected
version of _Icarus_, Major Quartermain abandoned the fleshpots of earth
and the adulation of his coast-to-coast collection of worshiping
females to again hurtle into the unknown.

"It was strictly a milk run," Major Quartermain was quoted as saying as
he emerged from his ship after an uneventful but propaganda-loaded
trip.

By the middle of May, it was the consensus of the veterinarians that
Delivery Day would be July 4th. Plans were drafted for the repeat
atomic cave shot at 9:00 p.m., July 3rd. The pregnant herd was to be
given labor-inducing shots at midnight, and, if all went well,
deliveries would start within a few hours. Just to be sure that nothing
would shield the cows from the rays of the explosion, they were put in
a corral on the south side of the barn until 9:30 p.m., on the night of
the firing.

Solomon's successor and a new bevy of hens were already roosting in the
same old chicken house and egg production was normal.

On the night of July 3rd, at precisely 9:00 p.m., a sheet of light
erupted from the Nevada hillside cave and the ground shook and rumbled
for a few miles. It wasn't a powerful blast, nor had been the original
shot. Sixty miles away, thirteen Guernsey cows munched at a rick of
fresh hay and chewed contentedly in the moonlight.

At 3:11 a.m., the following morning the first calf arrived, followed in
rapid order by a dozen more.

Sally's Cloverdale Marathon III dropped her calf at 4:08 a.m. on
Independence Day.

At 7:00 a.m., she was milked and produced two and a half gallons of
absolutely clear, odorless, tasteless and non-ignitable fluid. Eleven
other Guernseys gave forth gushing, foaming, creamy rich gallon after
gallon of Grade A milk.

T