all.

"In the year 2000," said Dr. Hitz, "before scientists stepped in and
laid down the law, there wasn't even enough drinking water to go around,
and nothing to eat but sea-weed--and still people insisted on their
right to reproduce like jackrabbits. And their right, if possible, to
live forever."

"I want those kids," said Wehling quietly. "I want all three of them."

"Of course you do," said Dr. Hitz. "That's only human."

"I don't want my grandfather to die, either," said Wehling.

"Nobody's really happy about taking a close relative to the Catbox,"
said Dr. Hitz gently, sympathetically.

"I wish people wouldn't call it that," said Leora Duncan.

"What?" said Dr. Hitz.

"I wish people wouldn't call it 'the Catbox,' and things like that," she
said. "It gives people the wrong impression."

"You're absolutely right," said Dr. Hitz. "Forgive me." He corrected
himself, gave the municipal gas chambers their official title, a title
no one ever used in conversation. "I should have said, 'Ethical Suicide
Studios,'" he said.

"That sounds so much better," said Leora Duncan.

"This child of yours--whichever one you decide to keep, Mr. Wehling,"
said Dr. Hitz. "He or she is going to live on a happy, roomy, clean,
rich planet, thanks to population control. In a garden like that mural
there." He shook his head. "Two centuries ago, when I was a young man,
it was a hell that nobody thought could last another twenty years. Now
centuries of peace and plenty stretch before us as far as the
imagination cares to travel."

He smiled luminously.

The smile faded as he saw that Wehling had just drawn a revolver.

Wehling shot Dr. Hitz dead. "There's room for one--a great big one," he
said.

And then he shot Leora Duncan. "It's only death," he said to her as she
fell. "There! Room for two."

And then he shot himself, making room for all three of his children.

Nobody came running. Nobody, seemingly, heard the shots.

The painter sat on the top of his stepladder, looking down reflectively
on the sorry scene.

* * * * *

The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born
and, once born, demanding to be fruitful ... to multiply and to live as
long as possible--to do all that on a very small planet that would have
to last forever.

All the answers that the painter could think of were grim. Even grimmer,
surely, than a Catbox, a Happy Hooligan, an Easy Go. He thought o