services" came through. Thus, Ex-Captain Carlyle Deston and his wife
were dead-heading, not quite back to Earth, but to the transfer-point
for the planet Newmars.

"Theodore Warner Deston is going to be born on Newmars, where he should
be," Barbara had said, and Deston had agreed.

"But suppose she's Theodora?" Bernice had twitted her.

"Uh-uh," Barbara had said, calmly. "I just _know_ he's Theodore."

"Uh-huh, I know." Bernice had nodded her spectacular head. "And we
wanted a girl, so she is. Barbara Bernice Jones, her name is. A living
doll."

Although both pregnancies were well advanced, neither was very near full
term. Thus it was clear that both periods of gestation were going to be
well over a year in length; but none of the five persons who knew it so
much as mentioned the fact. To Adams it was only one tiny datum in an
incredibly huge and complex mathematical structure. The parents did not
want to be pilloried as crackpots, as publicity-seeking liars, or as
being unable to count; and they knew that nobody would believe them if
they told the truth; even--or especially?--no medical doctor. The more
any doctor knew about gynecology and obstetrics, in fact, the less he
would believe any such story as theirs.

Of what use is it to pit such puny and trivial things as _facts_ against
rock-ribbed, iron-bound, entrenched AUTHORITY?

The five, however, _knew_; and Deston and Jones had several long and
highly unsatisfactory discussions; at first with Adams, and later
between themselves. At the end of the last such discussion, a couple of
hours out from the transfer point, Jones lit a cigarette savagely and
rasped:

"Wherever you start or whatever your angle of approach, he _always_
boils it down to this: 'Subjective time is measured by the number of
learning events experienced.' I ask you, Babe, what does that mean? If
anything?"

"It sounds like it ought to mean _something_, but I'll be damned if I
know what." Deston gazed thoughtfully at the incandescent tip of his
friend's cigarette. "However, if it makes the old boy happy and gives
the College a toehold on subspace, what do _we_ care?"

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUBSPACE SURVIVORS***

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