ble."

Berry drew the sheet down over Moira's abdomen as if it were an
exceptionally fragile egg. He probed delicately with his fat
fingertips, then used the stethoscope.

"Those X-rays," said Len. "Have they come back yet?"

"Mm-hm," said Berry. "Yes, they have." He moved the stethoscope and
listened again.

"Did they show anything unusual?" Len asked.

Berry's eyebrows twitched a polite question.

"We've been having a little argument," Moira said in a strained voice,
"about whether this is an ordinary baby or not."

Berry took the stethoscope tubes away from his ears. He gazed at Moira
like an anxious spaniel.

"Now let's not worry about _that_. We're going to have a perfectly
healthy wonderful baby, and if anybody tells us differently, why,
we'll just tell them to go jump in the lake, won't we?"

"The baby is absolutely normal?" Len said in a marked manner.

"Absolutely." Berry applied the stethoscope again. His face blanched.

"What's the matter?" Len asked after a moment.

The doctor's gaze was fixed and glassy.

"Vagitus uterinus," Berry muttered. He pulled the stethoscope off
abruptly and stared at it. "No, of course it couldn't be. Now isn't
that a nuisance? We seem to be picking up a radio broadcast with our
little stethoscope here. I'll just go and get another instrument."

Moira and Len exchanged glances. Moira's was almost excessively bland.

Berry confidently came in with a new stethoscope, put the diaphragm
against Moira's belly, listened for an instant and twitched once all
over, as if his mainspring had snapped. Visibly jangling, he stepped
away from the table. His jaw worked several times before any sound
came out.

"Excuse me," he said, and walked out in an uneven line.

Len snatched up the instrument he had dropped.

Like a bell ringing under water, muffled but clear, a tiny voice was
shouting: "_You bladder-headed pillpusher! You bedside vacuum! You
fifth-rate tree surgeon! You inflated--_" A pause. "_Is that you,
Connington? Get off the line; I haven't finished with Dr. Bedpan
yet._"

Moira smiled, like a Buddha-shaped bomb.

"Well?" she said.

* * * * *

"We've got to think," Len kept saying over and over.

"_You've_ got to think." Moira was combing her hair, snapping the comb
smartly at the end of each stroke. "I've had plenty of time to think,
ever since it happened. When you catch up--"

Len flung his tie at the carved wooden pineappl