let go, dead of a broken spine.

* * * * *

The "liquor control board" was Benson's best idea. Not only did it put
tala on a legitimate basis, but it controlled our dealings with the
natives. Bromley, the chemist, who was the original offender, was
charged with manufacturing the wooden matches, and the medium of
exchange was concentrated in the hands of the commissary "purchasing
agent".

The reason that Benson sanctioned the controlled tala trade with the
natives stemmed from our apparent failure to sterilize the males. There
was, indeed, a huge crop of native babies, tiny little dolls that looked
like spider monkeys and dropped from their mothers' breasts after little
more than a week.

The brisk tala trade was part of our program to keep the natives in
close association while we devised ways and means to discover the cause
of our failure. All quarantine rules had long since been dropped, and
Sorenson and Bailey began inventing ruses to lure the males into the gas
chamber again.

Weeks passed while we worked our way through the whole male population
again, testing for fertility and X-raying it wherever we found it.
Through Joe we advertised new wonders to be seen in the ship, and as the
sight-seers left we tagged each with an atomized spot on the other
shoulder, indicating that he was still sterile or had just become so.

This time we tallied 496 males which, according to Joe, was certainly
the whole masculine population. The mystery of our failure at genocide
forced an unpleasant decision on Benson. The biologists and medics
insisted that we must win the natives' confidence even further to gain
their cooperation. As the heat of summer bore down and the mercury rose,
we eased off on the work schedule and deliberately planned social
functions to which we had Joe invite a group of natives. There were
picnics and beach parties where our guests brought their own tala, and
ours was carefully rationed. Group singing entranced the little golden
people, and they took remarkable delight in the discovery of their own,
sweetly pitched voices. Enterprising Joe, with his remarkable memory,
soon became unofficial song leader, and all day long we would hear the
natives practicing.

Sue's baby came, a sturdy little boy whom we named Richard Joseph--Sue
insisted on the second name, and I couldn't argue her out of it without
revealing my reasons. Within two weeks the clinic's nursery was full of