such thing as a woman's
role unless it had been the same as a man's. That had gone on a long
time. And it hadn't been a joke at all.

How ironic it was, there at the last! All of man's work through the ages
had been aimed at the stars. And the women had assumed the final phase
of conquest!

For a long time women had been revolting against the masculine symbols,
the levers, pistons, bombs, torpedoes and hammers, all manifestations of
man's whole activity of overt, aggressive power.

The big H-bombs of the last great war had seemed to be man's final
symbol, destructive. And after that, the spaceships, puncturing space,
roaring outward, the ultimate masculine symbol of which men had dreamed
for so long, and which women had envied.

And then only the women could stand the acceleration. It was a
physiological fact. Nothing could change it. Nothing but what they had
done to Bowren.

All of man's evolutionary struggle, and the women had assumed the
climax, assumed all the past wrapped up in the end, usurped the effect,
and thereby psychologically assuming also all the thousands of years of
causation.

For being held down, being made neurotic by frustration and the
impossibility of being the "equal" of men, because they were
fundamentally psychologically and physiologically different, women had
taken to space with an age-old vengeance. Personal ego salvation.

But they hadn't stopped there. What had they done? What about the men? A
man for every woman, yet no men from Earth. That much Bowren knew.
Native Martians? What?

He had been transported somewhere in a car of some kind. He didn't
bother to be interested. He couldn't get away. He was held fast. He
refused to open his eyes because he didn't want to see the men who held
him, the men who had replaced him and every other man on Earth. The men
who were destroying the civilization of Earth.

The gimmicks whereby the women had rejected Earth and left it to wither
and die in neglect and bitter, bitter wonderment.

He was tired, very tired. The movement of the car lulled him, and he
drifted into sleep.

He opened his eyes and slowly looked around. Pretty pastel ceiling. A
big room, beautiful and softly furnished, with a marked absence of
metal, of shiny chrome, of harshness or brittle angles. It was something
of an office, too, with a desk that was not at all business-like, but
still a desk. A warm glow suffused the room, and the air was pleasantly
scented with nat