rtunities in radio and television, and firmly believed that
atom-bomb tests were causing all the bad weather.

Moira, in her eighth month, walked to the county library every day and
trundled a load of books home in the perambulator. Little Leo, it
appeared, was working his way simultaneously through biology,
astrophysics, phrenology, chemical engineering, architecture,
Christian Science, psychosomatic medicine, marine law; business
management, Yoga, crystallography, metaphysics and modern literature.

His domination of Moira's life remained absolute, and his experiments
with her regimen continued. One week, she ate nothing but nuts and
fruit, washed down with distilled water; the next, she was on a diet
of porterhouse steak, dandelion greens and Hadacol.

With the coming of full summer, fortunately, few of the high school
staff were in evidence. Len met Dr. Berry once on the street. Berry
started, twitched, and walked off rapidly in an entirely new
direction.

[Illustration]

The diabolical event was due on or about July 29th. Len crossed off
each day on their wall calendar with an emphatic black grease pencil.
It would, he supposed, be an uncomfortable thing at best to be the
parent of a super-prodigy. Leo would no doubt be dictator of the world
by the time he was fifteen, unless he would be assassinated first, but
almost anything would be a fair price for getting Leo out of his
maternal fortress.

Then there was the day when Len came home to find Moira weeping over
the typewriter, with a half-inch stack of manuscript beside her.

"It isn't anything. I'm just tired. He started this after lunch.
Look."

Len turned the face-down sheaf the right way up.

Droning. Abrasing
the demiurge.
Hier begrimms the tale:
Eyes undotted, grewling
and looking, turns off
a larm, seizes cloes.
Stewed Bierly a wretch
Pence, therefore tchews we. Pons!
Let the pants take air of themsulves.

* * * * *

The first three sheets were all like that. The fourth was a perfectly
good Petrarchian sonnet reviling the current administration and the
political party of which Len was a registration-day member.

The fifth was hand-lettered in the Cyrillic alphabet and illustrated
with geometric diagrams. Len put it down and stared shakily at Moira.

"No, go on," she said, "read the rest."

The sixth and seventh were obscene limericks; and the eighth, ninth
and so on to the end of the st