g project. How long do
you estimate it will be before the job is done?"

"Perhaps a century. As the trees go in by the tens of millions, there
will be a change in climate. Forest begets moisture which in turn allows
for more forest." He turned back to the audience as a whole. "In time we
will be able to farm these million upon million of acres of fertile
land. First it must go into forest, then we can return to field
agriculture when climate and soil have been restored. This is our prime
task! This is our basic need. I call upon all of you for your support
and that of your organizations if you can bring their attention to the
great need. The tasks you have set yourselves are meaningless in the
face of this greater one. Let us be practical."

"Crazy man," Abe Baker said aloud. "Let's be practical and cut out all
this jazz." The youthful New Yorker came to his feet. "First of all you
just mentioned it was going to take a century, even though it's going
like a geometric progression. Geometric progressions get going kind of
slow, so I imagine that your scheme for making the Sahara fertile again,
won't really be under full steam until more than halfway through that
century of yours, and not really ripping ahead until, maybe two thirds
of the way. Meanwhile, what's going to happen?"

"I beg your pardon!" Ralph Sandell said stiffly.

"That's all right," Abe Baker grinned at him. "The way they figure,
population doubles every thirty years, under the present rate of
increase. They figure there'll be three billion in the world by 1990,
then by 2020 there would be six billions, and in 2050, twelve billions
and twenty-four by the time your century was up. Old boy, I suggest the
addition of a Sahara of rich agricultural land a century from now
wouldn't be of much importance."

"Ridiculous!"

"You mean me, or you?" Abe grinned. "I once read an article by Donald
Kingsbury. It's reprinted these days because it finished off the subject
once and for all. He showed with mathematical rigor that given the
present rate of human population increase, and an absolutely unlimited
technology that allowed instantaneous intergalactical transportation and
the ability to convert anything and everything into food, including
interstellar dust, stars, planets, everything, it would take only seven
thousand years to turn the total mass of the total universe into human
flesh!"

The Sahara Afforestation official gaped at him.

The room rocked with