s chair.
Four gravities suddenly pushed her down into it and a hypodermic needle
jabbed her swiftly with a hypnotic drug. She slumped. He released the
button and the artificial gravity abated, but she remained dazed and
relaxed.

"You're not going to hurt her, are you, Doc?" Mr. Emery begged.

"Certainly not. But I suppose you know Social Control's orders."

They nodded, the husband gloomily, the wife with a single sharp jerk of
her head.

"You go right ahead and do it," she said. "I'm sick of working my
fingers to the bone while she primps and preens and talks all the time
about going to Earth."

"Come, Avis," Dr. Kalmar said in a low, commanding voice.

She stood up, blank-faced, and followed him out to the Ego Alter room.
He closed the door, sat her down in the insulated seat next to the
control console, put the wired plastic helmet on her and adjusted it to
fit her skull snugly.

Running his finger down the treatment sheet of her Social Control file,
he set the dials according to its instructions. The psychic areas to be
reduced were sex drive, competitiveness and imagination, while the areas
of reproductive urge and cooperation were to be intensified. He
regulated the individual timers and sent the varying charge through her
brain.

There was no reaction, no convulsion, no distortion of features. She sat
there as if nothing had happened, but her personality had changed as
completely as though she had been retrained from birth.

Miss Dupont came in without knocking. She knew, of course, that any
patient in the Ego Alter room would be incapable of being disturbed.

"Rephysical, Dr. Kalmar?" she asked.

"I'm afraid so. Will you prepare her, please?"

The nurse removed the girl's clothes. There was no resistance.

"Such a lovely body," she said. "It's a shame."

He shrugged. "Until we have enough people and farms and industries, Miss
Dupont, we'll just have to get used to altering people to fit the needs
of our society. I'm sure you understand that."

"Yes, but it still seems a shame. Bodies like that don't grow on trees."

[Illustration]

He gently moved the girl into the Rephysical Chamber. "They grow in this
machine, though. As soon as we can afford it, which ought to be only a
few hundred years from now, we can make any woman look like this, or
even better."

"And don't forget the men," Miss Dupont said as he started the
mitogenetic generator. "We could use some Adonises around here."

"We'